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Wednesday, February 27, 2008 

Theodore Roosevelt's eldest daughter, Alice:



  • She enjoyed shocking people. The press had a field day reporting her various scandalous activities, among which included:
         * Wearing make-up
         * Smoking on the roof of the White House
         * Bragging about speeding in her friend's roadster... while unchaperoned
         * Placing a bet at a racetrack
         * Wearing a boa constrictor around her neck... in public
         * Jumping into a pool fully dressed at one of her dad's junkets
         * Setting off firecrackers and shooting at telegraph poles... from a train
  • Needless-to-say, women idolized her, and she became the source of songs and poems.
  • A particular gray-blue color was her favorite, so it was named after her (Alice Blue).
  • Her father once said: "I can either run the country or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both."
  • She often possessed what she called ""malevolent detachment".
  • Ever since they were kids, she tormented her cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and would do impersonations of her.
  • She planted a voodoo doll of Nellie Taft, the new first lady after her father was succeeded, on the White House lawn, and mocked her "hippopotamus face".
  • She was known as Princess Alice, Mrs. L., and "the other Washington monument".
  • She loved gossip and is famously known for keeping a sofa pillow with the following phrase embroidered on it: "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me."
  • She once said, "Coolidge looks like he was weaned on a pickle."
  • She adopted a trademarked wide-brimmed hat and told President Lyndon Johnson she wore it so he couldn't get close enough to kiss her.
  • She played poker with Warren G. Harding, was JFK's favorite dinner guest, and acted as Richard Nixon's confidant.
  • On her piano, she had framed pictures of Joseph McCarthy and Fidel Castro side by side.
  • She died in 1980 at the age of 96. Her last act was to stick her tongue out at a friend sitting by her bedside.