everyone has a thing right something you're obsessed with maybe you've watched every episode of Seinfeld four times maybe you collect door knobs from historical buildings I don't know anybody who does that some obsessions can get more out of hand than others there's a fine line between quirkiness and straightup psychosis here are some of the weirdest obsessions of royalty and famous leaders over the years ik's war on squirrels all that 34th president Dwight Eisenhower wanted to do sometimes when he had a minute was play a little golf he loved the game so much he had a
putting green built on White House grounds but the president before him harri EST Truman loved to feed the squirrels on the grounds these squirrels didn't like to bury their acorns in IES putting green and Eisenhower hated it a war was brewing okay I'm half joking Eisenhower suggested that the squirrels infringing on his golf should be shot but firing at squirrels is not a good political look so he instructed the White House groundskeeping staff to find a different solution one of those Solutions was Advanced interrogations Techniques I swear this is real one secret service agent had
heard that starlings a type of bird that can swarm in massive numbers were scared off if they heard distress calls from their fellow birds so some agents captured a couple squirrels hoping to get a distress call from one of them except at first they couldn't there's actually a tape in an archive where you can hear one agent saying what Good's a tape going to be if he doesn't make any noise another agent then takes a pencil and starts jabbing the squirrel until it makes some squealing sounds but at the end of the day the recorded
squirrel squeals didn't work try saying that three times the grounds Keepers then implemented a trap and release program they captured the squirrels and relocated them to a park in Washington DC hoping to reduce their presence on the White House grounds that didn't work news of the squirrel War soon got out on March 15th 1955 The Washington Post ran a story with the headline White House squirrels being deported for taking divot from putting green another headline read operation squirrel I mean man this was some very important stuff Eisenhower squirrel campaign attracted some criticism and became a
minor political issue his opponent seized on it portraying him as an enemy of wildlife this criticism was somewhat ironic given Eisenhower's General appreciation for wildlife I mean all the guy wanted to do was play some golf Peter's Army Zar Peter III of Russia is a guy who only reigned for a couple of months in 1762 before being overthrown by his wife Katherine the Great he's probably remembered more for being more interested in kids games and actually ruling an Empire he had an obsession with soldiers which would be fine if they were real soldiers maybe he
could rally an army and expand his Empire the trouble was they were Toy Soldiers Peter preferred to spend time in his room playing with his toy soldiers he spent more time than that actually governing or pleasing his wife Katherine mentions the obsession multiple times in her memoirs and she didn't seem too happy about it now it didn't help that Peter was actually German and could barely speak Russian it didn't make him a very popular ruler granted he did become Zar when he was in his early 20s but he probably could have put the toys away
a little sooner and it wasn't just Toy Soldiers he was obsessed with it seems like he was into miniature things in general there's one story about how he set up whole mock trial for a rat a rat that he accused of treason he went through all the steps of an actual legal proceeding and then sentenced Theoden to be eliminated by The Gallows poor little guy the rat not Peter ju laoka hanana the first of Spain also known as Han laoka or Joanna the Matt was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella the monarchs who unified Spain
back in the 1400s as you can tell by her nickname she didn't have the soundest of mind when her husband Philip the handsome died young at just 28 she went down an obsessive rabbit hole that she never recovered from if you lost someone whose nickname included the handsome you might be pretty broken up about it too hopefully not as broken up as Wana though the loss of Philip to tyo Fever plunged Wana into a deep psychological crisis her behavior following his death became increasingly erratic and obsessive she reportedly spent hours caressing and kissing Philip's corpse
unable to accept that her handsome hus husband had passed away she refused to leave aside she watched him get inomed and then buried in a monastery near Bergos but even burial didn't bring closure to Wana soon after she demanded that the coffin be reopened so she could gaze upon her late husband once more going to the extent of kissing The Corpse's feet I just threw up a little bit in my mouth her obsession with Philip's body got worse from there Wana insisted that the coffin accompany her on her travels it was transported with all the
Pomp and Circumstance associated with the King while he he was traveling but usually those kings are alive Wana had the late Philip guarded at all times by a group of armed soldiers who were under peculiar orders to not let other women near it it seems she was still the jealous type jealous of a dead man W's life took a darker turn in 1509 when she was effectively imprisoned in a palace because of her worsening midle State she lived in this Force seclusion for the rest of her life removed for public affairs in the world she
once knew the ghost of her dead husband haunting her mind until till the [Music] end ibrahim's Kink when Ibrahim the first sulan of the Ottoman Empire from 1640 to 1648 was a kid he was tossed in a cage and forgotten about the Ottomans did this a lot their rulers usually had a Herm of wives and that meant a lot of kids many of which never had a chance at the throne now in order to cut down on the competition a son who Rose to power would often jail his siblings in something called a Cess basically
a cage where they could be imprisoned in a form of house arrest Ibrahim was the eighth son of Sultan ahed the first and so he didn't really have a chance to become Sultan except when his brother Murat Rose to power he started ending the lives of all of his brothers Ibrahim though had some marbles loose and Murat didn't see him as a threat when mad died suddenly of sosis Ibrahim was the only one left and the sultan it pretty much just fell into his lap it wasn't the most stable lap for an Empire to fall
into Ibrahim was crazy growing up for the first 16 years of your life in a cage probably didn't help his mother kosam who would helped protect him and get him on the throne needed to find a way to distract the Mad King so she could basically run the Empire that distraction was a Haram Ibrahim was obsessed with women as many as he could find his Haram grew to Crazy proportions and not in a good way he was abusive towards them there's story after story of how much of a Maniac he was towards them he also
had a type he ordered his underlings to go find a unique kind of woman one he described as being made in the manner of a wild heer there's having a type and then there's having a type glass delusions princess Alexandra Ali of Bavaria was a talented young woman she was a princess yes but she also was a writer she published several collections of short stories and wrote some plays and essays unfortunately she also thought she had a glass piano inside her princess Alexandra likely suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder based on some of her behavior she
was fixated on being clean a common thing for people to fixate on I suppose she only wore white which she associated with order and cleanliness fair enough but she apparently beli with all her heart that she had somehow swallowed a glass piano when she was a kid she would walk carefully through hallways making sure not to bump into anything for fear that the fragile instrument might shatter inside of her what she experienced actually isn't something entirely unique quite a few people have exhibited similar obsessions over the years it's called The Glass delusion a psychological phenomenon
where where people either believe that they're made out of glass or have things inside them that are made out of glass another Royal who had this glass delusion was King Charles II of France who somehow still managed to Reign for 42 years from 1380 to 1422 for King Charles this belief had significant implications on his behavior and his interactions with others he reportedly took great care to protect himself from activities that might cause him to break moving cautiously and avoiding situations where he believed he might be jostled or knocked over so that one time he
stubbed his toe on the nightstand he must have freaked the heck out this fear was so profound that it is said he had iron Rod sewn into his clothing to reinforce his body and prevent him from shattering Jackson's bird Andrew Jackson did some pretty terrible things while he was President the Trail of Tears wasn't a good look he had a tendency to challenge people to duels and get in brawls by many accounts he wasn't the best guy so it wasn't really a surprise that at his funeral his pet parrot which was in attendance went on
a CFI rant as more ERS looked on in horror Jackson had a pretty unusual relationship with his pet parrot Paul he and this African gray parrot which he originally bought for his wife formed a strong bond together especially after his wife's death you could say they got along too well and Jackson wasn't the best influence the story goes that Paul had developed a habit of using some bad language something that Jackson reportedly got a good laugh out of now we don't know exactly how Paul built up his dirty vocabulary whether Jackson deliberately taught them to
the parrot or if Paul just picked them up from overhearing Jack himself the latter wouldn't be entirely surprising given Jackson's reputed fiery temperament and strong language now when Jackson died Paul was still alive at his funeral in June of 1845 thousands of people gathered to pay their respects as people shed Trails of Tears except for lots of Native Americans who were probably quite happy Jackson was gone Paul spoke up with something to say the parot began to swear profusely shocking the attendees with a barrage of profanity the Reverend William meny Norman who wrote about Jackson
described Paul as a wicked parrot and recounted this incident in his book on Jackson and early Tennessee History the parrot's Outburst was apparently so offensive that it had to be removed from the surface now if you were there what would you have done thanks for watching what other weird obsessions throughout history do you want to learn about let us know in the comments and don't forget to like And subscribe for more nutty history
