▲During his candidacy, the media called him the "Elvis candidate," but it didn't deter voters from electing him as their president.

▲Lincoln's successor enjoyed making his own clothes during his free time.

▲In addition to leading the country through the Civil War and abolishing slavery, the 16th president liked to wrestle.

▲President Coolidge had a love for horseback riding, but developed an allergy later in life and was unable to continue riding.

▲He received a mechanical horse as a joke gift and ended up loving it and riding it regularly.

▲Our 32nd president had a penchant for detective stories.

▲At one point he was the wrestling champion of his county in Illinois. His wrestling background even came up during his presidential campaign, adding to the image of him as a strong and determined leader.

▲The 43rd president participated in many other activities in addition to running the country. He was a businessman, managed the Texas Rangers, and was in the Texas Air National Guard.

▲The first leader of the United States of America was a mule breeder in his spare time.

▲After seeing how effective they were in Spain as pack animals, he had them imported and started a mule-breeding frenzy among the townspeople of Mount Vernon.

▲Prior to his presidency, he spent years working as a tailor. Apparently, old habits do die hard.

▲He even ended up helping write a mystery novel, called 'The President’s Mystery Plot.'

▲The president used to take guests on joyrides around his ranch in his amphibious car.

▲The son of a Founding Father and the sixth president of the United States enjoyed skinny dipping.

▲

He loved a good card game, and won so much money gambling that he used his earnings to fund his campaign for the US House of Representatives in 1946.

▲He continued boxing even after elected as president, until an artillery captain permanently damaged his eye.

▲However his real passion was painting, and he loved creating portraits of dogs more than anything else.

▲He allegedly swam naked in the Potomac River every morning at 5 am.

▲Barack Obama is an avid comic book collector.

▲The president had an insatiable apettite for reading.

▲The 37th president had an infamous reputation for being the best bluffer in the US Navy during World War I.

▲He reportedly raced across town and risked his life to fight a fire at the Library of Congress in 1851.

▲Teddy Roosevelt was a huge fan of boxing after taking wrestling lessons from a middleweight boxing champion.

▲While not necessarily a strange hobby in and of itself, he took his passion to such an extent that he ended up killing over 11,000 animals during a single safari through Africa.

▲When he wasn't leading his people through the Revolutionary War, he invented spy gadgets.

▲Another one of Roosevelt's hobbies was hunting.

▲

The 42nd US President had an ear for music and played the saxophone.

▲

He has even been featured in many comics, including the 'Amazing Spider-Man #583' pictured above.

▲

His most famous invention was the "wheel cipher," a contraption used to decipher coded messages.

▲

His morbid pastime included pretending to lose control of the car and driving unsuspecting guests into a lake.

▲

It seems the most influential men in American history couldn't just have regular hobbies. Instead, they had pastimes that were either odd, extreme, or just downright violent. Fortunately, Ranker compiled several of the strangest ways presidents of the United States have spent their free time throughout history.

Browse through the most bizarre ones in the gallery.