The attacks got worse and worse as the Jacksons made their way along the campaign trail, setting a precedent that candidates' wives were now fair game for political sniping. Rachel was ridiculed for her weight, her rural background, and, of course, the botched marriage. To make matters worse, Jackson's opponents continually compared his wife to John Quincy Adams' wife, Louisa, considered to be more appropriate for the White House than Rachel almost exclusively because she was wealthy and pretty.

Charles Bird King
"Oh Christ, she brought out the harp. She is good."

Sadly, although her husband's political career survived the rumors and he won the presidency, Mrs. Jackson would never set foot in the White House as first lady. The anguish from being repeatedly ridiculed caused Rachel to sink into a deep depression, and she died of a heart attack before the inauguration. Jackson himself attributed the death to the attacks against her, and -- while making clear that we are ourselves not doctors and can't claim firsthand knowledge of the medical conditions at play -- he was 100 percent right.

The reason for the spread of the tale is still a matter for debate, and will be until Timecop becomes a real thing. There are a couple explanations, though. The first one is straightforward: There may have been another Thomas Jefferson whodied on June 30 -- one of his namesake's slaves. Simple enough.

Luckily, we have another, radder explanation. According to a number of Jefferson's fellow Democratic-Republicans, the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by their Federalist rivals to interfere with the presidential campaign going on at the time. In particular, this was all occurring prior to and during the Fourth of July, which meant that in the minds of at least some voters, Thomas Jefferson spent Independence Day 1800 as a dead man.

Library of Congress
"What!? I practically invented that thing!"

According to the Democratic-Republicans who cried "hoax," the Federalists spread the report of Jefferson's death so that he wouldn't be honored on the Fourth for writing the Declaration of Independence, and indeed, a lot of the discussion in the newspapers that reported on his "death" was eye-wateringly acidic. Consider the Connecticut Courant, where one of those tricksy Federalists wrote that on a slow news day, "some compassionate being ... very humanely killed Mr. Jefferson."

Hitler insisted on a special location for the surrender ceremony: the train car where the 1918 armistice was signed that ended WWI and bent Germany over a barrel for the next couple decades. It was symbolic, see, and of course there would be cameras there to capture the great irony of Germany's triumph on the site of their last defeat. But little did Hitler suspect that these cameras would also capture something that would make him look like a complete idiot.

You see, at one point during the signing, Hitler took a weirdly high step backward, as if suddenly startled by a mouse.

German Federal Archives
"Ach! Und grundrodunt!"

Where many saw only tragedy and a tyrant standing like a flamingo, one man saw a way to bring laughter back to the Allies. John Grierson, a Scottish filmmaker, looped the clip so that it would look like Hitler decided to do a goofy hopping dance.

German Federal Archives
Like the macarena, only 20 percent more humiliating to France.

The reel was a sensation, sweeping through theaters across the Allied world during one of the darker periods of the war. It provided a little bit of laughter during a much-needed time, and paved the way for generations of comedians to take cheap shots at Hitler.

In 1944, following FDR's trip to the Aleutian Islands, the Republicans, in particular a representative called Harold Knutson, started asking some difficult questions about the trip. Namely, why did the president need so many warships guarding him as it sailed through the Pacific? Now, it's fair to say that Knutson was being a little bit of a knutsack here, considering the state of the Pacific at the time.

via Histclo
Pictured: some inconsequential bullshit, apparently

But the bigger attack was to come. Knutston questioned the president about whether he left his pet dog behind and ordered a destroyer to turn around -- at an estimated cost of $20 million -- to bring him home.

Library of Congress
"How good of a boy could he have been, sir?"

At the time, FDR's love for his pet dog, a tiny terrier called Fala, was well-known, so it seemed entirely reasonable that he would misappropriate a destroyer to rescue him. It didn't happen, though. The Navy harshly denied the report, and Knutson soon backed down.

You know who didn't let it go, however? FDR. With some input from, no biggie, Orson Welles -- who often moonlighted as FDR's speechwriter -- he used the incident to give the Republicans a damn good kicking in his next campaign speech, accusing them of hurting his dog's feelings because they were incapable of dealing with the real problems facing the country.

In the game of political slap fights, nothing beats making your opponent look like they were being a dick to an animal.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum
A very good boy indeed, it turns out.

The Soviets swiftly issued a denial calling the whole thing an "impudent lie" and "an unpardonable provocation," and Buckley was forced to out his fakery. But that didn't stop the bargain-hunters. Within days, would-be buyers had flooded the Kremlin's phones, offering Lenin a new home everywhere from a museum, to a car dealership, to a seat in the new lobby of a printing company, like the most awesome episode of The Office we never got to see.