A Rich Dude Decorated His Yacht With Whale Dongs

In 1961, First Lady Jackie Kennedy was going to visit Greece. JFK gave one instruction to Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent guarding her: “Whatever you do in Greece, do not let Mrs. Kennedy cross paths with Aristotle Onassis.”

Hill didn’t know the reason behind this rule. Maybe it had something to do with the Greek tycoon’s legal issues. But he kept it in mind, and during the trip, Jackie and Aristotle never met. And that was the end of that story.

No, of course that wasn’t the end of that story: Jackie would go on to marry Aristotle Onassis before the decade was done. And that relationship of theirs really started in 1963, when Jackie spent two weeks aboard the man’s yacht (with JFK’s blessing this time—the two were going through some stuff). You know how some billionaires spend millions of dollars buying luxury megayachts? Not Aristotle. He bought this ship for its value in scrap metal, and then he spent millions converting it to a luxury megayacht.

The yacht, which he named the Christina O after his daughter and is available now years later for rent, had a dancefloor that slid away to reveal a swimming pool. It had staterooms with secret doors. While Aristotle was alive, it had a private operating theater, just in case he was in the mood for surgery.

Leather stools sat in front of the yacht’s bar. That leather came from whales—specifically from a whale’s foreskin. We can’t speak authoritatively about whether whale penises create higher-quality leather than more conventional alternatives, but this setup let Aristotle deploy a favorite line of his on lady companions. He’s seat a woman on the stool and then tell her, “Madame, you are sitting on the largest penis in the world.”

One month after Jackie visited those dong stools on the Christina O, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Was he assassinated by time travelers, and were those time travelers dispatched by Aristotle, or by Onassis heirs decades after his death? The government’s silence on this matter speaks volumes.

This fact came from the One Cracked Fact newsletter. Want more like this, straight from your email inbox, without any ads or popups? Join here: