Also known as "Warren's Bird"

Did you know …

Which was the most scientific US president? Why, it was the original “Warren G,” President Harding! While Harding, like every other US president, campaigned almost exclusively on the “science is a tool of the devil” platform (his most popular flyer during the race read “No more wizards” next to a drawing of a doctor with an X over it), he once inadvertently named an entire species of bird.

The story goes that President Harding was having a “Presidents only” picnic by himself in the White House garden. His chief of security, waiting in the garden shed, came running when he heard two gunshots. It turned out that the President had fired his own revolver, the first time, at a bird perching on the picnic blanket, and then fired again to summon the security chief to remove the dead animal from his sandwich. The line he used was, “Get that cooter-bird off my bread stack, Thomas!”

As it happened, Security Chief Thomas was an amateur ornithologist, and recognized neither the name nor the bird. The President, of course, was simply using an improvised cuss word, but over the course of attempting to identify the bird at the Smithsonian, Thomas repeatedly referred to it as a cooter bird. Previously unclassified, the name stuck!

President Harding would later go on to ensure the eradication of that species through a very specific Executive order … but that’s a fact for another day!