On March 8 and 16 of 1843, former U.S. president and then-congressman John Quincy Adams trudged to the Washington, D.C., studio of Philip Haas to sit for a portrait of his likeness. Portraiture of wealthy and esteemed individuals was nothing new, but these particular visits involved the novel technology of the daguerreotype, an early form of photography in which the exposure of light on a copper plate coated with silver iodine and treated with a salt solution produced images that proved spellbounding to people of the era.

This wasn’t the first time the venerable congressman had posed for a photo: During a trip to Boston the previous September, he paid a visit to the studio of John Plumbe, though he struggled to stay awake during the hour-and-a-half session. Fortunately, the March 1843 experiences were more fruitful for both the sitter and photographer. Adams’ March 8 diary entry reflects his amazement of the process, which he described as “yet altogether incomprehensible to me…  It would seem as easy to stamp a fixed portrait from the reflection of a mirror; but how wonderful would that reflection itself be, if we were not familiarised to it from childhood.” Returning the following week, Adams interrupted the session of fellow congressman Horace Everett to have his photo taken again. He later gave one of the resulting daguerreotypes to Everett, perhaps as a token of appreciation for allowing him to cut the line; it remained hidden from the public until being unearthed in the 1990s, and today sits in the National Portrait Gallery as the oldest surviving photo of a U.S. president.

It’s worth noting that Adams was not the first president to be photographed; that honor goes to William Henry Harrison, who sat for a daguerreotype shortly after his inauguration in March 1841, although that image has been lost to history. And as the Adams administration had been over for more than a decade by the time the former president posed for Haas, it is also not the oldest photo of a sitting U.S. president. That distinction belongs to James K. Polk, who posed for his piece of history in the White House in 1849.

Considering he was in as many as 100 duels, the fact that Andrew Jackson lived long enough to be president is a feat in itself. He didn’t escape completely unscathed, however: “Old Hickory” lived with a bullet in his body after being wounded in one of these confrontations. His opponent was Charles Dickinson, with whom he had a dispute over the repayment of a forfeited horse race bet. 

The conflict escalated when Dickinson insulted Jackson’s wife, Rachel. Those were fighting words back then as surely as they are today, and so the two men drew pistols in Logan County, Kentucky, on May 30, 1806. Dickinson’s first shot struck Jackson near the heart, where the bullet would remain for the rest of his life. Jackson, after misfiring the first time, recocked his pistol, fired again, and killed Dickinson. 

If the duel had any effect on Jackson’s subsequent presidential campaign, it certainly wasn’t a negative one. Duels were hardly uncommon at the time, though most resulted in little more than each man firing his pistol into the air to avoid being seen as cowardly for refusing the challenge. The seventh U.S. president, who was so quick-tempered that there’s a Wikipedia article titled “List of violent incidents involving Andrew Jackson,” clearly wasn’t one to turn the other cheek.

In 1915, a group known as the Vagabonds embarked on a series of summer camping trips around the U.S. These wayfaring travelers weren’t just any old campers, but rather some of the most well-known figures in American history: inventor Thomas Edison, industrialist Henry Ford, naturalist John Burroughs, and businessman Harvey Firestone. The idea was conceived in 1914 when Ford and Burroughs traveled down to Florida to tour the Everglades with Edison. In 1915, Edison, Ford, and Firestone took a road trip throughout Southern California, and it was during that excursion that the group’s nickname was informally chosen.

Before long, these expeditions ballooned into a sophisticated operation, with some trips featuring as many as 50 vehicles filled with additional staff and equipment. The group journeyed through the Adirondacks, the Catskills, Appalachia, and many other stunning natural sites across the country. In time, the American public grew fascinated with these expeditions. The Vagabonds even attracted the attention of sitting President Warren G. Harding, who briefly joined them in 1921 for a camping trip in Maryland. During his visit, Harding chopped wood, rode horses, and sat around the campfire before returning to Washington, D.C. Three years later, the Vagabonds were invited to join President Calvin Coolidge at his childhood home in Vermont in 1924, where they spent an hour taking photographs, discussing politics, and exchanging gifts. Unfortunately, these trips began to attract too much unwanted public attention, forcing the Vagabonds to disband later that year.