Strange Candidates #3: George Francis Train

Continuing the exploration of strange presidential candidates from American history:

George Francis Train (1829-1904)

Train was a fascinating character. Some facts about his life:

• He made a fortune in the railway business.
• He traveled around the world in sixty-seven days, which was a record for the nineteenth-century, and which made him the inspiration for Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days.
• He ran for President in 1872, as an independent candidate. The issues he stood for included temperance, and women's rights.
• In later years he campaigned to become Dictator of the United States.
• Campaigning was a bit difficult because he refused to shake hands with anyone, due to his belief that touching another person's flesh would cause a loss of "psychic force." Whenever he met someone he would "gravely shake hands with himself."
• He believed that extreme longevity could be achieved by eating no "dead animals" and wearing no underwear.
• As an old man he took up boxing and fought in a match at the Bowery Theatre. (He believed the boxing gloves served as insulators against the loss of psychic force.)
• According to Wikipedia, "He spent his final days on park benches in New York City's Madison Square Park, handing out dimes and refusing to speak to anyone but children and animals."
• When he died, the Thirteen Club (a club of rationalist skeptics -- its name was intended to mock the superstition of 13 at a table being unlucky) passed a resolution declaring Train to be one of the few sane men in "a mad, mad world."

Related Posts:
Strange Candidates #1: Live-Forever Jones
Strange Candidates #2: Homer Tomlinson