President William Howard Taft was a hefty man—clocking in somewhere between 340-350 pounds. This created significant lore about our nation’s largest president, including that he was once found stuck in a White House bathtub. That said many of these rumors are fairy tales.

More interestingly than discussion of Taft’s weight, President Taft had a very significant post-presidency. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed former-President Taft to the United States Supreme Court as Chief Justice. Taft would serve as Chief Justice of the High Court until his resignation almost 9 years later. To this day President Taft remains the only United States President to have served as a Supreme Court Justice and President of the United States.

President Taft was an ardent Unitarian, and did not subscribe to the divinity of Jesus Christ. This led to him turning down the presidency of Yale University due to it being associated with Congregationalists at the time that required an allegiance to the Trinitarian Godhead. This refutation would require Taft to state emphatically he was not an atheist in 1908. To have been an avowed atheist at that moment in history would have been political suicide.

Listen to a Podcast on Unitarianism and the American Presidency.