GRANT

[RJNorton]

(08-27-2013 12:46 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Since he got a ticket for speeding on his horse, just think what he could have done in a car...

Neat story, Laurie, and it wasn't his only one.

"The story goes that he loved horses and he loved to ride fast and he literally went fast through the city," says John F. Marszalek, the executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Collection at Mississippi State University. "In one instance this Washington policeman pulled him over."

The MPD officer's name was William West, according to Significa, a 1983 compendium of weird facts about historical figures. Grant was driving his horse-drawn coach down M Street NW at such a great speed, that after West grabbed the horse's bridle, it took half a block to stop the hasty president.

West, according to Marszalek, was so embarrassed when he discovered he had pulled over Grant that he offered to ignore the infraction. But Grant was magnanimous.

"The story goes that Grant says, 'I was speeding, you caught me and I'll pay the ticket,' " Marszalek says. At the time, speeding tickets were payable by a $5 fine. It was not Grant's first."

Source here.