Teddy Roosevelt Coloring Page

Teddy Roosevelt was 42 when he became president in 1901, which still makes him the youngest president in U.S. history. He took over after President McKinley was assassinated. As a boy he was sickly and had asthma, so he worked hard at getting stronger, and he stayed an outdoorsman for the rest of his life.

The teddy bear is named after him. In 1902 he went on a hunting trip in Mississippi, and his hosts tied up a bear for him to shoot. He refused. A newspaper cartoon about the moment got a shopkeeper thinking, and soon there were “Teddy’s bears” in shop windows.

Roosevelt loved wild places, and as president he set aside around 230 million acres of public land for forests, parks and wildlife. In 1912, while campaigning for another term, he was shot in the chest just before a speech in Milwaukee. His folded speech and glasses case slowed the bullet, and he gave the speech anyway, for about an hour, before going to the hospital.