The Bizarre Thing That This Google Executive Collects

There are a lot of hobbies that people engage with. All manner of things qualify as hobbies, such as playing sports, listening or watching a specific type of music, television show, or film, going to the gym, or doing outdoor activities.

And then of course there are people whose hobby includes building a collection of specific types of things, sometimes relatively common, sometimes more arcane. Collectors' items can range from anything and everything, from popular things like art, wine, sneakers, to other niche things like jewelry, action figures or dolls, baseball cards, and hats. But unusual things can also make the list for collectors' items, and it could be argued that an executive at Google falls within this group of people.

Per The Funny Beaver, there are scores of things people have collected over the years that are not quite as popular or what one would expect to be a collectors' item. Some of these things include napkins, toenails, and toothbrushes. Also, hair.

Google executive Jared Cohen is one hair collector (via Business Insider). Unlike other hair collectors, who aim to accumulate a horde of strands from anyone famous, Cohen takes his hobby a step further. He only collects hair from men who held the highest office of the land.

His collection of presidential locks includes hairs from 11 former heads of state. They include presidents Washington, Adams, Lincoln, Tyler, Jackson, Buchanan, Grant, Reagan, Harrison, Kennedy, and Eisenhower (via his Twitter).

Cohen began his distinct hobby some 15 years ago when the strands of George Washington found their way into his ownership. That established a newfound love for the hairs that once stood on the scalps of American presidents. He explains that despite the weirdness of it all, he's very specific in following his own principle to only collect the hairs of dead presidents — because only then will his beloved hobby turn into a strange one. "I have a rule that I don't collect presidential hair of the living. I don't cross that line. I think it's a little weird to collect it," said Cohen. Business Insider adds that Cohen also collects the "drinking vessels of historic figures" — Ronald Reagan's mug, for instance — and "early American documents."