Creepy Goddess of Life: Gift for Herbert Hoover

West Branch, Iowa

Couples who've been together a while sometimes have a knickknack in their homes that looks out of place, but it was a gift and they've become attached to it.

If you were a globe-trotting millionaire VIP couple like Herbert and Lou Hoover (who later became President and First Lady of the U.S.), that knickknack would be a hideous eight-foot-tall bronze statue of the goddess Isis. It was given to them by the people of Belgium in 1922, and the Hoovers placed it on the grounds of their California estate. When the Hoover Birthplace opened as a presidential attraction/shrine in the late 1930s, the Hoovers insisted that the statue be moved there, facing Herbert's boyhood cottage.

They were the bosses, and it's still there.