The line between madness and genius is so thin that it is sometimes more difficult to notice it than to push yourself out for a morning run in winter. Salvador Dali walked with a tame ocelot, walked an anteater and appeared in public in a diving suit, and Nikola Tesla, who surrounded himself with myths and a mystical halo, left more questions than answers to posterity. However, many recognized supertalents led a rather modest lifestyle, which did not prevent them from kinking - and sometimes in a rather strange way. Here are ten illustrative examples.
1. Pythagorean beans
Most remember about Pythagoras only that he had some kind of mystical pants with harmonious spatial outlines. In fact, the ancient Greek scientist became famous not only in the field of mathematics - he also founded his own religious and philosophical school. In addition to the theses about space, world order, the transmigration of souls and the achievement of a contemplative mind, he had one dogma that raises questions: Pythagoras outlawed beans and forbade his students to eat them, but even to touch them.
2. Window to history
Benjamin Franklin preferred to start the day not with a cup of coffee, but with a nudism session: waking up, he walked naked to the open window and stood like that for about an hour. He called this ritual air baths and believed that it helps to tune in to a working mood, to put in order thoughts and recharge. And who knows, maybe Franklin was right - at least, in memory of the merits in the political and diplomatic career of the leader of the American Revolutionary War, they still print on hundred dollar bills.
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3. Smell of inspiration
German poet, playwright and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, known for his "Ode to Joy" and fiery humanism, for the last seventeen years of his life was friends with Johann Goethe - he motivated Schiller to finish works that previously existed only in drafts. And it was thanks to Goethe that one unusual habit of Schiller became known to the general public: the writer was inspired by the smell of rotten apples, and he deliberately kept them next to his desk. Goethe, who once came to visit and did not find Schiller at home, decided to wait for him in his study - and very much regretted it.
4. Notes of chaos
Ludwig van Beethoven took the concept of creative disorder to a whole new level. Music sheets, drafts, clothes were scattered everywhere in the composer's house, plates with leftover food and dirty cups were on the tables. The servants who could cope with this creative slovenliness did not stay long due to the composer's difficult nature. In addition, Beethoven had another quirk: every morning he began with a cup of coffee brewed from exactly 64 beans - no more and no less, so each grain had to be counted by hand.
5. Bitter dope
However, Beethoven can be called a coffee ascetic - especially in comparison with Honore de Balzac, who did not even come to the work table without having drunk five cups. The writer compared the drink to a blow that spurs the horse and makes it gallop at full speed. Sometimes Balzac was so heavy on coffee that he could work non-stop for two days in a row. And when the body developed immunity, he switched to grains - in a week (especially before the deadline) he could eat a pound of strong stimulant, which was specially brought to him from Yemen and Jamaica.
6. Dickens ordered to the morgue - then to the morgue
Charles Dickens had several exotic habits at once. Firstly, the writer worked literally on the go - he dictated his novels, walking the streets, walking around the room or cutting circles out of the blue. In addition, he communicated with his characters - talking, arguing, persuading and even swearing. In addition, he often drew inspiration from the dissection rooms - the writer constantly visited city morgues, where he could just sit for hours and stare at the dead. Dickens was also fixated on his hairstyle - he always carried a comb with him and could correct his hair up to 1000 times a day. And the writer preferred to work surrounded by mirrors - so that he could be distracted at any moment and make an absurd face for himself (or, perhaps, for his character, who became too annoying - who knows?).
7. Fly off the Tesla coils
Nikola Tesla is called the man who invented the 20th century - the physicist and engineer who discovered alternating current really gave a powerful impetus to the development of electrical and radio engineering. However, until now, interest is not so much a scientist's contribution to science, as his personality. In everyday life, the physicist was an extraordinary person: he could not bear even the sight of women's earrings, especially with pearls, he counted the volume and amount of food eaten and the liquid drunk - otherwise the food would not bring him any pleasure, the smell of camphor brought great discomfort, and the number of his apartments in the hotel must have been a multiple of three. In addition, Tesla was terrified of microbes, memorized whole books by heart and said to himself that he had the gift of foresight - so, once, he dissuaded his friends from getting on a train, which later derailed, and many passengers died. In addition, Tesla was a great hoaxer who surrounded himself with many myths and legends - one of them is being dealt with by the team of the Discovery Channel project "Tesla: Declassified Archives", which will try to recreate Tesla's so-called death ray and shed light on the mysterious circumstances of the scientist's death.
8. Let a hundred weeds bloom
The rich have their quirks, and usually these are exotic and expensive whims, but one of the wealthiest people of his time, Henry Ford, gave a real fight to stereotypes. The millionaire preferred to eat the grass that grew in his own garden - for breakfast, the entrepreneur could easily eat a sandwich with such herbs, and for dinner - stewed weeds or freshly picked salad.
9. Horror hatched from the egg
Recognized as the maestro of horror and suspense, Alfred Hitchcock suffered from ovophobia - a fear of oval-shaped objects, primarily chicken eggs. “I'm afraid of eggs. Even worse, they are disgusting to me. This is a white round object without any holes. Have you ever seen anything more disgusting than a pierced egg yolk and its spilling yellow liquid? - the director rhetorically asked everyone who asked any questions. In addition, for some reason, Hitchcock memorized entire blocks of reference books and address books, street names, bus and boat routes in those cities that he had never been to and had never even planned to - and could spend hours talking about this to a random interlocutor.
10.3, 13 and 33 misfortunes
Truman Capote, one of the most eccentric prose writers and playwrights of the second half of the 20th century, became widely known not only for his works (Breakfast at Tiffany's, Cold-blooded Murder, Other Voices, Other Rooms) - the writer was unusual in everyday life human. He constantly added numbers in his mind, which he stumbled upon, did not call people whose sum of numbers in the phone number was an unlucky number, and therefore he could refuse a hotel room. Capote could not stand yellow roses (although these were his favorite flowers), never left more than three cigarette butts in one ashtray, and did not get on a plane with two nuns on board. Friday, however, was declared a day free from all business - the writer did not start or finish any business on this day in principle.