Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge (15 page)
Read Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge Online
Authors: Editors of Mental Floss
USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, impressing history teachers, and chatting up interior designers
KEYWORDS:
cocaine, bathrooms, or OCD
THE FACT:
Picture every stereotypical South American drug dealer you’ve ever seen in a movie. They’re all based in part on Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, except for the obsessive-compulsive part.
As the head of the Colombian Medellin drug cartel, Escobar ran his ruthless empire from a lavish pad complete with Arabian horses, a miniature bullfighting ring, a private landing strip, and a private army of bodyguards. Clearly, money wasn’t an object for the man. After all, he could afford to pay local authorities $250,000 each to turn a blind eye. Plus, he used his cash to build schools and hospitals, and was even elected to the Colombian Senate. But eventually the pressure got to be too much, and he turned himself in. Of course, incarceration didn’t stop him from living the lush life. Escobar converted his prison into a personal fortress, even remodeling all the bathrooms and strengthening the walls. Once he left, he was a fugitive again, but he wasn’t hard to track down. An obsessive germophobe, Escobar left a conspicuous trail of dilapidated hideouts with shiny, expensive new bathrooms.
USEFUL FOR:
living room Scrabble games, barroom banter, and bringing up anytime you happen to burp
KEYWORDS:
Triple Word Score, bingo, or excuse me!
THE FACT:
Even if you
do
know all those annoying two-letter words listed in the Official Scrabble Dictionary, you still don’t stand a chance against “G.I.” Joel Sherman.
In 1997, Sherman won the ridiculously competitive World Scrabble Championship in Washington, D.C., and in 2002, the National Scrabble Championship in San Diego. But that’s not the only reason you want to avoid a matchup with this guy. Turns out, he didn’t get his nickname because of his militaristic assaults on his opponents. Nope. The G.I. actually stands for gastrointestinal, because he belches so much during games.
The French poet
GERARD DE NERVAL
had a pet lobster that he enjoyed taking for walks, guiding it through the park of the Palais Royal on a pale blue ribbon.
If it wasn’t for his uncle’s influence,
CHARLES DARWIN
wouldn’t have gone on his famous voyage on the HMS
Beagle
. The ship’s captain tended to judge a man’s character by his profile, and he thought so little of Darwin’s nose that he initially banned him from the ship.
Who knew
GREGOR MENDEL
began his career in remedial training? That’s right, the monk famous for giving peas a chance was trying to get a job teaching science in a grade school, but he failed the teaching certificate exam and was forced to take remedial biology classes.
USEFUL FOR:
impressing history professors and students of the classics, and dropping into conversations at the movie store whenever you pass the movie
Caligula
KEYWORDS:
power trip, holier than thou, or just plain loony
THE FACT:
God complex or not, Caligula was immensely popular—that is, until he started declaring wars on mythological deities, literally.
Although he was emperor for just four years, Caligula (
A.D
. 37–41) was still able to take Rome on a wild ride, according to the ancient historians Suetonius and Flavius Josephus. The adopted son of the previous emperor, Tiberius, Caligula was initially very popular with Roman commoners. You can chalk it up to his spontaneous distributions of gold coins or his wacky, unpredictable sense of humor. Whatever the case, the public opinion quickly turned when (according to Suetonius) Caligula began cross-dressing in public, impregnated his own sister, declared war on Poseidon (bringing back chests full of worthless seashells as “booty”), and topped it all off by declaring himself a god—the classical definition of
hubris
. Poor Caligula. The seashell sovereign was assassinated by his own disgruntled bodyguards not long after.
USEFUL FOR:
conversing with jewelers, alchemists, and James Bond enthusiasts
KEYWORDS:
gold, heists, wealthy criminals
THE FACT:
British bad boy John Palmer has a cool nickname: Goldfinger. What he doesn’t have is a golden rep.
Currently ranked Great Britain’s wealthiest criminal, the UK scoundrel suckered over 16,000 people in a phony time-share scheme. But that’s just the start of it. Having amassed ill-gotten wealth of over £300 million, the notorious Mr. Palmer owns a fleet of cars and several houses all over England, including a huge estate at Landsdown in Bath. Palmer defended himself in the fraud trial, lost, got eight years in the clink, and has so far only been slapped with fines of £5 million. But this wasn’t his first criminal activity. In 1983 he took part in the UK’s greatest-ever robbery, in which he and a partner stole £26 million in gold bullion from a cargo storage company at Heathrow Airport. He smelted the gold himself and was arrested when police found two gold bars, still warm, under his sofa.
USEFUL FOR:
making conversation at precincts, with district judges, and on flights into Singapore
KEYWORDS:
Hubba Bubba, Bubblicious, and gum control
THE FACT:
You know the tiny nation of Singapore hates gum, but who knew the extent of their “You chews, you lose” laws?
If it weren’t for the dangerously explosive nature of Pop Rocks and the counterfeiting encouraged by $100,000 bars, Singapore’s classification of gum as the most evil substance on the face of the earth might come off as, oh, a tad eccentric. The ban, imposed on all citizens and tourists in 1992, emerged as a result of lawless gum chewers depositing their wads on train doors—delaying the transit system when the doors couldn’t fully close. Before the laws were (sort of) relaxed in May of 2004 (permitting gum to be sold through pharmacies only, to those with proper identification) any person trying to enter Singapore with more than a few sticks could be fined $6,173 and embarrassingly locked away in jail for a year, causing those striving for a dangerous prison persona to cringe when asked, “Waddaya in for?”