Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge (22 page)

USEFUL FOR:
barroom banter, making friends in cigar shops, and bringing up at Sunday school

KEYWORDS:
Cubans, smoking or, oh, my God!

THE FACT:
In the highlands of Guatemala, you’re likely to run in to members of the cult of Maximón, a Maya group that worships its cigar-chomping deity in a rather unusual way.

Worshippers believe Maximón, also known as San Simon, is a powerful saint who possesses the ability to, among other things, cure illnesses and confront Christ. Different shrines and chapels in Guatemala have different effigies built to represent Maximón, but a few things are pretty consistent: His face is made from wood, he’s got a (lit) cigar hanging from his mouth, and he’s surrounded by bottles of liquor. In some places, he may be nothing more than a wooden box with a cigarette sticking out of it; in others, he might be sporting sunglasses or a bandanna. Either way, if you see him, just be sure you have the proper offering. In exchange for blessings, he accepts cigarettes (Payaso brand are his favorite) and most any rum (although he’s partial to Venado).

(the tale of Stephen Hawking)

USEFUL FOR:
nerdy dates, academic gatherings, proving even geniuses make mistakes (and buy porn)

KEYWORDS:
physics,
Penthouse,
or Hawking

THE FACT:
One tiny mistake and the world’s most famous physicists ended up buying a subscription to one of the world’s raunchiest publications.

Well known for authoring
A Brief History of Time
, the world-renowned theoretician has made his greatest contributions in the physics of black holes. He was also elected one of the Royal Society’s youngest fellows and selected to Cambridge’s Lucasian post, a professorship of mathematics once held by Isaac Newton. While all signs point to genius, that doesn’t mean Hawking is always right. Earlier in his career, he made a bet with Kip Thorne of Caltech that Cygnus X-1 did not contain a black hole. (The prize was a subscription to a racy magazine.) In 1990, when Hawking decided the evidence against him was overwhelming, he conceded in a waggish manner: He had a friend break into Thorne’s office and steal the recorded terms of the bet—Hawkings signed his defeat, then snuck it back in for Thorne to find later. In the following months, Thorne also received his promised issues of
Penthouse
.

(Founding Father style)

USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, convenience store lines, convincing ultrapatriotic Americans that the Powerball isn’t immoral (at least according to the Framers)

KEYWORDS:
Founding Fathers, lucky numbers, or Powerball

THE FACT:
Despite what you may think about lotteries, early American leaders often turned to them to raise a buck or two.

It’s completely true! Displaying the astute politicians’ aversion to direct taxation, John Hancock organized several lotteries, including one to rebuild Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Ben Franklin used them during the Revolutionary War to purchase a cannon for the Continental Army. George Washington ran a lottery to pay for a road into the wilds of western Virginia. And Thomas Jefferson wrote of lotteries that “far from being immoral, they are indispensable to the existence of man.” Of course when he wrote it, he was trying to convince the Virginia legislature to let him hold a lottery to pay off his debts.

(to a pigeon)

USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, chatting up scientists, and making small talk whenever you and your loved ones are kicking pigeons in the park

KEYWORDS:
AC/DC, true love, or pigeons

THE FACT:
Who knew that Nikola Tesla, one of physics’ greatest minds, had such a penchant for chicks (we’re talking about the feathered kind)?

Tesla dreamed up AC current, won technical disputes with Edison, had ideas stolen from him by Marconi, and designed the Tesla coil (that lovely spinning thing you find sparking light in every mad scientist’s lab). But even more intriguing than all of this were his peculiarities. Nikola Tesla’s personal life was one of crippling obsessions: washing his hands endlessly, counting every item on a dinner table before tucking in, and maintaining a hatred for earrings and other round objects. But perhaps most unusual was his fondness for pigeons. Tesla was so smitten by one bird in particular that when it passed away, he wrote, “Yes, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me…When that pigeon died something went out of my life…I knew my life’s work was over.”

(a slightly more gangsterish one than Alice met)

USEFUL FOR:
costume parties, impressing your history teacher, inciting mob nostalgia with your friends in Witness Protection

KEYWORDS:
nicknames, gangsters, or fancy hats

THE FACT:
One of history’s strangest nicknamed mafiosos in the world, Albert “Lord High Executioner” Anastasia was also dubbed “The Mad Hatter” for his love of fancy fedoras.

As the whole “Lord High Executioner” name suggests, Al wasn’t exactly a man to be messed with. In the early 1920s, Anastasia was sentenced to death for killing a fellow longshoreman. But he was granted a retrial and the conviction was reversed when four of the witnesses “disappeared.” And that was just at the start of his career. After helping to kill crime boss Joe Masseria, Anastasia was made head of Murder, Inc. by new boss Lucky Luciano, and was dubbed the Mob’s “Lord High Executioner” by the press. And while the name stuck, his position didn’t, as Anastasia eventually fell out with the other bosses. On October 25, 1957, Anastasia was shot six times while getting a haircut. As one New York paper put it the next day: “He Died in the Chair After All.”