Great people had habits that will seem strange to you, and in some cases, absurd.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was one of the greatest writers in history, had a strange habit. He was annoyed by strands of protruding hair, so the writer always kept his comb nearby and combed it hundreds of times a day.

Benjamin Franklin

Every day, before starting work, Benjamin Franklin used to lie naked in his bathtub, taking "air baths".

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci did not believe in a regular sleep cycle and instead preferred a polyphasic cycle, meaning that he slept multiple times throughout the day.

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla also had a strange dream, and he really rested for only two hours a day. He also twisted his toes as hard as he could every night before going to bed because he thought it increased the nourishment of his brain cells.

Yoshiro Nakamatsu

Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu could have been the greatest inventor in history. He patented the floppy disk in 1952, as well as over 3,300 inventions during his lifetime.
Many of his greatest ideas hit him when he was close to drowning, as he believed that starving the brain without oxygen had many mental benefits. He also believed in brainstorming in a room with 24-karat gold, as this would block the television and radio waves that would impinge on the creative brain.

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison, when selecting employees for himself, made them pass an unusual test. The inventor suggested that they eat a bowl of soup, if the subjects salted the soup before they started eating, they were considered to have failed the test. Since the test was aimed at finding out which of the candidates had too many assumptions.

Pythagoras


The Greek mathematician Pythagoras had a very meager diet, he refused to eat beans and even forbade his followers to swallow or touch them. The popular belief is that Pythagoras even refused to run across the bean field when his attackers ambushed him and ended up killing him.

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope was a prolific writer, but oddly enough, he limited his work time, writing only three hours a day, and could produce 250 words every 15 minutes, meaning he ended the day with 3,000 words. If he finished a book that he wrote before three o'clock, he still continued to write.

Honore de Balzac


Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright who drank up to 50 cups of coffee a day. This may have helped his creativity, but it was detrimental to his health, he suffered from stomach cramps, headaches and high blood pressure.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche liked to work, and he liked to criticize his colleagues if they took a break.

Albert Einstein

One of Albert Einstein's oddities was his habit of playing the violin while watching birds, with tears usually running down his cheeks.

Demosthenes

Demosthenes was a respected ancient Greek statesman and orator. His most famous oddity is rehearsing his speeches with stones in his mouth for clearer diction.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe always wrote his works only on thin sheets of paper and then assembled them together to make scrolls for easier storage, which he believed helped with productivity.

Igor Stravinsky

Russian-American composer Igor Stravinsky stood on his head for 15 minutes every night to clear his head.

For many centuries, sages and scientists have been trying to understand the nature of man, his deepest essence. It cannot be said that it was completely unsuccessful, because you and I are the descendants of a huge and great intellectual heritage in the form of an infinite number of scientific works and teachings about man, his psyche, the nature of his motives and actions. However, paradoxically, the most seemingly ordinary phenomena, or rather their “root”, cannot be explained even by the most experienced experts.

It is quite obvious that during sleep a person unconsciously assumes one or another position. But what makes this unconscious choose this or that position is a mystery that has been trying to solve for a very long time, but so far to no avail. There are various theories on this subject: some scientists associate the sleeping position with the characteristics of a person’s character, while others argue that the posture depends on the specifics of dreams. Whatever it was, they still did not come to a consensus.

From childhood, each of us knows that picking your nose is not good. Nevertheless, no matter how aesthetic this habit was, it turned out to be very useful. According to one English newspaper, picking your nose stimulates the brain. Therefore, perhaps by getting rid of this "bad" habit, you missed the chance to become the second Einstein. Other scientists claim that eating goats boosts immunity. Strong statement. Of course, we will not check it.

There are a great many interpretations, but, of course, the theory of sexual desire is considered traditional. She says that a kiss is a symbolic sign of sexual connection. There are alternative opinions: many believe that a kiss is, first of all, an expression of admiration and respect. However, it is not known what kind of subconscious goal people actually pursue when indulging in these lovemaking. You have also probably heard that kissing is good for immunity. So kiss well!

By their very nature, superstitions are pagan, and may be ecclesiastical. If you look closely, it is not difficult to notice that the word superstition consists of 2 words: faith and turmoil. Superstition - belief in the vain (vain, empty, having no true value). Interpretations of superstitions are extremely contradictory. For some, a black cat that ran across the road - to success, while for others - to a continuous series of misfortunes. The only common sense that can be learned from this is that all these prejudices are not worth our attention, since psychosomatics can turn life into a real nightmare.

Why are some people so desperate to help those in need? Why are so many of these people able to give the last thing they have in the name of charity? Psychologists identify several factors, but the main one is a special personality type: some people are much kinder and more humane than others from birth, so a low level of egocentricity pushes them to such actions. Other scientists argue that altruism is a way of expressing one's deepest feelings and thoughts. But exact data about what pushes people to impartial and selfless help to their neighbors is not yet in psychological theory.

We spend almost one third of our lives in sleep. Most people dream every day, and some even several times a night. Science has long figured out how the process of falling asleep occurs, how the behavior of our body changes during sleep, and many other similar things. However, scientists are very reluctant to talk about the psychology of dreams, referring to the fact that this is not their prerogative. However, there are some interesting theories. One of them belongs to Sigmund Freud, who argued that dreams are a reflection of our deepest desires, especially sexual ones. But to explain what dreams mean, the plot of which goes beyond the existing reality, Uncle Freud, unfortunately, did not bother.

The stage of puberty is one of the most difficult periods in a person's life. No wonder it is also called a turning point. Most adolescents endure it with great difficulty, since this concerns not only physical maturation, but also moral. The pubertal stage (as it is also called) is the period of formation of the personality of a teenager, the transition to a completely new worldview. Often all this is accompanied by throwing from one extreme to another, nervous breakdowns and conflicts with the environment (primarily adults). What is most surprising is that none of the animals, even our closest "relatives" of primates, have such a phenomenon.

This feature is one of the most inexplicable mysteries of the human body. What is their role and whether it exists at all is still unknown to science. Only a few scientists say that this is the strongest genetic inheritance. However, they could not explain this in detail.

At first glance, it seems that this is a completely understandable and mediocre human reaction to something fun, and therefore it is pointless to talk about it. But everything is not so simple. Laughter has very deep roots and is a reflection of personality traits. No wonder they say, they say, tell me what a person is laughing at, and I will tell you who he is. Indeed, each of us has an individual sense of humor and, most importantly, an absolutely unique laugh. Many scientists say that a person's character can be determined by laughter and the manner of laughing. Much literature has been devoted to such studies.

Shame is a strong emotion, the functional meaning of which is to regulate human behavior in accordance with norms. However, under the conditions modern life norms for various people have become different. For some, one behavior seems unthinkable, for others it is in the order of things. And it is precisely by the ability of a person to blush that we can still comprehend his essence. After all, we are not able to hide this strangeness. But it is possible to realize who is in front of us: a conscientious or cunning person.

No matter how much the best minds of mankind have struggled with these riddles, or tried to explain our features, there have not yet been definite answers to questions. After all, man is the most inexplicable and mysterious creature on the planet. And there are a dozen or two such oddities in us. However, researchers do not lose heart, but the human race continues to amaze.

Jack Kerouac saw alcoholism as a basis for spiritual reflection. Benjamin Franklin began each new day with air baths: he spent half an hour in front of an open window every morning, so that he could read, write and mentally work all day. Thomas Eliot used green face powder and lipstick, while fellow poet Friedrich Schiller found inspiration in the smell of rotting apples. Perhaps the fruits of creativity of geniuses are the result of their incredible quirks, or just strange habits characteristic of eccentric people.

Of course, writers living in the 18th century did not have the word processing capabilities that we have today, so they often wrote by hand. Edgar Allan Poe took a step further: he fastened handwritten sheets with sealing wax, thus making scrolls. This writer's habit unnerved his editors.
Poe's stories are not for the faint of heart. They are full of gory details and so painful that many contemporaries believe that they are simply impossible to read. Only after the death of the writer, his works began to be respected, and were recognized as truly outstanding.

A very productive modern inventor that you probably haven't even heard of. Dr. Nakamatsu (better known as Dr. NakaMatsu) patented the floppy disk in 1952, and he patented over 3,300 inventions during his 74 years of life. Many of his most significant ideas came to him when he was close to drowning. The fact is that Dr. NakaMats believes that a long stay under water without air contributes to effective mental activity. “To let the brain feel oxygen starvation,” he says, “you have to dive deep and let the hydraulic pressure deprive the brain of blood. 5 seconds before I die, I see my new invention.” Then the Japanese inventor writes down his idea in a special notebook and rises to the surface.

Agatha Christie is the author of 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections. It is known that she did not write at the table. She didn't even have an office. Agatha Christie used a typewriter, but she did only part of her writing with it. In fact, she wrote wherever inspiration came to her: at the kitchen table or in the bedroom. Sometimes Christie would start writing history long before the idea for a particular book came up. She could begin to describe, for example, the details of the murder scene.

Honore de Balzac

Think you're too addicted to coffee? Surely, your caffeine problem will seem like a trifle to you when you learn something about the french novelist's addiction to coffee. Honore de Balzac drank 50 cups of coffee daily and slept very little when he worked on his work The Human Comedy. In his article on coffee "The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee", published in a French magazine, Balzac talks about the drink in sublime poetic language. “Coffee gets inside you and immediately there is excitement,” he wrote, “ideas come in like battalions of the Great Army, and the battle begins.”

A pioneer in the field now known as neuroscience, Freud, by studying the features of the subconscious, managed to change the path of psychology and come closer to understanding the human mind. Freud was a smoker. He started smoking early and subsequently smoked heavily. Freud was, of course, aware of the health risks associated with smoking. Freud tried to break the habit. This experience was not so good for him. “Shortly after quitting smoking,” he wrote, “my heart began to hurt so much, as it did not exist during smoking ... At the same time, I was in a depressed state of mind and gloomy thoughts overwhelmed me.” Freud simply could not overcome himself and leave the habit, even despite the many operations to remove a cancerous tumor that he had to endure. Freud tried to quit smoking with cocaine. He dedicated his work Cocaine Papers to this - "a paean to this magical substance."

As a child, Albert Einstein experienced great difficulty with speech, which worried his parents and doctors. He spoke very little, and when he wanted to say something, he always did it slowly, finding the right words with difficulty. Einstein admitted that this circumstance gave him a lot of time to observe the things around him and he could think for a long time about such concepts as space and time. He was amazed by these phenomena and then asked himself those curious questions, thanks to which, perhaps, his theory of relativity appeared. Einstein had some oddities. His driver reported that one day the scientist picked up a grasshopper from the ground and ate it. It is also known that Einstein took a violin with him during his trips to study birds in their natural habitat, and when he played, tears rolled down his face.

If it were not for this person, perhaps we would not have received the benefits of civilization that electricity gives us today. Tesla is the owner of over 300 patents for inventions, including radio, electromagnets and an alternating current electric motor. Tesla had a habit of starting work at 3 a.m. and finishing at 11 a.m. Because of this habit, Tesla suffered a mental breakdown at the age of 25. After that, he managed to pull himself together and did not change his habit until old age: he continued to live in this strict mode for 38 years. Tesla was not married, but it is known that he had a good relationship with the ladies. Tesla had several strange features: he could not stand the sight of overweight women and hated jewelry (most of all pearls).

Stephen King has his own fixed ideas about grammar, for example, he writes down 2000 words a day without a single adverb. In his book How to Write a Book. Memoirs of a Craft," he says, "The road to hell is paved with dialects." King believes that his skill as a writer depends largely on abstaining from adverbs. He is sure that adverbs steal details and obscure other parts of speech. “The adverbs were created by the minds of timid writers,” he says.
King is one of today's most prolific writers, with his books topping the New York Times bestseller lists. The writer claims that one of the secrets of his success is writing 2,000 words of text without using adverbs every day, even on holidays.

Thomas Edison

Edison's potential science assistants had to go through a difficult interview that included a soup tasting. Edison observed whether the applicant would season the soup before he tasted it. Those people who salted the soup before touching it, failed the interview. The test was designed to exclude people with prejudice.
Edison is also known for his neglect of such vital processes as sleep. Edison preferred polyphasic sleep, which involves several periods of light sleep (snoozing) during the day. This method is designed to free up the time that a person spends sleeping for wakefulness.

One of the greatest social reformers of Victorian London, Dickens was a fairly prolific writer and also had some quirks. It is known, for example, that he was irritated by at least one hair, knocked out of the total mass of hair, so he carried a comb with him everywhere and used it hundreds of times a day. Experts who analyzed the life and work of Dickens came to the conclusion that the writer suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and even epilepsy. There is one more interesting story about Dickens. During work, when he dictated to his assistant, who wrote down the text for him, Dickens paced around the room. They worked hard on each sentence, replacing one word with another many times, and the writer continued to walk from one end of the office to the other.

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At one time, Heinrich Heine wrote that creativity is a virus of the soul, just like a small pearl is a disease of a mollusk. Some of the habits inherent in great people, creators, cannot be called widespread in our society.

Take, for example, Schiller. This man could only work if he had a few rotten apples on his chair.

But Haydn could not start work without putting on his finger, his family jewelry - a precious diamond ring. After all, his main habit was to consider this how much during work.

The great Wagner also had certain oddities. He believed that nothing more than shreds of bright silk, which he diligently laid out on all the attributes of furniture that were in the room in which he worked, helped him to compose another brilliant piece of music. In addition to contemplating the bright mosaic that formed around him, Wagner liked to take the fabric in his hands, examine it, crumple it and pull it in every possible way. Perhaps this helped him to forget and go headlong into creativity.

But the writer Emile Zola acted differently: when he wanted his work to be as productive as possible, he simply tied himself tightly with a rope to a chair. Apparently, this was done so that even the body of the writer realized that in this situation there was nothing left but to create something masterpiece.

Charlotte Brontë, known worldwide as the author of Jane Eyre, periodically interrupted her creative process to peel potatoes.

But the poet Edgar Allan Poe could torment himself for hours, watching clean slate lying in front of him on the desk. Perhaps it was some form of meditation?

Maeterlinck acted according to a similar algorithm. He discovered a very useful morning ritual for himself. If the generally accepted opinion in society is that morning exercises are useful, then this genius of the pen considered it more productive to spend the morning - to sit at a desk for three hours, even if not a single useful thought visited him. It probably helped him concentrate and tune in to great work throughout the day.

Dumas Jr. acted according to the well-known principle - Good work you have to start with a good lunch. Therefore, the first thing he liked to do was to have a good meal several times, sometimes in the morning he ate five breakfasts.

His father also had his own characteristics - he wrote his works exclusively on leaves of a special square shape. Sometimes it even happened that he had to interrupt the process of creating a work, not because of the lack of an idea to continue the plot, but simply because there was no necessary paper at home.

But George Sand was different from most typical women and acted according to the classical principles of what is now fashionable to call time management - she worked exactly until 11:00. If at 10:30 she finished writing a novel, she immediately took on another, since she had to devote another half hour to work.

Even Schubert, who, unfortunately, lived only 31 years old, managed to develop an unusual habit during his unfairly short life - before bringing his next musical creation to the public, he would definitely reproduce it, but not an ordinary piece of music, but on a comb.

Almost all great people had their little oddities - nothing surprising, because all these are character traits, and every person has them, regardless of his fame. Another thing is when it comes to genius: then small eccentricities and habits turn into a "calling card", and sometimes even into jokes.

Perhaps the main source of inspiration for everyone was, is and will remain for a long time "Divine Dali" You can even call it a freak appearance: long slicked back hair, waxed moustache, ermine robe and a cane with a silver handle. Meanwhile, by his own admission, he woke up with the thought of "what would be so wonderful to do today?" And he did it very successfully. In Mikhail Veller's story "Saber Dance" from the book "Legends of Nevsky Prospekt" Dali's meeting with the composer Aram Khachaturian is described. It is unlikely that anyone other than a great artist could "hold" a meeting in this way:

"... the clock strikes four times, and with the last blow, a deafening call "Saber Dance" comes from the hidden speakers!" across the hall, waving their saber, to the opposite doors - they let him in, and slam shut!

During his first trip to America, Salvador Dali showed the reporters who met him a picture of Gala, naked, with lamb chops on her shoulders. When asked what the chops have to do with it, he replied: "It's very simple. I love Gala and I love lamb chops. Here they are together. Great harmony!"

At a lecture in New York, he once appeared in a sea-green suit and a diving helmet, explaining that it would be much more convenient to descend into the depths of the subconscious. And it was said absolutely calmly.

However, most likely, he was hardly serious in his actions and statements - to a greater extent it was shocking, a game for the public. How else can one explain such a statement of his: "Sometimes I spit on a portrait of my own mother, and it gives me pleasure."

But history also knows "serious eccentrics." Great commander Alexander Suvorov was famous for his strange antics: an unusual daily routine - he went to bed at six in the evening and woke up at two in the morning, an unusual awakening - he poured cold water on himself and shouted loudly "ku-ka-re-ku!", an unusual bed for a commander - at all ranks, he slept in the hay. Preferring to walk in old boots, he could easily go out to meet high officials in a sleeping cap and underwear.

He also gave the signal to attack to his beloved “ku-ka-re-ku!”, And, they say, after he was promoted to field marshal, he began to jump over chairs and say: “And I jumped over this, and through That!"
Suvorov was very fond of marrying his serfs, guided by a very peculiar principle - he lined them up in a row, selected those who were suitable for their height, and then married twenty pairs at a time.

Some seemingly great eccentricities are quite understandable. For example, Emperor Nero took baths in a tub of fish. This is due to the fact that the fish were not simple - they emitted electrical discharges, and the emperor was treated in this way for rheumatism.

Winston Churchill, for example, changed bed sheets every night. Moreover, in the hotels where he stayed, often even put two beds side by side. Waking up at night, Churchill lay down on another bed and slept on it until morning. Biographers see the reasons for this in the fact that he had a powerful excretory system, in other words, he often sweated ...

By the way, Winston Churchill also collected soldiers. It is known that he had several armies at home, which he enjoyed playing with.

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, as it turns out, did not wear socks. In July 2006, a collection of personal letters from the scientist was made public, in which he confesses this little oddity to his wife: "Even on the most solemn occasions, I did without socks and hid this lack of civilization under high boots." In addition, Einstein was fond of playing the violin and riding a bicycle.

Lev Davidovich Landau, Nobel Laureate in the field of physics, he constantly quoted some "chuckles, poems, rhyming lines that you can't even call poetry."

“For example, as soon as I hinted that I was going to Anapa, he answered: “I will put on a black hat, I will go to the city of Anapa, there I will lie on the sand, in my incomprehensible longing. In you, O abyss of the sea, a luxurious man will perish, who lay on the sand in his incomprehensible longing ... "

In our garden, in the very back,
all grass is crushed.
Don't think bad
all love is cursed!" Maya Bessarab wrote in her book "Thus Spoke Landau".

One of the physicist's favorite hobbies was solitaire. Laying out the cards, Dau said: "This is not for you to do physics. You have to think here."

Other strange habits of great people:

- Ivan groznyj in the mornings and evenings he personally rang the bells on the main belfry of Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. Thus, they say, he tried to drown out mental suffering.

- Lord Byron came to an extreme degree of irritation at the sight of a salt shaker with salt.

- Charles Dickens every 50 lines of writing he necessarily washed down with a sip of hot water.

- Johannes Brahms"for inspiration" constantly unnecessarily cleaned shoes.

- Isaac Newton once cooked a pocket watch, holding an egg and looking at it.

- Ludwig van Beethoven went constantly unshaven, believing that shaving hinders creative inspiration. And before sitting down to write music, the composer poured a bucket over his head cold water: this, in his opinion, should have been very stimulating for the brain.

- Benjamin Franklin sitting down to work, stocking up on a huge amount of cheese.

- Johann Goethe He worked only in a hermetically sealed room, without the slightest access to fresh air.

- Nikolay Gogol made great pasta. Living in Rome, Gogol specially went to the kitchen to learn from the cooks, and then treated his friends.

- Honore de Balzac did not sit down to work without drinking 5-7 cups of coffee. It is estimated that during his life he drank about 50 thousand cups of coffee. In addition, as a sign of deep respect for the brilliant man, he always took off his hat. Ask what's strange? Balzac did this when he spoke ... about himself!

Physicist Walter Nernst, author of the third law of thermodynamics, bred carp. When asked why exactly carps, and not any other fish or animals, he answered that he would not breed warm-blooded animals, because he did not want to heat the world space for his money.

- Jack the Ripper, the most famous murderer of the 19th century, committed his crimes only on weekends.

- Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin loved to shoot in the bath. They say that in the village of Mikhailovskoye, almost nothing authentic since the time of the poet has been properly preserved, but the wall that Pushkin shot at, surprisingly remained intact.