They might’ve been famous for some pretty incredible things, but it turns out that some of history’s biggest names had some extremely weird private habits.
Ian Fleming
The story of Ian Fleming and Ann Charteris’s relationship started off in secret, as they spent years having an affair. They eventually married in Jamaica in 1952. But their private life didn’t suddenly become all traditional, no way.
They wrote letters to each other that talked about whipping and pain. In fact, Ann once wrote about wanting him even when he hurt her because she liked him kissing her afterward.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
There’s no denying that Mozart’s music sure does sound elegant. His letters to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla were another matter, however, and he filled them with all sorts of lowbrow comments. He made jokes about backsides, soiling the bed, basically anything crude.
Some of his passages include parts that rhyme, and others are deliberate nonsense. These weren’t one-off dirty jokes either, far from it. He kept that tone throughout his letters. It’s kind of difficult to imagine the same guy who wrote all that beautiful music could be so crass.
Lord Byron
Newstead Abbey was a place with a lot of atmosphere. Then Lord Byron’s gardener dug up a human skull, and Byron didn’t want it to be buried again. No, he had it cleaned, polished, fitted with metal, and turned into a drinking cup. He genuinely drank claret from it.
Because, apparently, ordinary glassware wasn’t enough for Byron, and he went as far as writing a poem from the skull’s point of view. The poem said that being used to hold wine was a better job than simply rotting underground.
Nikola Tesla
Pigeons. Most people see them today as annoying birds that live downtown, but Nikola Tesla thought of them as more than that. He was particularly interested in one white pigeon. He told writer John J. O’Neill that he loved her ‘as a man loves a woman,’ believing she loved him back.Â
It gets even stranger, though, because Tesla said the pigeon once appeared in his hotel room with an intense light shining from her eyes. The pigeon’s death changed Tesla, and he said that his life’s work was no longer the same after her death.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Nature calls, even for presidents, but Lyndon B. Johnson wasn’t the kind of man to pause a meeting when that happened. He chose to bring aides or visitors into the bathroom and kept talking while on the toilet. He also told them to move closer if they couldn’t hear.Â
That wasn’t all because he also had very few boundaries in the White House swimming pool. He swam naked with staff members and journalists. You know, casual president stuff. He was a guy who didn’t seem to have any sense of embarrassment.
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin wasn’t someone who enjoyed using cold water. He invented something called an ‘air bath,’ and it involved Franklin removing his clothes early in the morning. Then, he’d open the bedroom window and sit there reading or writing.
Sometimes he climbed back into bed afterward before waking up again. Working naked beside an open window might not exactly sound scientific, but Franklin was pretty serious about his whole routine.
John Maynard Keynes
There was a time before John Maynard Keynes became famous for economics, and he kept private accounts of what his life was like. Maybe they were a little too private. Keynes detailed lots of information about his sex life, including his lovers’ initials and short descriptions.
His records from 1906 to 1915 also used the letters C, A, and W for different acts. Historians still can’t figure out what exactly each letter meant. Keynes did rein in his freaky side, however, right about the time he married Lydia Lopokova in 1925.
King Edward VII
King Edward VII had a lot of entertainment options when he visited Paris. But his most famous one was a custom chair that he had built at the expensive brothel, Le Chabanais. It was called the siège d’amour, and included things like padded supports and a wooden frame.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that it looks more like medical equipment than royal furniture. Maybe that was the idea, although it definitely wasn’t used for those reasons.
T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence made a name for himself as the real-life Lawrence of Arabia. His private life was even more adventurous. John Bruce, a former soldier, said Lawrence paid him to carry out severe beatings, with the instructions arriving through coded messages.
Lawrence claimed that a relative had ordered the punishment, although there was no proof of that. Historians don’t accept all of Bruce’s stories as true, but a lot of them do believe the beatings themselves took place.
Richard Francis Burton
Richard Francis Burton did a lot more than just ask people about their customs and move on. During his travels in Africa and other places, he apparently measured the size of the men’s genitals, then compared them across other groups.
His ‘interests’ went beyond that, too, since he also wrote about things like prostitution, circumcision, castration, same-sex relationships, and local physical practices. He was quite forward in a way that was pretty unusual for a Victorian explorer.
King Farouk
King Farouk was removed from his position as the king of Egypt in 1952, and that was when reporters finally entered parts of his royal residences. What they found was pretty graphic. He allegedly had an extensive collection of adult material.
It included glamour photographs and color photographs with pocket viewers, along with novelty pictures that moved when you squeezed them. Some reports even called it the world’s largest collection. Nobody’s ever been able to figure out exactly how many items he had.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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