The silliest mistakes made by the cleverest men and women in history from Albert Einstein to Charles Darwin
- Mozart had a very silly obsession, whilst Einstein kept making the same mistake
- READ MORE:?Tech 専門家 明らかにする／漏らすs the five dumb mistakes we're all 有罪の of that kill your expensive 装置s
The 限界s of Genius??
by Katie Spalding (Wildfire £13.49, 352pp)
Having travelled all the way to 火星, a $125 million 航空宇宙局 調査（する）, 開始する，打ち上げるd in 1999 to 調査する the red 惑星, got too の近くに to the surface and 崩壊するd.
Had the 機関’s famously intelligent scientists been 敗北・負かすd by bad luck? No. They’d been 敗北・負かすd by their own 失敗 to remember that the 調査（する）’s ソフトウェア operated on 皇室の, rather than metric, 測定s.?
What’s more, 航空宇宙局 made the same mistake six years later, destroying another 宇宙船, this one 価値（がある） $110 million.
Just because you’re clever and successful, it doesn’t mean you can’t also be stupid and self-敗北・負かすing.?
Einstein was a terrible sailor who put himself at 危険 多重の times by 転覆するing his boat at sea and having to be 救助（する）d. His folly was all the greater because he couldn't swim
Spalding has gathered together tales that 証明する how fallible the 広大な／多数の／重要なs can be, from 19th-century 計算するing 開拓する and 賭事ing （麻薬）常用者 Ada Lovelace losing £3,200 in one bet (価値（がある） about £270,000 today), to Albert Einstein 繰り返して 転覆するing his boat at sea and having to be 救助（する）d.?
His folly was all the greater because he couldn’t swim.
Some of the 失敗s are comically inept. Charles Darwin was fond of eating the new 種類 he was 目録ing. After months spent searching for a lesser rhea (a flightless bird), he 設立する one but mistook it for something else.?
He and his shipmates on the Beagle were half-way through eating it when Darwin realised the error. He quickly collected what was left on their plates and sent it to London.?
As Spalding points out, this means the first example of the bird in England ‘was essentially 再建するd from stew’.
Other failings are more serious. Sigmund Freud was a fan of コカイン, both for himself and his 患者s, but the 麻薬 made him paranoid, so much so that by a 1904 holiday to Greece, he thought the numbers 61 and 62 were out to get him.?
When he was giv en room 31 in a hotel, the psychoanalyst was horrified ― it was half of 62. ‘This wilier and nimbler 人物／姿／数字 証明するd to be even better at dogging me than the first.’
A lot of the stories are just plain weird. Napoleon celebrated 調印 a 条約 with Russia by organising a rabbit shoot, but when the bunnies were 解放（する）d into the field, they turned out to be domesticated rather than wild, so ran enthusiastically に向かって the 広大な／多数の／重要な 軍の leader, who 嵐／襲撃するd off in a huff.
Charles Darwin was fond of eating the new 種類 he was 目録ing. After months spent searching for a lesser rhea (a flightless bird), he 設立する one but mistook it for something else. He and his shipmates on the Beagle were half-way through eating it when Darwin realised the error. While Mozart was obsessed with bums, with over ten per cent of his 400 known letters について言及するing backsides or poo?
Mozart was obsessed with bums. The text of his 1782 canon in B-flat major translates as ‘kiss my a**e, quick, quick!’, while over ten per cent of his 400 known letters について言及する backsides or poo.?
After seeing the play Amadeus in 1979, Margaret Thatcher 辞退するd to believe that Mozart could have been so fixated. The director Peter Hall replied that there was lots of 証拠 he was.?
‘I don’t think you heard what I said,’ Thatcher 答える／応じるd. ‘He couldn’t have been like that.’
Another lesson is that you should never give up. Before he made his fortune as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle tried setting himself up as a doctor.?
He went weeks without attracting a 選び出す／独身 患者, so when someone did arrive, he 熱望して sat him 負かす／撃墜する and started 診断するing the man’s cough. Only then did the 訪問者 明らかにする／漏らす he was a 負債 collector, who had come about the 未払いの gas 法案.
