A notable physicist known for his theories while working in a Swiss patent office, and pacifist,
Einstein received 17 honors and awards for his work over the course of his lifetime,ranging
from honorary doctorates to the Nobel Prize in Physics. he even could’ve been a president!
Welcome back to Nutty History! Today, we’re going to be taking a look at the weird things related
to one of the biggest names of the scientific community: Albert Einstein. Let’s get started!
Albert Einstein’s distinctive messy hair is easily identifiable. He’s also well known for a picture
of him with his tongue sticking out because he was tired of smiling for photographers.
Though as you can imagine there is much more to him. Albert Einstein was born in Ulm,
Württemberg, Germany on March 14th, 1879 with an abnormally large head,
but over the first few weeks after his birth, his head started to reform into a more normal shape.
He also didn’t start speaking until age 3 or 4. When he did, his first sentence was to complain
at dinner that the soup was too hot. When asked why he hadn’t spoken before then, he replied:
“because up to now, everything was in order.” Despite that anecdote and being a super genius,
he was not a hot headed person. In fact people find him amusing because of his down-to-earth
sense of humor and his approachable manner. His hair was always uncombed, clothing disheveled,
and he never wore socks, not even when visiting President Roosevelt at the White House!
It turns out that Albert Einstein had a passion for sailing, but his sailing skills were sadly
lacking. On top of this, he never learned how to swim, and refused to wear a life jacket while he
was aboard his boat. There were many times where he’d run aground, nearly collided with other
boats, lost his bearings, or dropped his mast. Einstein also refused to put a motor on his boat,
as he considered them way too complicated. Stories have been told about his boat smashing into a rock
and capsizing. Einstein was trapped under the sail and tangled up, but despite not knowing how
to swim, he managed to get himself untangled and find his way to the surface before being rescued.
In the 1930’s the FBI’s famous J Edgar Hoover believed that Einstein was an extreme radical
element, and a communist, so he opened a file on Einstein. The file ended up being over 1400 pages.
Within this file, Hoover also criticized Einstein for being a dangerous anarchist. It turns out that
Hoover may have had issues with Einstein speaking out about social issues of the time, and publicly
arguing against racism and nationalism. Not a lot of people know that Einstein was a pacifist,
and despite being connected in history with the Atomic Bomb, he wasn’t actually responsible for
making it. His involvement with the project was communication with President Franklin D Roosevelt,
urging him to enter the atomic arms race, out of a fear that the Germans would develop
the technology first. Einstein’s intention of doing so was not for atomic weapons to be used.
Much like the rest of his life, Einstein’s marriages were anything but ordinary. Einstein
was actually married twice. The first marriage was to Mileva Maric, a fellow student at the
time. He married her in 1903 and together they had three children: Lieserl, Hans Albert, and Eduard.
Lieserl disappeared from historical records, and we still don’t know what happened to her,
but there may be hints that she died of Scarlet Fever. Apparently this marriage didn’t appeal to
Einstein for long. When Mileva was pregnant with their second son, Einstein wrote a love letter to
his first girlfriend, who he’d broken up with in 1897. Things only got worse from there.
In 1914, Einstein asked for a divorce from his wife. She refused, and Einstein ended up giving
her a list of rules to abide by so she could stay married to him. According to these rules,
Mileva had to clean the house, serve him three meals a day in his room,
couldn’t expect physical intimacy, and if he asked her to stop talking or to leave his presence,
she was to obey without question. This trainwreck of clause and contractual
marriage came to an end five years later as Mileva and Einstein finally divorced in 1919.
Part of the divorce arrangements that were agreed upon was that if Einstein ever won
the Nobel Prize, he would give the money to Mileva. Einstein did eventually win,
but only ended up giving a quarter of his winnings to Mileva. Einstein invested the rest of
his winnings in American bonds, and proceeded to lose everything in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
The total amount of his winnings was $32,000. When adjusted for inflation, this amounts to $515,703
in 2022. Einstein never married his first girlfriend though and his second marriage
was actually to his second cousin Elsa who looked after him and cared for him. He started an affair
with her while he was still married to Mileva, but later contemplated leaving her for her 20
year old daughter from a previous marriage. He was on some Woody Allen stuff there. Sheeesh!
Einstein’s last words can be taken from two different points. His last spoken words may never
be known. He spoke his last words in his native tongue - German - to his attending nurse who,
unfortunately, didn’t understand the German language and was therefore unable to recall what
he said. Einstein’s last written words, on the other hand, resulted in an unfinished sentence.
After his death in 1955, his brain had been removed from his body without permission by Thomas
Harvey. It’s a situation that would make anyone a little light-headed, honestly. It turns out
that Harvey also stole Einstein’s eyeballs which he gifted to Einstein’s eye-doctor Henry Abrams.
These two facts might bring a whole new meaning to “out of sight, out of mind.”. For decades,
he kept pieces of the preserved brain in two mason jars, which he stored in his Philadelphia lab,
his basement, and in a cider box stored under a beer cooler. Harvey eventually
returned Einstein’s brain to the Princeton Hospital where he performed the autopsy. Today,
the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia is the only place where the public can view Einstein’s brain.
Shortly after World War Two when most Jews at the time moved to the newly-formed country of Israel,
Einstein received a letter from the then-president David Ben Gurion. In the letter, Gurion asked
Einstein if he wanted to take on the role of President of Israel, which would require Einstein
moving to Israel and acquiring citizenship to the country. Einstein however, declined. In his
response, Einstein wrote that “. . .All my life I have dealt with objective matters. . .Hence I lack
both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official
function.” As much as Albert Einstein contributed to society and did good for people and science,
he was not without his issues, and he was most definitely weird. His life was anything but dull,
and sure, there were moments when one most certainly might question his sanity. But you
also have to wonder if humanity would have gotten the same contributions from him if his quirkiness
would have been suppressed. It’s also quite clear that Einstein wasn’t exactly the best family man,
as evidenced by him flitting from one relationship to the next. Labeled as a radical extremist,
and an element that needed to be watched, it’s clear that the US saw Einstein as a threat,
but then again, anyone with above average intelligence was considered a threat in a fickle
time of espionage, wars and diplomatic turbulence. Despite all these weird facts about Einstein,
one thing remains certain: he will be remembered as the man who was responsible for the theory of
general relativity and atomic bomb, even if atomic bomb wasn’t his intention. His four groundbreaking
theories that changed how scientists think about the world around them has played an important part
in the advancement of humanity. Can you imagine what the world would look like if Einstein had
accepted the position? Let us know in the comments how you think the world might be different if this
had happened. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Nutty History! Don’t forget to like and subscribe!