A vast and truly extraordinary collection of crackpots, visionaries, despots, prophets, performers, royals, politicians, inventors, philosophers, writers, artists and just plain eccentrics and their phobias, compulsions, odd beliefs and weird habits.
The president of Paraguay Francisco Lopez attempted to rout the Brazilian army by sending out a battalion of small boys wearing false beards
Elvis Presley was convinced that he could turn the Gracelands sprinkler system on and off by the power of his thoughts
The learned Victorian judge Lord Monboddo spent his entire life convinced that babies were born with tails and that there was a universal conspiracy of silence among midwives who cut them off at birth
Kaiser Wilhelm II always carried with him photos of his deceased relatives in their funeral attire
Florence Nightingale liked to keep a miniature pet owl in her pocket
Salvador Dali ate vast quantities of Camembert before bedtime to make his dreams more vivid
John Harvey Kellogg of cereal fame spent his wedding night writing an essay on the evils of sexual intercourse
Shane MacGowan once ate a Beach Boys album to demonstrate the cultural inferiority of America