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Just Some Anecdotes

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tommyedison

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Just some anecdotes I like to share. :D

Thomas Edison                   

Thomas Edison enjoyed showing visitors around his summer residence, pointing out the estate's many labor-saving inventions. At one point, before returning to the house, guests were guided through a curious turnstile. As considerable effort was required to turn it, a guest one day asked Edison why he had produced such a cumbersome device. "Well, you see," Edison replied, "everyone who pushes the turnstile around pumps eight gallons of water into the tank on my roof."

Thomas Edison was a workaholic who regarded formal dinners as a waste of time. At one such meal - finding the company rather dull - he resolved to escape to his lab at the earliest opportunity.

Having made his way to door, however, he was dismayed by the approach of his oblivious host. "It certainly is a delight to see you, Mr. Edison," he declared. "What are you working on now?" Edison's reply? "My exit."

Ludwig Van Beethoven

"The old castellan [of Gratz castle] was firmly convinced that Beethoven was not quite right in his mind; he would often run, bareheaded, without a hat, around in the great park of the castle hours on end, even if it were raining with lightning and thunder. On other occasions, he would sit for whole days shut up in his room without seeing anybody and not speaking a word. But the most insane behaviour occurred when the French occupied Gratz after the battle of Austerlitz (1806). The prince had aroused the hopes of the French general of meeting the celebrated composer and to hear him play on the piano-forte. To this end, a great musical soiree was arranged at the castle and the composer was to play his latest compositions. Beethoven, however, refused although the Prince repeatedly and earnestly requested him to do so. Nevertheless, the Prince sill hoped to persuade the obstinate musician, and invited the French general and other distinguished guests. On the appointed evening Beethoven was nowhere to be seen. Finally the news came that the artist had secretly left the castle and fled on foot to the town of Gratz in the cold winter night - only a letter to the Prince had been found in his room. In it he explained that he could not play to enemies of his country and added 'Prince! What you are, you are by circumstance and by birth. What I am, I am through myself. Of Princes there have been and will be thousands. Of Beethovens there is only one...'"

"One day we [beethoven and Ferdinand Ries] were dining at the Swan; the waiter brought him the wrong dish. Beethoven had scarecly said a few choice words about it, which the waiter had answered perhaps not quite so politely as he should, when Beethoven laid hold of the dish (it was so-called 'Lugenbratel' [Roast beef] with lots of sauce) and flung it at the waiter's head. The poor fellow still had on his arms a large number of plates containing various dishes (a dexterity which Viennese waiters possess to a high degree) and could do nothing to help himself; the sauce ran down his face. He and Beethoven shouted and cursed at each other, while all the other guests laughed out loud. Finally Beethoven began laughing at the sight of the waiter, who lapped up with his tongue the sauce that was running down his face, tried to go on hurling insults, but had to go on lapping instead, pulling the most ludicrous faces the while, a picture worthy of Hogarth."

Toward the end of his life, Beethoven fell into a coma. One evening, as a storm raged outside, the composer, at the sound of a mighty thunderclap, briefly regained consciousness, sat bolt-upright in bed with his fist raised in one final defiant gesture, and promptly fell back, never to breathe again.

Beethoven once expressed his wish to find a patron who would pay him an income for the rest of his life in exchange for the exclusive rights to all of his work. "I would not be idle in composition," he added. "I believe Goethe does this with Cotta, and if I am not mistaken, Handel's London publisher held similar terms with him." "My dear young man," he was told, "You must not complain; for you are neither a Goethe nor a Handel, and it is not to be expected that you ever will be; for such masters will not be born again."

By the way, what is objectivist's view of Bill Gates

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