Despite the fact
that Bobby Fischer quickly became a
media darling following his victory in 1972, and many thousands of Americans
cheered his name, Fischer’s stance on America was anything but kind. Claiming
that he hated the country he once called home, Fischer was quoted as saying
about 9/11, “I applaud the act” and within the same breath, “Fuck the US. I want
to see the US wiped out.”
He was also a
raging anti-Semite, to the point even his most die-hard supporters found him
repugnant. Unless that person was a woman.
Aristotle’s views on the fairer sex are so expansive that
they get their own Wikipedia page. He basically asserted that women should be
subservient to men, to the point where they shouldn’t even be allowed to eat as
much food. He also claimed that women were basically incomplete men, and thus,
inferior.
( Opiniile lui Aristotel cu privire la sexul frumos sunt atât de expansive că primesc propria lor pagină pe
Wikipedia. El, practic, a afirmat
că femeile ar
trebui să fie aservite bărbaţilor, până la
punctul în care acestea nu ar trebui să le fie nici măcar permis să mănânce la fel de multă mâncare.
De asemenea, el susţinea că
femeile erau de fapt bărbaţi incompleţi, și, prin urmare, inferioare.)
John Lennon was the Chris Brown of his day. That’s not us
making a cheap joke; that’s a direct comparison that has been made about him.
Lennon openly admitted that he used to beat the living crap out of women, in an
interview with Playboy Magazine, a magazine literally dedicated to appreciating
the awesomeness of womankind, albeit the naked variety. Woman beater or not,
you have to admire his sense of irony.
The kicker of
this is that very few people know this about Lennon. Whereas Chris Brown has
become a walking joke, and has his domestic violence charges listed very
clearly on his Wikipedia page, not a single mention is made of John Lennon’s
similar abuse, despite him being massively more famous and influential than
Chris Brown will ever be. And when it is mentioned, his fans are so quick to
defend his actions that they almost break through time and land on the
receiving end of one of his punches personally.
Nikola Tesla is hugely famous online, and within pop culture.
Though in his lifetime his contributions to science and technology were largely
overlooked, today he’s widely regarded as one of the best minds science has
ever known.
Eugenics, for
those of you too lazy to open up a new tab on Wikipedia, is the art of selective breeding on a mass scale. It’s
the act of actively denying people with undesirable traits (such as infirmity
or stupidity) the right to reproduce, which supposedly betters the human race.
You’ll notice that this is a terrible, horrible idea, if only because if it happened,
we never would’ve gotten reality TV.
And Tesla loved
that idea. In his writings, Tesla extended the notion that “The year 2100 will
see eugenics universally established,” referring to it as important for
“weeding out undesirable strains.” Of course, none of this alters that fact
that he was a fantastically gifted mind, but it’s more than a little
disconcerting to realize that this guy fully supported the thought of certain
people getting denied the chance to mate. Especially once you realize he never
took a wife or had a kid.
