Forbidden Knowledge Part 8

I Got Mine, Now What?

5 Shady Business Moguls and

What They Did with Their Money

"A man who dies rich dies disgraced," said philanthropic industrialist Andrew Carnegie. And while not that many robber barons would agree, a few did try to give something back to society, no matter how unscrupulously their money was acquired.

_01:: An Erie Case of Corruption Cattleman Daniel Drew turned to the pa.s.senger steamboat business in 1834 and prospered. Ten years later, he opened the Wall Street brokerage firm Drew, Robinson and Company. Then a decade after that, when a financial panic hit in 1857, Drew snapped up the undervalued Erie Railroad stock and became a company director. Not a bad few years. Although Drew routinely manipulated stocks, his old steamboat compet.i.tor Cornelius Vanderbilt outfoxed him in 1864 with company infighting and Drew lost heavily. Seeking revenge, he and two partners issued enormous amounts of Erie stock, driving down the value of Vanderbilt's investment. Both sides bribed judges in the "Erie War," which ruined thousands of investors, but never really hurt Vanderbilt. Then, in an unexpected twist, Drew's partners turned on him, leaving him ruined. Although dishonest in business, Drew did have a few good qualities. As a devout Methodist, he founded the Drew Theological Seminary (which later became Drew University) before he lost his money.

_02:: Whistle-stop Prosperity After a few years of law practice in Wisconsin, Leland Stanford heard about all the money you could make selling equipment (at grossly inflated prices) to gold rush miners in California, so he promptly moved west. Once well established as a merchant, Stanford decided to seek public office and in 1860 he won California's governors.h.i.+p. Never bothered by conflicts of interest, Stanford used his position to secure public money and state land grants for himself and his three Sacramento partnersMark Hopkins, Collis Huntington, and Charles Crockerwho built the western portion of the transcontinental railroad. After one two-year term, Stanford became president of the Central Pacific Railroad. A consummate (and ridiculously corrupt) businessman, Stanford's varied interests were greased with government influence, all of which brought him tremendous wealth. But he did give back a little. In 1885, after the death of his teenage son, Stanford founded and endowed Stanford University in the boy's memory.

DAVID HANNUM'S HORRIBLE-TERRIBLE,

NO-GOOD, VERY BAD DAY.

Turns out P. T. Barnum wasn't the man behind the memorable aphorism "There's a sucker born every minute." Though nearly always attributed to Barnum, the quote about suckers was actually from a first-rate sucker (and Barnum rival) named David Hannum. In 1869, Hannum and four business partners paid $37,500 for a 10-foot-tall stone giant man. The Cardiff Giant was in fact an elaborate hoax played by a tobacconist named John Hull, who had the stone man carved, then buried in Cardiff, New York, and then dug up again. Theories abounded about the giant (was he a petrified biblical figure? an ancient Native American statue?), and thousands of people paid good money to catch a glimpse. Of course, Hannum was looking to make back his investment easily. But then P. T. Barnum built a giant and claimed that it was the true Cardiff Giant. When people flocked to see Barnum's fake, Hannumwho didn't yet know he'd paid almost 40 grand for a fake giant of his ownmused incredulously, "There's a sucker born every minute." Sure is. And it takes one to know one, Mr. Hannum.

_03:: The Art of Making Money The son of a financier, John Pierpont Morgan bought his way out of the Civil War draft for $300, giving himself plenty of free time to speculate in wartime gold. As Morgan quickly realized, the price of the metal rose against the dollar with each Union Army defeat. As a bank loan agent, J. P. Morgan earned a commission on a deal to buy defective rifles from a Union a.r.s.enal in New York for $3.50 apiece, then sell them to the Union Army in Virginia for $22 each. The underhanded deal (in, oh, so many ways) only helped him on his way to becoming a powerful banker, a railroad magnate, and one of the world's top financiers. Of course, he wasn't all bad. J. P.'s giant industrial consolidations reshaped American capitalism and his financial muscle held off national fiscal crises. Further, as a great art collector, Morgan gave many works to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. In fact, his book collection and the building that housed it have become a museum and public library in New York.

_04:: Oil Wells That End Well John D. Rockefelleroriginally a dealer in farm goodsgot into the oil business in 1863 and founded Standard Oil in 1870. His ruthless compet.i.tive practices made Standard Oil a monopoly and made Rockefeller the world's first billionaire. To skirt antimonopoly laws, he reorganized the Standard Oil Trust and made the resulting companies appear in compliance. When the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911 declared Standard Oil to be in violation of federal law, it forced the company's breakup. But by then, Rockefeller had found a new hobby: philanthropy. Before his death at age 97 in 1937, he had given away $500 million, including $80 million to the University of Chicago, which he had helped found in 1892. With son John D. Rockefeller Jr., the businessman also founded Rockefeller University, the General Education Board, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

_05:: Honeys, I'm Home!

Haroldson Lafayette Hunt speculated in cotton and Arkansas farmland before he became an oilman in the 1920s. As a real-estate operator, Hunt would find out a farmer's asking price, then find a buyer willing to pay a little more. In essence, the slick salesman would cut deals to sell the land before he actually acquired it. In 1930, though, Hunt took his eyes off land and set them on oil. He bought out East Texas oil wildcatter "Dad" Joiner and reaped hundreds of millions in profits. And while Hunt was pretty fond of money, he was also fond of pretty wives. A bigamist, Hunt was married to first wife, Lyda, throughout his 17-year marriage to second wife, Frania. Then, after Lyda's death, he married secretary Ruth Ray, who had already borne him four children. But even with all the wives, and kids, and business dealings, Hunt made plenty of time to preach about the little things he really loved: like conservative values. The billionaire founded the nonprofit Facts Forum radio program, and also hosted the conservative radio show Life Line. Among his 14 children, daughters Margaret Hunt Hill, Helen LaKelly Hunt, and Swannee Hunt have been especially active in charitable work.

Touch of Evil Tabloid and "yellow journalism" king William Randolph Hearst did more than buy flowers for his mistress, Marion Davies. He formed Cosmopolitan Pictures to make films starring only her, and put rave reviews in all his newspapers.

Pilfer While You Work:

3 Marauders to Know

Who invented the concept of "take the money and run"? Judging by the dates on these entries, we're guessing it wasn't Woody Allen.

_01:: Fur Pants, Iron Sword The sketchy facts about Ragnar Lodbrok, prototypical Viking king, were spun into legend so long ago that the truth is elusive. Probably born in Norway, this Danish chieftain wore fur trousers that earned him the name Lodbrok ("Hairy Pants"). A proud pagan, Lodbrok enjoyed attacking the coasts of Europe on holy days, when townspeople were off guard. Legend says Ragnar fought Charlemagne (who died in 814 CE), but it's more likely that he led the 5,000 Norse warriors that besieged Paris in the 850s, until Charlemagne's grandson Charles II paid them off. (Ragnar often demanded and received huge bribes.) The Viking then hit up northern England on his European tour, but the strike proved unlucky. Hairy Pants was captured by the Saxon king Aella, who killed him by lowering him into a snake pit, Indiana Jonesstyle.

_02:: The Holy (City) Terror At the culmination of the First Crusade in 1099, fair-haired G.o.dfrey of Bouillon, a direct descendent of Charlemagne, led the first troops over the wall into Jerusalem. Bouillon and his fellow commanders from Western Europe, Raymond of Toulouse and Tancred Hauteville, were intent on taking the Holy City away from its s.h.i.+te Muslim rulers. Shortly after G.o.dfrey's advance guard threw open the gates, the rest of the Christian troops stormed in. Immediately, the Muslim governor surrendered, but he was comforted when Tancred told him that those residents who took refuge in the Aqsa Mosque would be spared. Although Tancred may have been sincere, the rest of the Crusaders didn't show any mercy. They slaughtered everybody in the mosque in the name of Christ, and they killed virtually everyone else in Jerusalem as wellMuslim and Jew, grandmother and infant. When the raid was over, G.o.dfrey declared himself ruler of Jerusalem under the t.i.tle Defender of the Holy Sepulcher.

_03:: Black Beard, Black Heart During the War of Spanish Succession (17011714), the Bristol-born Edward Teach sailed under a privateer's charter from Britain, attacking s.h.i.+ps from hostile nations for profit. But in 1716 he began to freelance. Teach, better known as Blackbeard for his raven-colored chin whiskers, converted a captured French freighter into a 40-gun wars.h.i.+p. As Queen Anne's Revenge, the vessel spread terror across the Caribbean and along the southern coast of colonial North America. Blackbeard raided ports and forced bribes from other sea captains in return for safe pa.s.sage. He also cut deals with unscrupulous officials, including the colonial governor of North Carolina. The lieutenant governor of Virginia, however, called for a British naval force to put the pirate out of business. After a tough sea battle, the Brits killed Blackbeard, cut off his bearded head, and fastened it to the bowsprit of his s.h.i.+p.

Touch of Evil Know which Marauder helped the Allies win World War II? The B-26 Marauder bomber. Thousands of them combined to drop 150,000 tons of explosives on Hitler and his cohorts.

l.u.s.t.

4 Famous Scientists Who Shared More Than Equations 6 Sinfully Amusing Snippets 5 Infamous Female Spies 5 Facts on Harems 4 Original Cities of Sin (None of Which Had Elvis Impersonators) 4 Self-proclaimed Casanovas 5 So-called Virtuous Figures Who Got Caught with Their Flies Down (or Skirts Up) 6 Presidential Affairs (Cigar Not Included) 4 Victorian Tricks for Retraining That Mojo 4 Royal Mistresses Who Made Good 5 Risque Ad Campaigns That Got Canned 6 Crazy Historical Trades for Brides 6 Historical Dudes with Lots of Illegitimate Children 5 Famous People Who Died in the Act World's 8 Strangest Aphrodisiacs 4 Historical Eloping Tales 5 Greatest Syphilitics of All Time 4 Not-So-Straitlaced Reformers of Victorian Times 5 Artists Who Did More Than Portray Their Models 5 Divinity School Dropouts 6 Portraits of Artists as Young Perverts 5 s.e.x Rumors About Royalty The "Get Around, Get Around, I Get Around" Awards:

4 Famous Scientists Who Shared More

Than Equations

The nerdy scientist stereotype hardly presents the recipe for hot romance. After all, equations, beakers, and Bunsen burners rarely set the stage for love scenes except in the most absurd of parodies. And yet sometimes, while heating things up in the laboratory, scientists have been known to, well, heat things up in the laboratory.

_01:: Frederick's Hypothesis To his friends, Frederick von Hohenstaufen was the stupor mundi ("wonder of the world"). To his enemies, he was the Antichrist. Of course, to the people of Sicily (11971250), Germany (12121250), and the Holy Roman Empire (12201250), he was simply the king. As a skilled warlord, Freddy kept power by overwhelming his enemies with his military expertise. As a clever linguist, he wrote scientific tracts in a dozen languages (including one of the first detailed manuals on the anatomy of birds). Not to mention that the guy was also an early advocate of the experimental method and performed some rather interesting (though highly unethical) experimentssuch as raising children in silence to see if they would speak a "natural language." But Fred was best known for his decadent lifestyleenamored of Islamic culture and philosophy, he kept a harem of nubile young ladies at his beck and call. And why shouldn't he? It's good to be the king.

_02:: Swingin' Ben Franklin The kite-flying, bifocals-inventing, library- and post officeestablis.h.i.+ng Renaissance man of the American Revolution was a self-taught meteorologist, printer, inventor...and ladies' man? That's right, old Ben Franklin loved to get his groove on. And though he appears to have been faithful to his beloved wife Deborah during the years of their marriage (from 1730 until her death in 1774), historical records show big Ben was quite the man s.l.u.t both before they married and after her death. In fact, Franklin fathered at least one illegitimate child, William, in 1728. While on diplomatic missions in Europe for the Continental Congress, Franklin developed a reputation that led more than one worried father to lock up his daughters when the American delegation was in town. And even in his old age, Franklin had so many affairs that we wonder if he might not be literally, as well as figuratively, the "Father of Philadelphia."

_03:: Einstein = Ladies' Man Squared While he never had an actual harem like von Hohenstaufen or a gaggle of French mistresses like Franklin, old Al Einstein earns his place in the h.o.r.n.y Scientist Hall of Fame just the same for his work in seducing his colleague, Serbian scientist Mileva Maric. The lewd scientist snared more than just her heart when the two were graduate students working together in a lab. And Maric actually gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, whom the couple gave up for adoption, before marrying Einstein in 1903. Though the two went on to have more children (before divorcing in 1919), some have suggested that Maric made significant contributions to Einstein's theories. Albert didn't give up on love, thoughhe married his second wife, Elsa (not before contemplating marriage with her 20-year-old daughter, Ilse), shortly after his divorce, but maintained numerous affairs with other women throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Whether or not you consider it ethical, of course, remains a matter of relativity.

_04:: Alfred Kinsey Gets Kinky An entomologist by training, Kinsey's tastes soon strayed far from insects. In 1947 he founded the Inst.i.tute for s.e.x Research at Indiana University, single-handedly creating the academic field of s.e.xology. In fact, his well-known Kinsey Reports were among the first scientific studies of human s.e.xual behavior. It's little wonder that the guy was attacked by traditionalists, who accused him of promoting immoral behavior and s.e.xual perversion. And though the first charge is a matter of opinion, they may have been more accurate on the second than they knew at the time. After Kinsey's death it became known that he was a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t and a fan of group s.e.x. Both Kinsey and his wife regularly engaged in s.e.x with other men, but they stayed married for 35 years and remained devoted to each other until his death in 1956. Kinsey was also infamous for encouraging his a.s.sistants and grad students to engage in unusual s.e.x acts with one another, which no doubt made for some rather interesting staff meetings.

Touch of Evil After the death of her husband, Marie Curie began a scandalous affair with her married lab a.s.sistant. Despite her two n.o.bels and everything she did for science, the tryst ultimately cost her admission into the prestigious Academie des Sciences.

Biblical Girls Gone Wild:

6 Sinfully Amusing Snippets

It's part of the genius of the Bible that most of the great biblical figures aren't portrayed as supermen or saints. Abraham doesn't appear to have been in any danger of winning Father of the Year, Moses had serious anger management issues, and King Solomon's love of the finer things is criticized in the text, particularly his harem filled with 1,000 women. And because they're human, we can relate to themwell, most of the time. Here are a few biblical stories you probably didn't hear about in Sunday school.

_01:: Lot's Daughters Bark up the Family Tree (Genesis 19) As they hid in a cave somewhere in the wilderness near the Dead Sea, Lot and his daughters were the only survivors of G.o.d's rampage through the streets of sinful, sinful Sodom (luckily, as the only righteous man in town, Lot was spared). Suspecting that they were the last people left on earth, and unwilling to die alone and childless, Lot's crafty lot got their father drunk and then had their way with him, making the previously righteous figure his own son-in-law and his two sons' father also grandfather and uncle at the same time. And while this probably made Lot family reunions a tad more interesting, sadly the details are lost in the mists of time. As for the kids, though, they did pretty all right for themselves. Lot's sons grew up to be the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites, two very powerful tribes of the highland region east of the Jordan River.

_02:: Jacob's Women (Genesis 2930) Need something even more Jerry Springer for your scandal-loving palate? Then get a load of the story of Jacob, grandson of Abraham. Things started off rocky for the kid as Jacob had to flee to his uncle's place after royally s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his brother Esau in an inheritance swindle. Safe in the warmth of his uncle's home, he fell in love with his cousin Rachel, and married her, but not before his uncle Laban duped him into marrying Rachel's sister Leah as well. (For the privilege of all this cousin-marrying Jacob had to work 14 years, though some might say marriage is hard time enough!) More chaos ensued when Rachel, the beloved wife, was barren while her sister, Leah, (to whom Jacob was presumably relatively indifferent) produced kids with alarming regularity. Not to be outdone, Rachel gave her servant, Bilhah, to Jacob as a concubine, taking the kids produced as her own. Leah upped the ante by giving the probably exhausted Jacob her servant, Zilpah. All told, the compet.i.tive fivesome produced 13 children, 12 of which became the ancestors of Israelite tribes and the last of whom (see below) had the poor taste to be born a girl.

_03:: Dinah's Brothers Get Overprotective (Genesis 34) Dinah was the only known daughter of the extraordinarily fertile Jacob. One day while her family was camped outside the town of Shechem, Dinah went to get some water and had a run-in with a local prince. Whether she ran off with him willingly (as feminist authors like to claim) or was raped by him (as the text seems to suggest) is unclear, but her 11 older brothers (the 12th, Joseph, was by this time in Egypt) had a rather dim view of such goings-on. After convincing the prince's buddies that circ.u.mcision was a great idea, Dinah's older brothers slaughtered the lot of them while they were recuperating from their ordeal. Dinah's ultimate fate has gone unrecorded, but folks who heard the tale were probably careful around girls with that many brothers for some time thereafter.

_04:: Tamar Tricks Judah (Genesis 38) Another of Jacob's kids, Judah, married off his oldest son, Er, to a woman named Tamar. Er, who was "wicked in the eyes of the Lord," ended up dying young. The custom of the time (codified into law later in the Bible) was that his next oldest brother should "go in unto" his widow, and the child from that union would carry on the line of the dead man. Judah's second son, Onan, wasn't exactly up to the challenge, however. Unwilling to fulfill his obligation to his brother, Onan instead "spilled his seed on the ground" (hence "onanism," or masturbation). For the sin of refusing his brotherly obligation (not, as is often stated, for spanking his proverbial monkey), Onan too met an untimely end. So, what was a proud parent (albeit an embarra.s.sed one at this point) to do? Unwilling to risk his youngest son's life, Judah sent Tamar home to her folks. But Tamar one-upped Jacob. Disguising herself as a prost.i.tute, she tricked her father-in-law into performing the neglected duty himself. In fact, she bore him two sons, one of whom, Perez, was an ancestor of King David.

Touch of Evil A 1631 printing of the King James version of the Bible was missing a rather important word. It became known as the Wicked Bible for leaving "not" out of Exodus 20:14, which as a result read "Thou shalt commit adultery."

_05:: Jael "Nails" Sisera (Judges 5) Jael was the wife of Heber, the chieftain of a clan allied with the Israelites. After the Israelite chieftainess Deborah defeated Sisera, who was a general for the king of Hazor, Sisera made a hasty retreat that took him right by Jael's tent. The clever Jael, went on to play it just right. She invited him in, fed him, and, in a scene reminiscent of bad p.o.r.n, may even have had s.e.x with him. Once he was sound asleep, though, she took a hammer and drove a tent peg through his skull. Who knew the chieftain's wife would be so handy with a hammer? Or thoughtful? Jael went on to present Sisera's carca.s.s as a gift to Deborah's army when they turned up shortly thereafter.

_06:: Bathsheba Nonchalantly Goes Skinny-dipping...in Plain Sight of the Royal Palace (2 Samuel 11) One day King David glanced out his window and just happened to see a beautiful, completely naked woman taking a bath on a rooftop. She had no idea that David was going to be watching (and if you believe that, we have a river in Egypt to sell you), but he was immediately smitten. Just one problem: The woman, Bathsheba, was already married to a Hitt.i.te mercenary named Uriah. In one of David's less than stellar moments, he conspired to have Uriah moved too close to enemy lines and, with her husband out of the way, rushed to the altar with Bathsheba. Good thing, too, as it was just in time for her first son by him to be born. In an episode that is part tragic, part comic, and all shocking, the prophet Nathan exposed the adulterous union before the court. And though David and Bathsheba's first son died, their story takes an upswing as David and Bathsheba's second son eventually became King Solomon.

Weapons of Ma.s.s Seduction:

5 Infamous Female Spies

Behind every good war are many good women. Using their feminine (and in at least one case masculine) wiles, the following five spies would make James Bond proud.

_01:: Mata Hari While Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod (18761917) may not have caused World War I, she sure as heck kept it going. Having spent time in Java with her husband, Captain Campbell MacLeod, Margaretha returned to Holland and sued for divorce. To make ends meet she took up exotic dancing and the name Mata Hari (meaning "the light of day" in Malay). With her sensual performances becoming the attraction of the major European cities came the men and the gifts for her favors. Many of these favors came from royalty and high-ranking French and German military officers. As World War I progressed, both sides became suspicious that Mata was spying for the other side. The French eventually put her on trial and, although the charges were never proven, Mata Hari was convicted of espionage and was executed by a firing squad on October 15, 1917. Playing the seductress up until the end, Mata refused a blindfold, smiled, and blew a kiss to the firing squad as the fatal shots were fired.

_02:: Sarah Emma Edmonds (or Was It Frank Thompson?) Born in 1841 in New Brunswick, Canada, Sarah ran away from home in her early teens. In order to survive she became an itinerant Bible salesman, by calling herself Frank Thompson and dressing like a man. In 1861, Frank (Sarah) enlisted in the Second Michigan Infantry and over the next two years not only fought in a number of Civil War battles, but also served as a spy for the Union Army. Solders in her unit called Frank "our woman" because of his feminine mannerisms and his extremely small boot size. However, none of her comrades ever figured out that Frank was really Sarah. This boded well for her spying, where she dressed as a young boy serving in Confederate camps, as an immigrant Irish peddler and, most interestingly, as a woman. In 1863, Sarah caught malaria and deserted the army out of fear that hospitalization would reveal her true ident.i.ty. In 1884, though, Sarah applied for and was awarded a veteran's pension in which the secretary of war acknowledged that Sarah was a female soldier who had rendered faithful services to the ranks.

_03:: Noor Inayat Khan Khan was born in the Kremlin in 1914 and at a young age moved with her family first to England and then to France. In 1940, Khan, along with her mother and sister, escaped back to England just before France surrendered to Germany. While in England she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), but her ability to speak fluent French soon caught the attention of the Special Operations group and Khan agreed to become a spy. Khan was flown to Le Mans, where she teamed up with other female spies and traveled to Paris. There they joined the French Resistance Prosper Network. Soon after their arrival, the network was infiltrated and many were arrested. Khan was ordered to return to England, but instead she stayed on and continued to pa.s.s information on to England. Eventually she was arrested again and interrogated by the Gestapo. When she refused to speak, she was sent to a prison in Germany and then to the Dachau concentration camp. On September 13, 1944, Khan and three other female British spies were executed by the n.a.z.i SS. In 1949, Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross.

_04:: Belle Boyd (aka "La Belle Rebelle") Born Isabelle Boyd in Martinsburg, Virginia, in 1844, the beautiful Belle soon became the star attraction in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., social circles prior to the beginning of the Civil War. With the outbreak of the war, she returned to Martinsburg. When the Union soldiers occupied the city, Belle mixed with the officers and soon gathered information on troop movements, which she pa.s.sed on to the Confederate forces. However, she is probably best known for warning Stonewall Jackson that the Union intended to blow up all the bridges around Martinsburg. With this information, Jackson, with a small number of troops, was able to surprise the Union troops and drive them from the area. In 1864, Confederate president Jefferson Davis asked Belle to carry letters for him to England. The Union Navy captured her s.h.i.+p, but the officer in charge fell in love with Belle and let her escape. The officer, Lieutenant Samuel Harding Jr., after being court-martialed and discharged from the Navy, traveled to England, where he married Belle. After the war, Boyd toured the United States as an actress under the stage name of La Belle Rebelle.

_05:: Elizabeth Van Lew Crazy Bet, as she was known, was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1818 but educated at a Quaker school in Philadelphia. After developing a hatred for slavery, Elizabeth returned to Richmond and freed all her family's slaves. She also went so far as finding where her freed slaves' relatives were and purchased and freed them also. After the Civil War started, Elizabeth asked to visit Union prisoners being held captive in Richmond. The Union prisoners gave her information, which she then pa.s.sed on to the North. Among the slaves she freed was Mary Elizabeth Bowser, whom Van Lew got a job as a house servant in the home of Jefferson Davis. This allowed Bowser and Van Lew to collect and pa.s.s on information directly from the Confederate president's mansion. Elizabeth effectively used the Crazy Bet moniker to make the residents of Richmond think she was mentally ill. She would wear old clothes and bonnets and talk to herself. Because of this, most people thought that her Northern sympathies were just a part of her craziness. After the war, President Grant named Elizabeth the postmaster for Richmond. When the citizens of Richmond found out that Crazy Bet was an act, they shunned her. However, at her death, the state of Ma.s.sachusetts placed a memorial marker on her grave.

Just the Facts p.o.r.n BY THE NUMBERS.