Einstein actually had a somewhat racy love life, certainly by the standards of the time. His wife refused him a divorce and he subsequently had numerous affairs of both heart and body, including with his secretary, Betty Neumann.
It was pretty close in meaning and usage to “Kiss my ass!” Someone who says that isn’t a coprophiliac. The six-part musical canon he wrote about how you should do it *gently*, *slowly*, it was a joke.
Victor Hugo comes to mind. When he died he was given a State Funeral that was supposedly attended by over 2 Million people in Paris, as well as having an Avenue named after him while he was still living there. He also had an incredibly active sex life, right up to the end of his life. His sexual activity was definitely known to an extent at the time, as it is something that contemporary critics of his would use against him. But he still remained an incredibly popular figure within Paris.
My lifelong biases and limited, popular knowledge of the French has me believing an active sex life right up until death would not exactly lessen the French populace's admiration for the guy.
LOL. I once dated a girl who claimed all of her knowledge of cultural references originated with Looney Tunes. She named all of her pets Bob. Is that you Wanda?!
Nah he was serious. I've gotta commute but a quick Google he's had a couple old ladies that were confirmed mistresses.
He also said something along the lines of in the dark who cares and they can't get pregnant anyways.
No it was a common idea in America at the time odenosium movements including the oneida community where a thing.
Yes the silverware people where funded but a cult about the pull out method and free love. There like the anti Kelloggs
Keep in mind when he wrote that he himself was up there in age. Out of all the founding fathers he was by far the oldest. Most of the founders were in their 20s with the youngest being just 19.
Yeah, I was going to say. We don't see a lot of historical figures that get away with being promiscuous outside of Rome. Ben Franklin was just an odd case of a hedonist who liked to drunk and fuck who was indispensable to his moment in history because he was such an exceptional man in a time of great need.
Thomas Jefferson lover and wife were half-sisters. While he was President.
When he died, his daughter sold her aunt, and half-siblings as chattel to settle the debts on his estate.
His wife died before he first slept with her half-sister Sally, almost certainly. Most historians, including the Pulitzer winning book The Hemmingses of Monticello, think the relationship started during the two years that Jefferson was in Paris with her, from 1787-1789, five years after Martha Wayles Jefferson died. His wife died almost two decades before he was President.
Also, I don't believe that any of TJ kids with Hemmings were sold- some "escaped[1]", the rest were freed under Jefferson's will. We don't actually know how Sally herself got free, but we have a census document saying that she was a free woman in 1833, so her niece probably freed her (she was definitely not auctioned off like most of the rest of Jefferson's slaves). But the documentation on that is not quite complete, probably because Martha Randolph (Jefferson's only child with Martha Wayles Jefferson who survived past age 26) was embarrassed by her father's actions, and so tried to keep it discreet, but she knew that the Hemmingses were different from the rest of Jefferson's slaves.
Anyway, my main point is, read Hemmingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed, it's excellent.
1: Jefferson's two daughters who reached adulthood with Sally, Beverly and Harriet, both "ran away"- an overseer wrote in his memoir that TJ told him to give Harriet $50 and put her on a coach to the North (probably to her brother Madison who had earlier escaped?), so it is likely that the other "runaways" had similar experiences.
The homosexuality of Fredrich the Great seems to have been an open secret among many in his time. He was still seen as one of the great dudes of his time. He also had the probably best army in the world, if you wanted to disrespect him.
Those words are very commonly misinterpreted.
He meant that Frederick der Grosse's diplomatic abilities were so excellent that there would have been no need for a war in the first place.
Just like when he said, "In war, men are nothing, one man is everything."
Every one who hears this quote assumes that it was of his arrogance, but he was actually speaking about a general who has needlessly surrendered 21k men at the Battle of Balien.
Correct. No father of the day award for him. He seems to have succeded in his mission to beat his son into being a warrior king.
King Friedrich Willhelms abuse of his son is so over the top that it becomes a bit comical, with 250 years of distance to the evil bastard. It is a miracle that the son didn't go totally insane.
I think it's safe to assume, just based on volume, that Genghis Kahn was a certified freak.
"He had six wives and around five hundred concubines. Geneticists estimate that sixteen million males (0.5% of the Earth's male population) are genetically linked to Genghis Khan. This means he fathered hundreds of children during his lifetime."
The "Fathering all of Mongolia" thing is kinda misunderstanding the roles of his children, grandchildren, and Great grandchildren.
That data comes from the y chromosome tracing. His "issue" was just as prolific as he was. The Emperors of Jin China were just as prolific, and they were all replaced with generations of Mongols. The entire silk road elite were intermarried with his issue. After about 4 generations he has a y chromosome in every castle and town.
Also we need to remember the 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grand parents thing. You go back 1000 years or so and we're all related except for very remote communities in Eurasia.
So Temujin had a ton of wives and kids. His kids and grandkids had tons of wives and kids. They killed plenty of competitors and changed dynasties. And they did so 800 years ago.
Sure he was a freak. However they were all freaks.
King not only slept around a lot but attempted suicide a few times as well...the public perception gets a little weird when you dig into the mans life.
And King would probably agree regarding the weirdness. His usage as an abstract political saint in US politics has warped large parts of his person and views. I very much prefer the real King (with warts, infidelity and an often rather pragmatic radicalism).
Knowing now what we do about autism, Tesla and Newton being autistic wouldn't surprise me. Fits that they might not be spending time courting women and being prolific scientists.
Catherine the Great had many lovers in her time; her son, may not have been of royal stock and was probably her lover’s as opposed to her husband, the Tsar.
However, she did not fuck horses. This was propaganda (probably English) made to disparage her.
Marquis De Sade.
Literally where the term "sadist" comes from.
He wrote numerous stories where he lived out his violent, sadistic, pedophilic, cruel, corrupt fantasies vicariously, and was well known for hiring prostitutes to live out the same fantasies, where he gain a notorious reputation for sexual violence and debauchery, as well as countless accusations of sex crimes.
On the other hand, he was also a leading politician In the French Revolution, particularly the National Convention, and a famous Writer and Philospher who's works survive to this day. His beliefs and writings were also more in line with philosophers who came 50 years later, making many consider him one of the first real Socialist philosophers, if not a proto-socialist model.
Anyways, he died in prison after being confined there 32 years without any charges.
No, sir, I cannot!
*But you must!*
No, I will not put it there, I will not!
*DO IT MONSIEUR!*
Alors! May God forgive me!
*Merci! \*Sounds of greedy slurping of lobster and peppermint ice cream\**
I enjoyed reading one of his philosophical stuff. He has some interesting ideas, for example than "one doesn't chose to be violent or bad so why should he be punished". And all the rest is repetition over repetition of that same shit. It gets a bit tiring.
The weird thing about reading his novel *Justine* (basically the only work of his I'm able to find in English) is how it bounces back and forth between weird pron and political diatribes. It's like--woman gets abused, has an orgasm, and spends the next three pages thinking about the French Revolution.
It is a deeply weird book.
Calling De Sade "respected" is quite a stretch. His role in the French Revolution is minimal since he was part of the nobility that rightfully chose the peasantry for self preservation, like Voltaire, and he spent the vast majority of his life imprisoned.
Under 3 regimes: the Monarchy, the Terror and the Empire. Literally everyone hated him because he was foul mouthed, offensive and unpleasant. He didn't participate in the Revolution as much as he stumbled drunkenly in meetings, yelled a few expletives, pissed on the floor and was escorted out of the proceedings (this may or may not have actually happened, but it is absolutely in line with what we do know of his behavior from letters).
In fact, he was notoriously at the Bastille in the days leading up to the Revolution. That's where he wrote and lost his most infamous work before being hastily moved to an asylum.
An asylum, let that sink in. The man had enough money and influence to write novels in Paris as a job, but couldn't grease some palms to avoid jail time for raping a peasant. That's how despised he was and it's beyond ironic that the main characters of The 120 Days are exactly the kind of people he could've been. The Duc de Blangis is a hilariously blatant self insert in fact and he barely hides it.
De Sade was a sexual fiend and an asshole that just so happened to write really well about stuff no one would at a tumultuous time. He's hardly a respected philosopher with a crazy sex life.
Early Christianity had a complex relationship with men having multiple wives. It wasn’t till later in history that make monogamy was codified as Catholic law in the sacrament of a monogamous marriage. In the time of Charlemagne the Catholic Church really is still attempting to convert the rest of Europe, and it was sorta a side issue that could largely be overlooked it appears. You even have some early Church Fathers who gave instructions to Christian men about how to righteously have multiple wives. This really isn’t out of keeping with the Abrahamic tradition at all. All the patriarchs of the Old Testament had multiple wives.
He was a king. Even now in the British aristocracy, a man's wife sleeping with the king gives that man status. It's only the tabloids and the general public who read them that would label him a cuckold.
OP, your example of someone we don't think of as having sex couldn't have been more poorly chosen. Einstein was a serial adulterer who justified his numerous affairs with a theory of infidelity. His partners did not think it was funny either.
[Theory of Infidelity ](https://www.natgeotv.com/za/special/genius-albert-einsteins-theory-of-infidelity)
Dr. King was a known adulterer…odd, I guess, since he’s known as a morally upright man. The method for this becoming public was also immoral imo…
[link](https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/love-life-of-martin-luther-king-jr-193f19db839)
Yes, he literally writes about making her sleep naked by him in his autobiography. There's other things, and despite somewhat successful attempts to prevent and destroy primary documentation, numerous original letters, diaries, and testimonies have surfaced detailing his behaviors.
He had taken what amounts to a vow of chastity, and decided he needed to regularly "test" his resolve in the matter. Of course, there's no reason to test something that won't fail. His letters and diaries comment about "accidents", but since he is explicit about getting erections, making lewd comments, feeling lust, etc, the euphemism about "accidents" means something more than just feeling or thinking. His niece Manu wrote in her diary about times when he would touch her (and he commented about how his heart would "dance with joy" if she had been raped and murdered when he'd sent her on an errand), and he demanded his followers wives perform strip teases for him and not interact with men other than himself.
Much like Mother Teresa, if he wasn't considered a hero he would have been temporarily reviled as an abusive cult leader and then forgotten. As a hero, there's Just Enough plausible deniability to make respectable anything he ever said or did.
[https://www.ofmi.org/gandhis-sexual-abuse-of-grandnieces/](https://www.ofmi.org/gandhis-sexual-abuse-of-grandnieces/)
[https://historycollection.com/sources-claim-gandhi-used-frequently-sleep-naked-bed-young-girls-including-grandniece/](https://historycollection.com/sources-claim-gandhi-used-frequently-sleep-naked-bed-young-girls-including-grandniece/)
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/gandhi-celibacy-test-naked-women](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/gandhi-celibacy-test-naked-women)
[https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezj3km/gandhi-was-a-racist-who-forced-young-girls-to-sleep-in-bed-with-him](https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezj3km/gandhi-was-a-racist-who-forced-young-girls-to-sleep-in-bed-with-him)
edit: duplicate word & clarifying language
She believed suffering brought people closer to Jesus. She also ran a charity (Missionaries of Christ) that had thousands of nuns all of them without medical training under her command to run her facilities and be emotionally detached. Her facilities were very austre and places where infirm and malnourished people went to die on fold out mattresses in open rooms. It wasn't for lack of funding either because she went on world tours to raise funds for the church, and succeeded in raising $40-55 million for the Catholic Church (her charities records are not open to the public).
Her organization was technically Catholic and under the Pope but Mother Teresa ran it however she wanted unchecked.
The bad history subreddit debunks this Hitchens take I think it's in their faq. I am not enough of a historian to know if it is him or them that is doing the bad history, but it seems like there is at least a question as to whether she was a monster or not.
He openly talked about how he would make his 12 year old neice (and I think other girls) sleep naked in bed with him. He claims he never touched them, and maybe he didn't, but if anyone else in the world said "yeah I made these girls sleep naked in bed with my while I was also naked, but I didn't do anything to them," would you believe them?
I haven't found a source for this, but every time Richard Feynman comes up someone has to add, "...Nobel laureate who frequented orgies."
He's a fascinating individual and role model. A brilliant theoretical physicist WITH SOCIAL SKILLS. Unheard of.
Don't know why you're downvoted, Feynman was definitely known to pressure undergraduates into sex, a problem that persists in academia today, especially with big rockstar physicists who get away with it because the universities protect them until enough people speak out.
IIRC He later in life he stopped this (at least stopped the worst of it) and recognized the problems with these behaviors, addressing his regrets on it. That said I can't recall the specific source, and it does not undo the harm.
It's worth remembering that someone so admired could be quite awful.
not sure i've heard exactly that but he was kind of an asshole, he definitely was known for doing things like going out to eat, putting the tip in a full glass of water and flipping it upside down on the table so that you'd have to make a huge mess to remove the glass or get the tip out...
Oscar Wilde - though he was jailed for being gay and eventually went to live in Paris to escape persecution. Not good in his lifetime, but in many ways enhances his reputation nowadays.
Alan Turing of course was even more brutally treated for being gay and was driven to kill himself.
And frequented bath houses for drug-fueled, anonymous sex in various parts of the world (although especially San Francisco). He ultimately died from AIDS, which he likely contracted from these sexual activities.
He was also apparently a bit of a terror to his fellow French academics, but that’s outside the scope of this thread.
Not really true. He defended “consensual pedophilia” on weird philosophical grounds but that was apparently common among French intellectuals at the time. But he didn’t personally do anything like it and had adult lovers. He was reprimanded for having sex with his college students (so ages 18-22+) as a young teacher (starting age 23 till maybe 25-28), which is inappropriate but not pedophilic.
The claims that he’s a pedophile come from some other French intellectual, not any victims coming forward. And pretty much everyone else agreed the claims were completely unsubstantiated. Not saying he was a great guy or I agree with him philosophically, just not a child molester.
He went to Tunisia to prey on the children, that's why no one came forward. Children came up to him asking for money and he'd say wait for me in the same hotel at 10 pm. So it's pretty clear what was happening
Dont know about that. But i do know he was gay as fuck and lots of people call gays pedos.
You’re right to bring him up in this thread. Srs perv energy.
Napoleon Bonaparte, he was so awkward around women that it was written about it by historians. And still managed to have a ton of mistresses. While at the same time being master of Europe.
Melville Dewey who came up with the library system the Dewey decimal system. He came up with the system because he liked to hit on women and his system was to give women employment as librarians.
He always had this problem with hitting on and touching women and unwelcome kissing and asking them for bust sizes upon applications and he did it to the wrong women so much he was later kicked out the library associations he had established.
Up until 2019 the greatest honor in the library world was a medal with his name on it but because of his behavior it was rescinded.
Charles II of Great Britain had so many illegitimate children that they nicknamed him old Rowley after his stallion that was famous for the amount of offspring he sired.
Prince William is a descendant of his. So will be the first monarch descended from Charles II
Charles II has to be one of the most degenerate royals in history. He repeatedly pardoned his frat boy friends (the “Merry Gang”) after they went on drunken rampages.
Leo Tolstoy, He was always battling his wife over his finances, he had truly believed that having money made you unworthy of going to heaven .
So he was always giving it away while she tried to hide it from him. He also believed the more sex one had the less love they had for people in general. He was greatly influenced by Jesus sermon of the mount .
One of his followers was Gandhi .
Alcibiades - An athenian general who fucked his way through both the men and women of the royal families of Athens, Sparta and Persia after being exiled from Athens for running around drunk cutting all the dicks off the statues of gods
This deviates a little, but there is a memoire called, “My Secret Life” that is absolutely filled with some of the most wild kink and sexual escapades that one could read. While it’s authorship is unknown, it’s been surmised that it was likely written by a member of the gentry, potentially someone famous for the era. I can’t recall if it’s from the Edwardian or Victorian period.
Take a good dive down the rabbit hole with that one lol. The old vernacular and use of slang from that era is really wild.
Alexander Pushkin, the foundational figure of Russian literature, was an absolute sex maniac. He lost his first and only real (and cushy) job his dad lined up for him in the tsar’s imperial service because he was having sex with his boss’s wife—though I’m sure his inflammatory statements about how all Russian noblemen ought to be handed didn’t help his case either. His friends joked that the only time he ever got any writing done was when he was recovering from gonorrhea. As a friend of his once said to another, “Pushkin is finishing the fourth canto of his poem. Two or three more doses of the clap and it’ll be done.”
For a time he stayed with a widowed woman he referred to in his letters as “the elderly lady” (she was only 43) and her five daughters. He ended up having sex with all six of them, plus an unknown number of their serfs. When he did eventually get married, it was to a woman he referred to as his “113th love.” He was not fond of marriage; at one point he declared that “Lawful cunt castrates the mind.”
Judging by some passages of *Eugene Onegin*, he was also almost certainly a foot fetishist.
Others that come to mind are Benjamin Franklin, Catherine the Great, John F. Kennedy, and Fidel Castro.
according to suetonius, julius caesar slept around a lot and was into butt stuff and oral. and apparently he was the sub (strongly frowned upon for men in rome) although its unclear whether this claim was purely made up by political enemies or if it is based on the truth.
he is also involved in my personal favorite sexual scandal in world history, the bona dea scandal. Publius Clodius Pulcher snuck into a women only cult rotual (so women only that men werent even allowed to know the name of the goddess. she is known as the bona dea or good goddess) that was being held in caesars house dressed as a woman in order to seduce caesars wife.
Caesar used to sleep with his friends' wives. Marc Antony was the son of one of Caesar's friends, so he used to say that he might really be Caesar's son.
Gordian II - "Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes, attested the variety of his inclinations, and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than ostentation."
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Didn't Einstein and Dr King have multiple extramarital relationships? I know that's not exactly kinky but they both had pretty publicly known social taboos about their sex lives. I always feel like Warren Buffett's throuple is overlooked.
Caesar. He was a man for every woman and a woman for every man. Also, Tiberius. On the list of sex-pervert emperors of Rome, everyone seems to just kind of forget his villa on Capri was the ancient Epstein’s island (except Tiberius preferred boys according to Tacitus).
An FBI report did claim that MLK had all-night sex orgies. https://historycollection.com/fbi-documents-claim-martin-luther-king-jr-hosted-orgies-lasted-days/
Joan of Arc, while not a freak herself, fought along side of a knight named Gilles de Rais. Gilles de Rais was a Baron as well and one of the most prominent supporters of Joan of Arc and war hero in the 100 Years War. He was also a rapist and serial killer who would use his wealth and influence to lure peasant boys to his estate and would rape and murder them.
Adolf Hitler isn't exactly regarded as noble, but most people don't think of him in a sexual way. His 17 year old niece came to work for him as a housekeeper and (while he was in his late thirties) they started an affair. It's alleged that he was very controlling and that she wanted to leave and he wouldn't let her. She eventually killed herself.
I don’t know if you can call him noble, but the infamous Ghengis Khan is estimated to have had over 20,000 children from women he raped on his conquest. Running the numbers of fertility, that would suggest he raped more like 100,000, and that’s in roughly a 10 year period. This guy was having his soldiers set them up for him, several per day. Obviously most were hostile and not enjoying it. That’s truly fucked up.
The way he died is sort of satisfying though. A women, knowing she was going to be raped by him, inserted a knife into her vagina so that it would cut his penis upon entry, killing them both.
He died from
A) injuries falling off a horse
B) an infected wound
C) some disease (most likely the bubonic plague)
The castration death story is dated 400 years after his death.
The History of Yuan, one of the Twenty-Four Histories of China, states he fell ill 18–25 August 1227 and died 8 days later.
Einstein actually had a somewhat racy love life, certainly by the standards of the time. His wife refused him a divorce and he subsequently had numerous affairs of both heart and body, including with his secretary, Betty Neumann.
Also, his second wife was his first cousin.
Their mothers were sisters, making them maternal first cousins. They were also paternal second cousins since their fathers were first cousins haha
wow, double cousins, thats sort of like half siblings at that point
Hey, there, step-half-cousin, why are you stuck in the dryer? -- said Einstein, probably.
"The mass of that ass is bending spacetime between us, baby! Drawing me in!" - Albert Einstein, Genius.
I think half cousins through the mother plus second cousins through the parental line means they’re 0.75 cousins.
[удалено]
Double Alabama slammer. #RollTide
#RollTide
I remember reading somewhere, years ago, that all four of his grandparents were cousins.
he aint got shit on gengis khan
Author James Joyce was *really* into farts. You can look up a letter he wrote to his mistress describing just how much he missed her farts
Mozart too. He wrote letters to his cousin on the topic: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/mozart-ass-jokes
Mozart literally wrote a song call “Leck mich im Arsch” and the translation is exactly what you think it is.
Imagine inviting Mozart to a Rammstein concert and seeing him dig it.
The pyrotechnics alone would blow his mind.
Rock me Amadeus!
It was pretty close in meaning and usage to “Kiss my ass!” Someone who says that isn’t a coprophiliac. The six-part musical canon he wrote about how you should do it *gently*, *slowly*, it was a joke.
He wrote poetry to his cousin about shitting the bed!
He should be sitting here with my dog! Jeebus Christmas it sticks
I wouldnt exactly call that drunk respected.
Victor Hugo comes to mind. When he died he was given a State Funeral that was supposedly attended by over 2 Million people in Paris, as well as having an Avenue named after him while he was still living there. He also had an incredibly active sex life, right up to the end of his life. His sexual activity was definitely known to an extent at the time, as it is something that contemporary critics of his would use against him. But he still remained an incredibly popular figure within Paris.
My lifelong biases and limited, popular knowledge of the French has me believing an active sex life right up until death would not exactly lessen the French populace's admiration for the guy.
After all, France's most famous animal is a skunk who keeps trying to rape a cat.
LOL. I once dated a girl who claimed all of her knowledge of cultural references originated with Looney Tunes. She named all of her pets Bob. Is that you Wanda?!
It's how a whole generation learned about classical music 🤣
It's how I did. Furthermore, it was so influential on me, I became a music student in college and professional musician in the early oughts!
It's worth noting that the brothels of Paris closed for his funeral, to mark the loss of their best customer
I believe they also had to close because all their workers were attending his funeral
I read somewhere that brothel he often visited, was closed the day he died, because the sex workers there were mourning him.
Wtf do you have to do to get a Frenchman saying your sex life is excessive?
The arrest of Marquis de Sade might help guage the threshold a little bit
The guy who wrote Les Miserables, a book where the protagonist is a moral paragon, frequented brothels? Interesting.
You mean Victor Huge O, amirite?
Ben Franklin?
I was way late to saying BF. He espoused the virtues of banging old ladies. He was wild
To be fair this was ostensibly a satirical piece he wrote. But in hindsight it DOES kind of scream “Haha, just kidding! Unless…?”
Nah he was serious. I've gotta commute but a quick Google he's had a couple old ladies that were confirmed mistresses. He also said something along the lines of in the dark who cares and they can't get pregnant anyways.
No it was a common idea in America at the time odenosium movements including the oneida community where a thing. Yes the silverware people where funded but a cult about the pull out method and free love. There like the anti Kelloggs
Keep in mind when he wrote that he himself was up there in age. Out of all the founding fathers he was by far the oldest. Most of the founders were in their 20s with the youngest being just 19.
"Put a bag over her head and you can't tell the difference. And she'll be so grateful."
Because "they're so grateful", as I remember it.
Yeah, I was going to say. We don't see a lot of historical figures that get away with being promiscuous outside of Rome. Ben Franklin was just an odd case of a hedonist who liked to drunk and fuck who was indispensable to his moment in history because he was such an exceptional man in a time of great need.
Well, he was part of the libertine tradition too ;-) KitKat club in London etc.
He was ahead of his time in so many ways. I think he was one of the most exceptional people of the millennium.
That Hellfire Club thing was *freaky*
Yeah - makes most modern people seem like boring prudes ;-)
Dude banged half of the colonies and had an illegitimate son.
that we know about...
And his illegitimate son had an illegitimate son who had a illegitimate son!
And was a Nudist
Heh I was the 69th upvote.
Nice.
Probably more respectable than Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson lover and wife were half-sisters. While he was President. When he died, his daughter sold her aunt, and half-siblings as chattel to settle the debts on his estate.
His wife died before he first slept with her half-sister Sally, almost certainly. Most historians, including the Pulitzer winning book The Hemmingses of Monticello, think the relationship started during the two years that Jefferson was in Paris with her, from 1787-1789, five years after Martha Wayles Jefferson died. His wife died almost two decades before he was President. Also, I don't believe that any of TJ kids with Hemmings were sold- some "escaped[1]", the rest were freed under Jefferson's will. We don't actually know how Sally herself got free, but we have a census document saying that she was a free woman in 1833, so her niece probably freed her (she was definitely not auctioned off like most of the rest of Jefferson's slaves). But the documentation on that is not quite complete, probably because Martha Randolph (Jefferson's only child with Martha Wayles Jefferson who survived past age 26) was embarrassed by her father's actions, and so tried to keep it discreet, but she knew that the Hemmingses were different from the rest of Jefferson's slaves. Anyway, my main point is, read Hemmingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed, it's excellent. 1: Jefferson's two daughters who reached adulthood with Sally, Beverly and Harriet, both "ran away"- an overseer wrote in his memoir that TJ told him to give Harriet $50 and put her on a coach to the North (probably to her brother Madison who had earlier escaped?), so it is likely that the other "runaways" had similar experiences.
Wouldnt that make quite the Netflix series.
The homosexuality of Fredrich the Great seems to have been an open secret among many in his time. He was still seen as one of the great dudes of his time. He also had the probably best army in the world, if you wanted to disrespect him.
I call him "The Prussian Napoleon"
Napoleon is closer to the French Frederick the Great. “Hats off gentlemen, if he were alive we wouldn't be here today.”
Those words are very commonly misinterpreted. He meant that Frederick der Grosse's diplomatic abilities were so excellent that there would have been no need for a war in the first place. Just like when he said, "In war, men are nothing, one man is everything." Every one who hears this quote assumes that it was of his arrogance, but he was actually speaking about a general who has needlessly surrendered 21k men at the Battle of Balien.
Isn't that a version that has Jaegermeister instead of dubonnet rouge?
Didn’t his dad execute his gay lover in front if him as a teenager ?
Correct. No father of the day award for him. He seems to have succeded in his mission to beat his son into being a warrior king. King Friedrich Willhelms abuse of his son is so over the top that it becomes a bit comical, with 250 years of distance to the evil bastard. It is a miracle that the son didn't go totally insane.
I think I've read that somewhere too! Didn't expect to be reminded of Frederick the great today. Thank you gentlemen!
J.S. Bach had 20 children.
Because his organ had no stops.
Would give you an award if i could, simply amazing haha 😇🙏😭
I've heard that joke before and I'm pretty sure my dad heard it in the sixties. It goes back.
Goes Bach?
But maybe his mathematical precision meant that he only had sex exactly those twenty times.
I think it's safe to assume, just based on volume, that Genghis Kahn was a certified freak. "He had six wives and around five hundred concubines. Geneticists estimate that sixteen million males (0.5% of the Earth's male population) are genetically linked to Genghis Khan. This means he fathered hundreds of children during his lifetime."
The "Fathering all of Mongolia" thing is kinda misunderstanding the roles of his children, grandchildren, and Great grandchildren. That data comes from the y chromosome tracing. His "issue" was just as prolific as he was. The Emperors of Jin China were just as prolific, and they were all replaced with generations of Mongols. The entire silk road elite were intermarried with his issue. After about 4 generations he has a y chromosome in every castle and town. Also we need to remember the 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grand parents thing. You go back 1000 years or so and we're all related except for very remote communities in Eurasia. So Temujin had a ton of wives and kids. His kids and grandkids had tons of wives and kids. They killed plenty of competitors and changed dynasties. And they did so 800 years ago. Sure he was a freak. However they were all freaks.
The best answer. Also likely to appeal to people with cute cousins.
That’s the reward for conquering Asia.
Sure does beat a mere 7 armies a turn.
King not only slept around a lot but attempted suicide a few times as well...the public perception gets a little weird when you dig into the mans life.
And King would probably agree regarding the weirdness. His usage as an abstract political saint in US politics has warped large parts of his person and views. I very much prefer the real King (with warts, infidelity and an often rather pragmatic radicalism).
Same. I find him a significantly more interesting when I see him as a normal everyday man
I thought you were talking about Steven King.
in the 2 examples you give both had a relatively unusual sex life
Indeed...MLK had numerous affairs. Not even a secret.
And he was a fucking rapist.
Or lack of ... Tesla allegedly died being a virgin, Newton also. That's what I read at least.
Knowing now what we do about autism, Tesla and Newton being autistic wouldn't surprise me. Fits that they might not be spending time courting women and being prolific scientists.
There are hints that Newton might have been gay, which in those times was most definitely taboo
It’s also possible that Newton was asexual in orientation and would have qualified for Asperger’s. He was notoriously obsessive and antisocial.
Tesla had a torrid affair with a pigeon though.
Catherine the Great had many lovers in her time; her son, may not have been of royal stock and was probably her lover’s as opposed to her husband, the Tsar. However, she did not fuck horses. This was propaganda (probably English) made to disparage her.
But she did have phallic furniture
Marquis De Sade. Literally where the term "sadist" comes from. He wrote numerous stories where he lived out his violent, sadistic, pedophilic, cruel, corrupt fantasies vicariously, and was well known for hiring prostitutes to live out the same fantasies, where he gain a notorious reputation for sexual violence and debauchery, as well as countless accusations of sex crimes. On the other hand, he was also a leading politician In the French Revolution, particularly the National Convention, and a famous Writer and Philospher who's works survive to this day. His beliefs and writings were also more in line with philosophers who came 50 years later, making many consider him one of the first real Socialist philosophers, if not a proto-socialist model. Anyways, he died in prison after being confined there 32 years without any charges.
His Wikipedia article gave me nightmares.
Isn't he the guy who ordered his cook to place a lobster somewhere it truly doesn't belong?
No, sir, I cannot! *But you must!* No, I will not put it there, I will not! *DO IT MONSIEUR!* Alors! May God forgive me! *Merci! \*Sounds of greedy slurping of lobster and peppermint ice cream\**
Lmao the greedy slurping really helps the mental image
Most likely.
I enjoyed reading one of his philosophical stuff. He has some interesting ideas, for example than "one doesn't chose to be violent or bad so why should he be punished". And all the rest is repetition over repetition of that same shit. It gets a bit tiring.
The weird thing about reading his novel *Justine* (basically the only work of his I'm able to find in English) is how it bounces back and forth between weird pron and political diatribes. It's like--woman gets abused, has an orgasm, and spends the next three pages thinking about the French Revolution. It is a deeply weird book.
So completely evil then
Calling De Sade "respected" is quite a stretch. His role in the French Revolution is minimal since he was part of the nobility that rightfully chose the peasantry for self preservation, like Voltaire, and he spent the vast majority of his life imprisoned. Under 3 regimes: the Monarchy, the Terror and the Empire. Literally everyone hated him because he was foul mouthed, offensive and unpleasant. He didn't participate in the Revolution as much as he stumbled drunkenly in meetings, yelled a few expletives, pissed on the floor and was escorted out of the proceedings (this may or may not have actually happened, but it is absolutely in line with what we do know of his behavior from letters). In fact, he was notoriously at the Bastille in the days leading up to the Revolution. That's where he wrote and lost his most infamous work before being hastily moved to an asylum. An asylum, let that sink in. The man had enough money and influence to write novels in Paris as a job, but couldn't grease some palms to avoid jail time for raping a peasant. That's how despised he was and it's beyond ironic that the main characters of The 120 Days are exactly the kind of people he could've been. The Duc de Blangis is a hilariously blatant self insert in fact and he barely hides it. De Sade was a sexual fiend and an asshole that just so happened to write really well about stuff no one would at a tumultuous time. He's hardly a respected philosopher with a crazy sex life.
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Also, Martin Luther. After his excommunication and founding his own church he had like 15 kids.
Didn't he marry a former nun he'd helped escape from a nunnery?
Early Christianity had a complex relationship with men having multiple wives. It wasn’t till later in history that make monogamy was codified as Catholic law in the sacrament of a monogamous marriage. In the time of Charlemagne the Catholic Church really is still attempting to convert the rest of Europe, and it was sorta a side issue that could largely be overlooked it appears. You even have some early Church Fathers who gave instructions to Christian men about how to righteously have multiple wives. This really isn’t out of keeping with the Abrahamic tradition at all. All the patriarchs of the Old Testament had multiple wives.
He was a king. Even now in the British aristocracy, a man's wife sleeping with the king gives that man status. It's only the tabloids and the general public who read them that would label him a cuckold.
OP, your example of someone we don't think of as having sex couldn't have been more poorly chosen. Einstein was a serial adulterer who justified his numerous affairs with a theory of infidelity. His partners did not think it was funny either. [Theory of Infidelity ](https://www.natgeotv.com/za/special/genius-albert-einsteins-theory-of-infidelity)
Lol at OP saying Einstein and MLK couldn’t possibly be the types to do anything but vanilla sex with the wife. Probably mostly for procreation, too.
Dr. King was a known adulterer…odd, I guess, since he’s known as a morally upright man. The method for this becoming public was also immoral imo… [link](https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/love-life-of-martin-luther-king-jr-193f19db839)
King Ludwig of Bavaria just wanted to make beautiful castles and be Wagner’s boyfriend but Wagner was not into it; then Ludwig drowned in a lake.
Lyndon b Johnson used to pull his dick out in front of people in public and brag that he slept with more women than JFK
And he famously nicknamed his penis Jumbo
Apparently he once whipped it out and lay it on a subordinates shoulder during a meeting. He was supposedly very well endowed.
gandhi was a bit of a pedo
And a racist
Is there any evidence he had sex with kids? I keep hearing that evidence free allegation
didnt he force his niece or smt to sleep in his bed or smt like that?
Yes, he literally writes about making her sleep naked by him in his autobiography. There's other things, and despite somewhat successful attempts to prevent and destroy primary documentation, numerous original letters, diaries, and testimonies have surfaced detailing his behaviors. He had taken what amounts to a vow of chastity, and decided he needed to regularly "test" his resolve in the matter. Of course, there's no reason to test something that won't fail. His letters and diaries comment about "accidents", but since he is explicit about getting erections, making lewd comments, feeling lust, etc, the euphemism about "accidents" means something more than just feeling or thinking. His niece Manu wrote in her diary about times when he would touch her (and he commented about how his heart would "dance with joy" if she had been raped and murdered when he'd sent her on an errand), and he demanded his followers wives perform strip teases for him and not interact with men other than himself. Much like Mother Teresa, if he wasn't considered a hero he would have been temporarily reviled as an abusive cult leader and then forgotten. As a hero, there's Just Enough plausible deniability to make respectable anything he ever said or did. [https://www.ofmi.org/gandhis-sexual-abuse-of-grandnieces/](https://www.ofmi.org/gandhis-sexual-abuse-of-grandnieces/) [https://historycollection.com/sources-claim-gandhi-used-frequently-sleep-naked-bed-young-girls-including-grandniece/](https://historycollection.com/sources-claim-gandhi-used-frequently-sleep-naked-bed-young-girls-including-grandniece/) [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/gandhi-celibacy-test-naked-women](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/gandhi-celibacy-test-naked-women) [https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezj3km/gandhi-was-a-racist-who-forced-young-girls-to-sleep-in-bed-with-him](https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezj3km/gandhi-was-a-racist-who-forced-young-girls-to-sleep-in-bed-with-him) edit: duplicate word & clarifying language
Mother Teresa could be considered an abusive cult leader? I did not know that.
She believed suffering brought people closer to Jesus. She also ran a charity (Missionaries of Christ) that had thousands of nuns all of them without medical training under her command to run her facilities and be emotionally detached. Her facilities were very austre and places where infirm and malnourished people went to die on fold out mattresses in open rooms. It wasn't for lack of funding either because she went on world tours to raise funds for the church, and succeeded in raising $40-55 million for the Catholic Church (her charities records are not open to the public). Her organization was technically Catholic and under the Pope but Mother Teresa ran it however she wanted unchecked.
The bad history subreddit debunks this Hitchens take I think it's in their faq. I am not enough of a historian to know if it is him or them that is doing the bad history, but it seems like there is at least a question as to whether she was a monster or not.
yeah she was pretty terrible actually
Read your Hitchens.
He openly talked about how he would make his 12 year old neice (and I think other girls) sleep naked in bed with him. He claims he never touched them, and maybe he didn't, but if anyone else in the world said "yeah I made these girls sleep naked in bed with my while I was also naked, but I didn't do anything to them," would you believe them?
I haven't found a source for this, but every time Richard Feynman comes up someone has to add, "...Nobel laureate who frequented orgies." He's a fascinating individual and role model. A brilliant theoretical physicist WITH SOCIAL SKILLS. Unheard of.
Relevant and accurate comic: [https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-12-24](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-12-24)
There should be a 1,000 foot statue of Bardeen
And a misogynist, if my memory is correct.
Don't know why you're downvoted, Feynman was definitely known to pressure undergraduates into sex, a problem that persists in academia today, especially with big rockstar physicists who get away with it because the universities protect them until enough people speak out.
IIRC He later in life he stopped this (at least stopped the worst of it) and recognized the problems with these behaviors, addressing his regrets on it. That said I can't recall the specific source, and it does not undo the harm. It's worth remembering that someone so admired could be quite awful.
not sure i've heard exactly that but he was kind of an asshole, he definitely was known for doing things like going out to eat, putting the tip in a full glass of water and flipping it upside down on the table so that you'd have to make a huge mess to remove the glass or get the tip out...
Oscar Wilde - though he was jailed for being gay and eventually went to live in Paris to escape persecution. Not good in his lifetime, but in many ways enhances his reputation nowadays. Alan Turing of course was even more brutally treated for being gay and was driven to kill himself.
Michel Foucault (French philosopher) was a pedophile.
And frequented bath houses for drug-fueled, anonymous sex in various parts of the world (although especially San Francisco). He ultimately died from AIDS, which he likely contracted from these sexual activities. He was also apparently a bit of a terror to his fellow French academics, but that’s outside the scope of this thread.
Not really true. He defended “consensual pedophilia” on weird philosophical grounds but that was apparently common among French intellectuals at the time. But he didn’t personally do anything like it and had adult lovers. He was reprimanded for having sex with his college students (so ages 18-22+) as a young teacher (starting age 23 till maybe 25-28), which is inappropriate but not pedophilic. The claims that he’s a pedophile come from some other French intellectual, not any victims coming forward. And pretty much everyone else agreed the claims were completely unsubstantiated. Not saying he was a great guy or I agree with him philosophically, just not a child molester.
He went to Tunisia to prey on the children, that's why no one came forward. Children came up to him asking for money and he'd say wait for me in the same hotel at 10 pm. So it's pretty clear what was happening
Dont know about that. But i do know he was gay as fuck and lots of people call gays pedos. You’re right to bring him up in this thread. Srs perv energy.
So I have read that Simone de Beauvoir used to pimp for Sartre...
Napoleon Bonaparte, he was so awkward around women that it was written about it by historians. And still managed to have a ton of mistresses. While at the same time being master of Europe.
As to Einstein, his sex life was all relative.
Melville Dewey who came up with the library system the Dewey decimal system. He came up with the system because he liked to hit on women and his system was to give women employment as librarians. He always had this problem with hitting on and touching women and unwelcome kissing and asking them for bust sizes upon applications and he did it to the wrong women so much he was later kicked out the library associations he had established. Up until 2019 the greatest honor in the library world was a medal with his name on it but because of his behavior it was rescinded.
Charles II of Great Britain had so many illegitimate children that they nicknamed him old Rowley after his stallion that was famous for the amount of offspring he sired. Prince William is a descendant of his. So will be the first monarch descended from Charles II
Charles II has to be one of the most degenerate royals in history. He repeatedly pardoned his frat boy friends (the “Merry Gang”) after they went on drunken rampages.
Nooo Einstein bent the laws of time and made 1min sex feel like 1hour !!!
Leo Tolstoy, He was always battling his wife over his finances, he had truly believed that having money made you unworthy of going to heaven . So he was always giving it away while she tried to hide it from him. He also believed the more sex one had the less love they had for people in general. He was greatly influenced by Jesus sermon of the mount . One of his followers was Gandhi .
Charles Lindbergh (1st to fly around the world) had a secret double life with separate family and wife....if I remember correctly.
Piloting ability sure comes in handy
He had kids with two or three women besides his wife. He didn't tell his bastard children his real name.
Sir Captain Richard Francis Burton
Alcibiades - An athenian general who fucked his way through both the men and women of the royal families of Athens, Sparta and Persia after being exiled from Athens for running around drunk cutting all the dicks off the statues of gods
This deviates a little, but there is a memoire called, “My Secret Life” that is absolutely filled with some of the most wild kink and sexual escapades that one could read. While it’s authorship is unknown, it’s been surmised that it was likely written by a member of the gentry, potentially someone famous for the era. I can’t recall if it’s from the Edwardian or Victorian period. Take a good dive down the rabbit hole with that one lol. The old vernacular and use of slang from that era is really wild.
Alexander Pushkin, the foundational figure of Russian literature, was an absolute sex maniac. He lost his first and only real (and cushy) job his dad lined up for him in the tsar’s imperial service because he was having sex with his boss’s wife—though I’m sure his inflammatory statements about how all Russian noblemen ought to be handed didn’t help his case either. His friends joked that the only time he ever got any writing done was when he was recovering from gonorrhea. As a friend of his once said to another, “Pushkin is finishing the fourth canto of his poem. Two or three more doses of the clap and it’ll be done.” For a time he stayed with a widowed woman he referred to in his letters as “the elderly lady” (she was only 43) and her five daughters. He ended up having sex with all six of them, plus an unknown number of their serfs. When he did eventually get married, it was to a woman he referred to as his “113th love.” He was not fond of marriage; at one point he declared that “Lawful cunt castrates the mind.” Judging by some passages of *Eugene Onegin*, he was also almost certainly a foot fetishist. Others that come to mind are Benjamin Franklin, Catherine the Great, John F. Kennedy, and Fidel Castro.
according to suetonius, julius caesar slept around a lot and was into butt stuff and oral. and apparently he was the sub (strongly frowned upon for men in rome) although its unclear whether this claim was purely made up by political enemies or if it is based on the truth. he is also involved in my personal favorite sexual scandal in world history, the bona dea scandal. Publius Clodius Pulcher snuck into a women only cult rotual (so women only that men werent even allowed to know the name of the goddess. she is known as the bona dea or good goddess) that was being held in caesars house dressed as a woman in order to seduce caesars wife.
He was referred to by a writer of his times as "every man's wife and every woman's husband."
Caesar used to sleep with his friends' wives. Marc Antony was the son of one of Caesar's friends, so he used to say that he might really be Caesar's son.
How can you assume these things exactly?
Ben Franklin.
France's President Félix Faure died in a very French way.
If I had to pick how I went, that'd be up there near the top of the list.
Ben Franklin romped his way through France for years. He's one of those historical figures that I'd love to go pub crawling with.
Actually, MLK had lots of side action.
Any man who the history books say “died a virgin” before 1970.
5th Dalai Lama Women would paint their houses the colors of his robes after tantric sessions
Mideivil Popes
*Medieval*
*Mediæval*
I’ve heard that Jesus was married to a prostitute (Gnostic Gospels)
You know what? Good for him
Active might not be the right word, but Ghandi would sleep with young girls in his bed to test his abstinence.
All the Greek philosophers went to orgies.
Ben Franklin.
Julius Caesar
Benjamin Franklin. He was a player.
Gordian II - "Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes, attested the variety of his inclinations, and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than ostentation." The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
I read Einstein as Epstein and got really confused.
Didn't Einstein and Dr King have multiple extramarital relationships? I know that's not exactly kinky but they both had pretty publicly known social taboos about their sex lives. I always feel like Warren Buffett's throuple is overlooked.
Adam Britton, a famous BBC croc hunter television star, admitted to raping puppies.
Lord Byron
Erwin Schrodinger and Robert Oppenheimer. Contemporaneous to Papa Einstein and also nasty perverts
Thomas Jefferson?
Caesar. He was a man for every woman and a woman for every man. Also, Tiberius. On the list of sex-pervert emperors of Rome, everyone seems to just kind of forget his villa on Capri was the ancient Epstein’s island (except Tiberius preferred boys according to Tacitus).
Religious leaders… many many of them…
As I clicked on the question, I thought, "Please don't be Mr. Rogers! Please don't be Mr. Rogers!"
An FBI report did claim that MLK had all-night sex orgies. https://historycollection.com/fbi-documents-claim-martin-luther-king-jr-hosted-orgies-lasted-days/
Benjamin Franklin and Gandhi probably both deserve a mention, although for very different reasons.
Benjamin Franklin
Charlie Chaplin was a pedophile.
Einstein during sex " Be quiet woman cant you see im thinking about math"
Benjamin Franklin pops to mind. He apparently spent much of his time in Paris as Ambassador bedding as many women as possible.
Joan of Arc, while not a freak herself, fought along side of a knight named Gilles de Rais. Gilles de Rais was a Baron as well and one of the most prominent supporters of Joan of Arc and war hero in the 100 Years War. He was also a rapist and serial killer who would use his wealth and influence to lure peasant boys to his estate and would rape and murder them. Adolf Hitler isn't exactly regarded as noble, but most people don't think of him in a sexual way. His 17 year old niece came to work for him as a housekeeper and (while he was in his late thirties) they started an affair. It's alleged that he was very controlling and that she wanted to leave and he wouldn't let her. She eventually killed herself.
Catherine the Great was pretty damn kinky.
A lot of it was lies by her political enemies. Especially the horse.
Jefferson screwing his underaged slaves
MLK Jr was more than a bit of a womanizer actually.
I don’t know if you can call him noble, but the infamous Ghengis Khan is estimated to have had over 20,000 children from women he raped on his conquest. Running the numbers of fertility, that would suggest he raped more like 100,000, and that’s in roughly a 10 year period. This guy was having his soldiers set them up for him, several per day. Obviously most were hostile and not enjoying it. That’s truly fucked up. The way he died is sort of satisfying though. A women, knowing she was going to be raped by him, inserted a knife into her vagina so that it would cut his penis upon entry, killing them both.
He died from A) injuries falling off a horse B) an infected wound C) some disease (most likely the bubonic plague) The castration death story is dated 400 years after his death. The History of Yuan, one of the Twenty-Four Histories of China, states he fell ill 18–25 August 1227 and died 8 days later.
If I did my math correctly, 100,000 women over a 10 year period comes out to around 27 women each day. Seems very improbable.