obsession
Couldn't stop, wouldn't stop, didn't see why anyone would ask.
Montgomery's Ribs
William Harvey, the physician who proved blood circulates, once reached through a hole in a young viscount's ribs and took hold of the beating heart.
A Little Patch of Yellow Wall
Marcel Proust wrote most of his novel in a cork-lined bedroom he fumigated five times a day with a hallucinogenic nightshade powder.
The Honeymoon
The man who signed a urinal and hung it in a gallery quit modern art for competitive chess, and then married an heiress who lasted seven months.
The Baron in the Bath
On rainy mornings, a Georgian peer walked miles to the sea to swim while his liveried footman, on the peer's orders, rode dry in the empty carriage behind him.
The Man Who Counted the Posts
The man who single-handedly disciplined the English language could not walk past a post without touching it.
This Ain't an Egg-Shop
Who walks 130 miles through an Antarctic winter, in total darkness, to fetch a penguin egg?
The Man Who Counted the Hurdy-Gurdies
The man who designed the first computer spent a quarter of his working life fighting street musicians. Guess which project he finished.
The Man Who Refused to Lose a Thought
What does a Victorian mathematician invent when he refuses to lose a single thought to the dark?
The Nanny Who Never Looked
What if one of the twentieth century's great photographers spent her whole life making pictures she never bothered to look at?
The Man Who Chased His Own Equation
What do you do when the blackboard you've been chalking equations onto turns out to be a moving cab?
The Chair That Would Not Let Him Eat
What does a Renaissance physician discover when he rigs his dining chair to yank the table away the moment he has eaten his ration?
The Man Who Let Gravity Draw
What kind of architect designs a church by hanging it upside down from a shed ceiling?