A historical look at the stuff that gets us hammered. Who’s ready for the first round?

Beer

To quote Homer Simpson, is there anything it can’t do? Most likely invented in Persia circa 7,000 B.C.E., beer’s gone on to become hugely important in almost every ancient society it’s touched. Back in Sumerian culture, the drink was considered positively divine - a fact confirmed when archaeologists dug up the 4,000-year-old "Hymn to Ninkasi." The ode to the goddess of brewing actually doubles as a recipe for a barley-based beverage
guaranteed to make people feel "exhilarated, wonderful and blissful."

The epic of Gilgamesh tells us a similar tale; one of the main characters, Enkidu, is said to have had "seven cups of beer, and his heart soared." After seven rounds we can definitely see why. In ancient Egypt, wages were often paid to the poor in beer, or as they called it, hqt. It was sort of light beer, apparently, and not very intoxicating, which explains how construction workers of the day managed to drink three daily rations of it and still build their masterpiece: the not-at-all-leaning pyramids of Giza.

Wine

A wine snob will happily tell you, for hours on end, how difficult it is to make a decent wine and how many complicated steps are involved. This may be true, but it’s ridiculously easy to make basic wine. The beverage in its roughest form probably goes back thousands of years to primitive cultures who mistakenly left grapes in the sun for too long and then attempted to eat them. As it turns out, all the yeasts needed to ferment grapes actually grow on grape skin. (No additives necessary!)

Around 5,000 B.C.E., the people of present-day Georgia and Iran started making wine in clay pots. By the time of ancient Greece, wine had acquired a religious significance; perhaps in homage to Dionysus, the Greeks planted vines in all their colonies, including France and Egypt. (We’d love to know what the French make of the fact that they have the Greeks to thank for their vaunted grapes.)

California winemakers should also praise God, literally, for the fruits of their labor: when Christian missionaries arrived there, they planted the region’s first vines so they’d have something to transmogrify into
the blood of Jesus when they took Communion.

Champagne

As you probably know, bubbly comes from the Champagne region of France, a longtime center of trade (and also a region in the path of rampaging hordes: Attila the Hun, among others, left footprints there). As you may also know, Dom Perignon was in fact a real person - his first name was Pierre - and, in a sense, he’s the inventor of the sparkly stuff. A Benedictine monk, the Dom served as treasurer of an abbey in the Champagne region starting in 1688.

The region had slightly chilly weather that year, and the growing season was unusually short anyway - which meant grapes spent less time fermenting on the vine and more time fermenting in cellars. Essentially, it was this process that led to carbon dioxide being trapped inside the bottles.

At first the Dom was horrified; this was a sign that he’d failed in his duties as treasurer (which included, for some reason, winemaking). Try as he might, he couldn’t get rid of the bubbles. Finally, resigned to dealing with them, he blended grapes to make a light white wine, which suited the effervescence far better than a heavy red.

He also realized he’d have to solve another problem caused by trapped carbon dioxide: a considerable number of his bottles exploding. So, instead of stopping them with wood and oil-soaked hemp, he started using a soft material from Spain: cork.

This lovely story, by the way, doesn’t sit so well with the natives of Limoux, France. They allege that they were making sparkling wine in their backyards as early as the 1500s, and that Perignon stole their idea. We’ve got to side with the Dom on this one: After all, the guy was a monk.

Vodka

Believe it or not, the name really does come from the Russian word for "water," which is "voda," and the Russians have a pretty good claim to inventing the stuff. Production from grains has been documented there as far back as the 9th century. It wasn’t, however, until around the 14th century that vodka became known as the Russian national drink, and for good reasons; it was served everywhere, even at religious ceremonies.

Poland likes to boast that its own vodka production goes back even further than Russia’s, to the 8th century, but what was going made in that region at the time was more like grappa or brandy. Later Polish vodkas were called "gorzalka," or "burnt wine," and were used as medicines, as were all distilled liquors in the Middle Ages. Vodka was also used as an ingredient in early European formulations of gunpowder.

By the way, for those of you who turn your noses up the fruit-infused vodkas that have recently hit the market: they’re the original. Early vodkas were not quite as palatable as your average Grey Goose, so makers often masked the taste with fruits and spices.

Gin

If you’re unsurprised that vodka used to be given as medicine, you probably won’t be shocked to learn that gin was invented specifically for that purpose. 14th-century Europeans distilled juniper berries in hopes of fighting the plague (then again, almost everything they did was in hope of fighting the plague).

But gin as we know it didn’t come along until the mid-1600s. That’s when one Dr. Sylvius concocted the first formulation in the Netherlands, hoping it would serve as a primitive type of dialysis for kidney patients. (We’re guessing he didn’t particularly care about its effect on the liver.) By the end of the century, gin had become popular in Britain because it was sold at cut-rate prices, despite a very widespread rumor that it could induce abortion, which lead to it being nicknamed "mother’s ruin." Later, when the Brits started to occupy India, they found it useful in yet another medical mixture: the gin and tonic. The quinine in the tonic water was effective in fighting malaria.

Tequila

As vodka was to Russia, tequila was to Mexico; it’s been made there since at least the 16th century and was originally used in religious rituals. (Having drunk a little too much tequila once, we can testify to its ability to cause drinkers to beseech God for mercy.) The name comes from a town founded in 1656. And while José Cuervo didn’t exactly invent the drink, he was the first to commercialize it. As for its migration northward, a fellow named Cenobio Sauza brought the stuff to the U.S. in the late 1800s; we can’t help but wonder if this is why frat boys on spring break still refer to this stuff as "the sauce."

Rum

Yo-ho-uh-oh and a bottle of rum - the drink tastes great, but its history isn’t so sweet. The story, as far as we can tell, starts in India, where in 300, B.C.E., Alexander the Great saw some sugarcane and memorably called it "the grass that gives honey without bees."

All well and good, until Christopher Columbus went and brought sugarcane to the Caribbean. There, it flourished and became the engine of the slave trade. Africa sent slaves to the Caribbean, which sent sugar to New England, which sent rum and other goodies to Africa, which sent more slaves to the Caribbean. Known as the triangular trade, pondering the implications of it all is enough to make a person want a stiff drink. But not, preferably, one steeped in rum.

The article above was reprinted with permission from mental_floss‘ book In the Beginning.

From Big Hair to the Big Bang, here’s a Mouthwatering Guide to the Origins of Everything by our friends at mental_floss.

Did you know that paper clips started out as Nazi-fighting warriors? Or that cruise control was invented by a blind genius? Read it all in the book!

Photo: misterbisson [Flickr]

Not all the bandits in Sin City are one-armed. Here are a few different ways people have tried to beat the odds:

1. A Little Off The Top

Here’s how it worked. In the 1970s, the Mob coerced the Teamsters Union into making loans to a San Diego businessman buying four casinos in Vegas. As hidden partners, Mob bosses then "skimmed" millions of dollars from the joints by rigging slots so they showed winners when there were none, or by fixing scales so they underweighed coins. One estimate had the wise guys swiping $7 million in quarters in just one 18-month period. In the end, though, federal wiretaps and informants broke the scam. The Feds even tapped conversations between mobsters in the visitors room at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and in 1986, a dozen bosses from gangs in Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Cleveland were convicted in the biggest Mob-Vegas case ever.

2. Playing Your Cards Right

Blackjack is a beatable game - that is, if you can count cards well enough to know when the deck favors the player, not the house. And while solitary card counters are relatively easy to spot for most casino security outfits, it took them six years during the 1990s to tumble to the strategy used by a group of MIT students. Using card-counting teams, complete with diversionary players - the cavalier math-letes raked in millions. One player recounted walking from one casino to another carrying a paper hat stuffed with $180,000 in cash. Amazingly, the MIT ring was never actually caught in the act. Some members retired. A few others were ratted out by a team traitor and banned from the casinos, which learned a lesson about the concept of team play.

3. The Genius

Like a football quarterback, Dennis Nikrasch needed his blockers. In Nickrasch’s case, however, they were blocking surveillance cameras while he worked his sweet computer magic on slot machines. Once the machines were rigged, the clever hacker vacated the premises, leaving it to confederates to win the jackpots. Cops have reported that the Nikrasch gang raked in at least $16 million between 1976 and 1998, even with a 10-year time-out while NIkrasch spent in federal prison and on parole. When he was caught again in 1998, Nikrasch indicated that he’d share his secrets in return for a lighter sentence. He got seven years - and apparently refused to talk. "I have no desire to explain anything to the public," he wrote to an Internet magazine in 1999 from jail. "Never smarted up a chump." (Photo: gaming.nv.gov)

4. The Mechanic

Starting in 1980 in the back of his TV repair shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tommy Glenn Carmichael invented, refined, then manufactured devices for cheating slot machines. Tommy’s bag of tricks ranged from coins on strings to light wands that blinded machine sensors, fooling them into dropping their coins. For most of two decades, Carmichael and his partners raked in millions of dollars. But his luck finally ran out when federal agents tapped his phone and heard him discussing a new device that would rack up hundreds of credits per minute on slot machines. In 2001, Carmichael was sentenced to about a year in jail, and was ordered to stay out of casinos. In 2003, he told an Associated Press reporter he was developing a new gadget, called "the Protector." It was designed to stop slot cheaters. (Photo: gaming.nv.gov)

5. And If All Else Fails …

Jose Vigoa was one cocky crook. After doing a five-year stint from 1991 to 1996 for drug dealing, Vigoa decided to change career paths in 1998. Well, only slightly. As the mastermind of a string of armed robberies over two years that rocked the Vegas Strip, Vigoa armed his outfit with high-tech weapons, body armor, and sophisticated planning. In fact, the Vigoa gang hit up the MGM Grand, the Desert Inn, the Mandalay Bay, and the Bellagio. Not looking to slack off, they even robbed an armored car in between gigs, and killed the two guards. Vigoa was tripped up, however, when video cameras at the Bellagio caught him without a mask during a robbery. He was sentenced in 2002 to life without parole, proving crime doesn’t pay, even in Vegas.

From mental_floss’ book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History’s Naughtiest Bits, published in Neatorama with permission.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog!

Given how many horrendous karaoke performances we’ve been subjected to, we weren’t at all surprised to learn that the guy who invented the karaoke machine can’t sing, can’t read music, and plays the keyboards about as well as your average third-grader.

Songs in the Off-Key of Life

We were, however, surprised to learn that poor Daisuke Inoue has made almost no money from his invention, and that he didn’t even give it a try himself until 1999, his 59th birthday. (Photo: lvhrd.org)

Inoue’s happy-go-lucky ineptitude has been pretty much the driving force of his entire life. In high school he picked up the drums, which he chose as an instrument because, hey, all you had to do was hit them. Eventually, he took his limited talent and started playing with a Hawaiian band that frequented old dance halls from the days of the American World War II occupation.

Inoue, shall we say, marched to the beat of a different drummer. Noticing this, the other band members quickly, and somewhat mercifully, realized that he’d be of better use on the business side, and he started acting as the band’s manager. But he still served as occasional drummer, particularly on amateur nights playing backup for rich Japanese businessmen.

Because Inoue can’t read musical notation, he had to reply on watching the singer’s lips in order to strike the right beat. One of his clients apparently found his drum technique flattering and asked Inoue to accompany him to a hot springs resort as his personal drummer. But Inoue couldn’t go. Time Asia tells what happened next: "[Inoue] obliged by providing him with a tape of his accompaniment. The boss delivered an emotional rendition of Frank Nagai’s ‘Leaving Haneda Airport on a 7:50 Flight,’ Inoue collected his money in absentia and karaoke (a term long used in the industry for house musicians – it literally means ‘empty orchestra’) was born."

Inoue quickly realized he was on to something. With some help from his buddies, he built 11 prototype machines, kitted them out with amplifiers and background music, and then leased them to bars in Kobe. They were an immediate hit. But Inoue made one crucial mistake: He didn’t patent his invention. Big companies quickly realized they could make a mint on machines and tapes and made their own.

Inoue only went so far as to patent two things: a type of plastic-covered songbook for wannabe Frank Sinatras, and a concoction he claimed could ward off rats and cockroaches in more downscale karaoke joints. But hey, give the poor guy credit: He certainly did things His Way.

The article above was reprinted with permission from mental_floss‘ book In the Beginning.

From Big Hair to the Big Bang, here’s a Mouthwatering Guide to the Origins of Everything by our friends at mental_floss.

Did you know that paper clips started out as Nazi-fighting warriors? Or that cruise control was invented by a blind genius? Read it all in the book!

250 BCE Lead, Lead Wine

Ancient Romans use lead in everything from paint to dishware to plumbing, despite warnings from Caesar’s engineers.

Actually, Romans love the stuff so much that they add lead acetate to wine as a sweetener.

Lead poisoning runs rampant, leading future historians to speculate that
lead-induced insanity caused the fall of Rome. (Image: Dionysus as baby
by Guido Reni)

50 CE Listen To Your Elder

Roman historian Pliny the Elder notes that asbestos in clothing "affords
protection against all spells, especially those of the Magi." If that’s not handy enough, the Romans also discover that asbestos is a strong building material, and that it can make tablecloths flame retardant. (Simply burn off the food to clean them!)

Curiously, Pliny also warns against purchasing slaves who’ve worked in asbestos quarries. He writes, "They die young."

1527 CE Opium for the Masses

Physician and toxicologist Philippus Paracelsus prescribes opium as a painkiller throughout Europe. Using his marketing genius, he also re-brands the drug under the more wholesome name "laudanum."

During the next 300 years, the drug becomes as commonplace as Advil, and it’s prescribed for everything from colds to diarrhea to insomnia.

Poets and novelists, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charles Dickens, even take laudanum to cure writer’s block. Mary Todd Lincoln combines the drug with camphor in an effort to commit suicide, but she’s foiled by a suspicious pharmacist who plies her with sugar pills instead. (Photo: NLM Visible Proofs)

1850 CE And Speaking of Camphor …

In the mid-1800s, swallowing camphor is thought to cure hysteria, cholera, and gout. Later, however, medics wise up to the toxic nature of the gummy compound, and it’s relegated to things like fireworks and embalming fluid.

But camphor hasn’t totally retired from its career in medicine. It’s an active ingredient in Vicks VapoRub, anti-itch creams, and several other products with warning labels that read, "If swallowed, contact a Poison Control Center immediately."

1898 CE Heroin for Everyone!

Got a nagging cough? Some heroin will fix you right up. At least, that’s what mothers believe in 1898, when they start buying Bayer Heroin for their sick kids.

Soon approved by the American Medical Association, the drug is marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute - which is wrong on many levels. Not only is heroin extremely addictive, but the body also metabolizes it into morphine.

When reports of extreme addiction become known, Bayer acknowledges its blunder and stops making the medicine in 1913. But for the next decade, heroin lozenges, heroin elixirs, and heroin tablets continue to dominate the market.

1920 CE Video Killed the Radium Star

Is there anything radium can’t do? In the 1920s and early 1930s, companies tout it as a cure-all and put the radioactive element in toothpaste, ear plugs, soap, suppositories, and even contraceptives.

One of the biggest sellers is a radium-laced water called Radithor. Steel magnate Eben Byers drink approximately 1,400 bottles of the stuff over the course of several years, believing that it is the key to longevity.

After undergoing operations to remove parts of his mouth and jaw, he dies in 1932 as the rest of his bones disintegrate. The drink’s popularity plummets after it’s implicated in his death. (Photo: Oak Ridge Associated Universities)

1971 CE Breakfast of Champions

Executive Robert Loibl decides to prove that his company’s pesticide, DDT, is completely harmless.

For three months, he and his wife take a concentrated dose of the poison every morning before breakfast. The Loibls report no negative side effects and claim to feel more energized after their "treatments."

Studies later confirm that DDT is not acutely toxic, but rather, that it induces certain cancers and neurological disorders that take years to develop. (Photo: Roadjunky.com)

The article above, written by Stacy Conradt and Hank Green, appeared in Scatterbrained section of the Mar - Apr 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine (the excellent "The Future of Sex" issue!). It is reprinted here with permission.

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Source: TattooSymbol and Wikipedia

3300 BCE: Ötzi the Iceman dies in the Austrian Alps, where his frozen body is discovered by hikers in 1991 CE, making him the world’s oldest mummy. His 57 tattoos - straight lines and small crosses, mostly - are believed to be therapeutic, possibly used to treat osteoarthritis.

2800 BCE: The ancient Egyptians: Is there anything they can’t do? In addition to inventing writing, surgery, and beekeeping, they also popularize tattooing as an art form, which spreads from Greece to
China. (Oh, yeah - they invented the flushable toilet, too.)

921 CE: Islamic scholar Ibn Fadlan meets Viking on a journey from Baghdad to Scandinavia and describes them as vulgar, dirty, and covered from neck to toe with tattoos.

1600: Unlawful intercourse by Indian priests is punished by tattooing. Doesn’t sound so bad? Try having a big vagina branded on your forehead for life.

1700: Obeying the letter of the law - if not the spirit - middle-class Japanese adorn themselves in full-body tattoos when a law is passed that only royals can wear ornate clothing.

Omai, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1776). Notice the tattooed arm and hand.

1790: Captain Cook returns from a voyage to the South Pacific with a unique souvenir: a tattooed Polynesian named Omai. He’s an overnight sensation in fad-crazy London and starts a tattooing trend among upper-class poseurs. Between passionate declarations that he is "not an animal" Omai also manages to introduce the word tattoo into our Western lexicon, from the Tahitian tatau, "to mark."

1802: By now, tattooing has caught on with sailors throughout the Royal Navy, and there are tattoo artists in almost every British port. Especially popular are Crucifixion scenes, tattooed on the upper back to discourage flogging by pious superiors.

1891: American Samuel O’Reilly "borrows" Edison’s electric pen design to patent a nearly identical machine that tattoos. Its basic design - moving coils, a tube, and a needle bar - is still used to today, so remember kids: That’s 19th-century technology they’re repeatedly stabbing you with.

1919: The troublemaker protagonist of Franz Kafka’s short story "In the Penal Colony" finally gets the law drilled into him - liiterally - by its fatal, 12-hour inscription into his skin.

Robert Mitchum sporting "love/hate" knuckle tattoos in The Night of the Hunter.

1955: Robert Mitchum makes the tattoo cool again in the movie Night of the Hunter, playing a sociopathic traveling preacher with "love" and "hate" inked on his knuckles. Popular modern variants include "rock/roll" and "love/math."

1961: Hepatitis B makes the tattoo not cool again, an outbreak of which is linked to tattoo parlors in New York City. Parlors are outlawed in the Big Apple until 1997.

2005: Popular culture helps tattoos become more popular in the West than at any time in recorded history, with more than 39 million North Americans sporting one. It all comes back to Austrian Ötzi and his 57 tattoos. It might’ve taken almost 6,000 years but tattooing and the West are in love again.

The article above, from mental_floss’ book Scatterbrained. is published in Neatorama with permission.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog!

Sibling rivalries are as old as time. We all know about Cain and Abel, but what about Jesus and his brothers? Or the falling out between Jimmy and Billy Carter? Here are 6 of the most interesting examples of mismatched siblings throughout history:

Jesus and Who?

The New Testament mentions brothers (adelphoi in Greek) of Jesus and even names them. Yet, many Christians teach that Jesus was an only
child and that the adelphoi James, Simon, Judas (different from apostles James, Simon, and Judas), and Joseph were Jesus’ cousins.

In fact, according to Catholic theology, Jesus’ mother, Mary, never had sexual intercourse and never bore a child other than the Messiah, so adelphoi couldn’t have been his brothers. Other lines of thought tell it a little differently, claiming that the Gospel writers used adelphoi literally and that Mary was a virgin until after the birth of Jesus.

We don’t want to take sides, but if these four guys really were Jesus’ brothers, they got the seriously short end of the sibling stick. Imagine - not only is your brother God Almighty, he’s also the most famous man in history. Meanwhile scholars are arguing about whether you ever even existed.

Charlotte Brontë and her Five Siblings

Maria and Elizabeth Brontë couldn’t help being eclipsed by younger sister Charlotte; after all, they died in girlhood in the 1820s. Sister Emily, second youngest, was the family’s only poetic genius and wrote Wuthering Heights (1847). Seen in retrospect as one of the finest novels in English, it was panned in its own time and she produced no more. Youngest sister Anne’s novels, Agnes Grey (1847) and especially, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), were popular, if literarily undistinguished. Branwell, the one brother, drank too much, smoked too much opium, and died a failure in 1848. Emily and Anne died the next year. All of which leaves Charlotte the only Bronte to achieve popular, critical and lasting success with her novels, especially Jane Eyre (1847). In the end, she was the longest-lived of the TB-plagued Bronte siblings, surviving until age 39. She was also the only one to marry (the show-off).

John and Tom Fogarty: Bad Blood Rising

In 1959, Tom Fogarty, two school chums, and Tom’s little brother, John, formed a band. Playing in the Fogarty garage in El Cerrito, California, they called themselves Tommy Fogarty & the Blue Velvets.

Then in 1964, they landed a recording contract with Fantasy Records in nearby Berkeley, Renamed the Golliwogs, the band floundered until John suddenly emerged as both a towering talent and a control freak.

As lead singer, lead guitarist, lead composer, lead lyricist, lead arranger, and lead (if not sole) band manager, he could do everything but spell. John turned the group, now called Creedence Clearwater Revival into an "overnight" sensation, cranking out top-10 singles ("Proud Mary," "Bad Moon Rising," "Down on the Corner") and No. 1 albums.

Brother Tom? In 1971 he quit in disgust. Worse yet, he couldn’t catch a break. He passed away in 1990 as a result of AIDS, a condition contracted from a blood transfusion.

Jimmy and Billy Carter: Not Like Two Peanuts in a Shell

Jimmy Carter (L) greets his brother Billy at the commencement ceremonies at Georgia Institute of Technology (Photo: Carter White House Photographs Collection)

Twelve years younger than brother Jimmy, Billy Carter found himself cast in the role of crown prince in the late 1970s. A beer-for-breakfast kind of guy who proudly wore a "Redneck Power" T-shirt, Billy sometimes embraced the role of buffoon and sometimes tried to shake the stigma.

His bid to become mayor of Plains, Georgia, close on the heels of his brother’s 1976 presidential victory, failed. He also failed as manager of the family peanut warehouse. His PR makeover wasn’t helped by the fact that he regularly greeted reporters while perched on a stack of beer cases in his service station. It also wasn’t helped by his business initiatives: Billy once tried to cash in on celebrity, promoting a brand beer named for him.

His biggest misadventure, however, came when he accepted money from the Libyan government in return for his supposed influence with his brother. Dubbed "Billygate," the episode prompted a congressional investigation and embarrassed Jimmy as his 1980 bid for reelection approached. Billy Carter died at 51 in 1988.

Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi: Who Gets Mom’s Job?

Indira Gandhi stands between her two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay. Photo: Terry Fincher/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had two son’s: Rajiv and Sanjay. The elder, Rajiv, didn’t want to follow in the political footsteps of his family (including Grandfather Jawaharial Nehru, founding prime minister of independent India). So, he became and airline pilot.

Sanjay, on the other hand was groomed by Mom to succeed her as leader of the Indian National Congress Party. Willful and aggressive, Sanjay pushed for his Mother’s 1975 declaration of state of emergency - an unconstitutional abuse of power.

After Sanjay’s death in a 1980 plane crash, though, Rajiv agreed, reluctantly, to run for the Lok Sabha when a suicide bomber - linked to Tamil separatists in southern India - killed him. Today his wife, Sonia, is active in Congress Party politics and continues the political legacy.

Bill and Roger Clinton: Little Rock

Like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton brought his own sibling of ill repute to the national spotlight.

When Bill was Arkansas governor, Roger Clinton pleaded guilty to distributing cocaine and served 15 months in prison. When Bill was U.S. president, his half brother, 10 years younger, was supposedly a rock singer.

After Bill left the White House, a congressional investigation in 2001 showed that much of Roger’s considerable income during his brother’s two terms had come from mysterious sources. His "musical gigs" overseas brought him big money from foreign governments, payments that suggest he was playing something other than rock and roll. (Clinton bashers say it was influence.) He also accepted money from organized crime figure Rosario Gambino, apparently in exchange for seeking leniency from a parole board.

Hey, take "the work" when you can get it. Since Bill’s White House departure, rockin’ Roger’s music career has fizzled. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

From mental_floss’ book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History’s Naughtiest Bits, published in Neatorama with permission.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog!

Brains are pretty scary to begin with: they’re pinkish gray, they’re lumpy, and they blank out at the most inappropriate times. But what would happen if your brain really turned on you?

THAT’S NO FRIEND OF MINE

Do you friends and family feel like strangers? You might be suffering from Capgras’ syndrome, a rare condition in which family, close friends, or items of personal significance seem like imposters.

What gives? When you see a familiar face, you don’t just recognize the face; you also experience some sort of emotional reaction to it. Capgras’ delusion arises when there’s a disconnection between these two brain functions. You can identify your father’s face and know it’s familiar, but since there’s damage to the pathway between face recognition and emotional reaction, you experience no jolt of emotion. Since it doesn’t feel like your father, the man must be an imposter!

I CAN’T SEE, BUT I CAN SLAM-DUNK

Believe it or not, people with blindsight are blind due to cortical damage, but they can still unconsciously "see" some aspect of their environment.

One famous patient, D.F., couldn’t read the big E on the eye chart of identify how many fingers a doctor was holding up right in front of her, but she could put an envelope through a slit in the wall with a high degree of accuracy.

How is that possible? There’s more than one way to see. The "what" pathway is responsible for recognizing what an object is - for instance, is it a wolf or a banana? The "where and how" pathway determines where objects are and how to navigate and interact with them. Without visualizing the "what," people with blindsight are still able to figure out the "where."

NOT FOR WEAK STOMACHS

Picture living your life under a strobe light. That’s what it feels like to suffer from akinetopsia, or motion blindness. This very rare condition results from selective loss of motion perception because of damage to certain areas of the brain (the temporoparietal cortices). Patients with motion blindness can identify stationary objects and have no problems with other aspects of vision, but moving objects inexplicably seem to appear in one position and then another. For instance, when crossing the street, cars that at first seemed far away could suddenly be very near. And liquid pouring from a pitcher into a cup might look frozen until the cup finally overflowed, allowing the patient to infer that it was full.

BETTER THAN PEYOTE

Can you imagine tasting music or smelling the color red? Most of us can’t (or at least don’t remember), but those with synesthesia can and do. Just as the word anesthesia means "no sensation," synesthesia means "joined sensation." For some reason, stimulating one sense triggers perception in another sense. For example, a bright light might seem loud, the sound of bagpipe sour, the color after sex a static silver.

No one’s sure of the cause, but there are a few hypotheses. Some experts think that crossed wires in the brain cause the problem (the path to the taste buds get hooked up to the sense of hearing path, for example), while others believe that it’s a lack of