ANECDOTES

  

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Einstein was once travelling from Princeton on a train when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger.

When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket. He couldn’t find his ticket, so he reached in his trouser pockets. It wasn’t there, so he looked in his briefcase but couldn’t find it. Then he looked in the seat beside him. He still couldn’t find it.

The conductor said, ‘Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know who you are. I’m sure you bought a ticket. Don’t worry about it.’

Einstein nodded appreciatively.

The conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to move to the next car, he turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.

The conductor rushed back and said, ‘Dr. Einstein, Dr. Einstein, don’t worry, I know who you are. No problem. You don’t need a ticket. I’m sure you bought one.’

Einstein looked at him and said, “Young man, I too, know who I am. What I don’t know is where I’m going. That’s why I am searching my ticket”

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In a session of the Academy of Sciences of the (former) USSR, the agronomist Lysenko, founder of “Creative Darwinism,” gave a talk on the inheritance of acquired traits.

When he finished his report, Lev Landau, who was in attendance, asked, “So, you argue that if we will cut off the ear of a cow, and the ear of its offspring, and so on, sooner or later the earless cows will start to be born?”

Lysenko replied, “Yes, that’s right.”

“Then,” started Landau, “how you explain the virgins still being born?”

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Theodore Maiman was an American engineer and physicist credited with the invention of the first working laser.

The laser was successfully fired on May 16, 1960. On July 7, 1960 in a press conference in Manhattan, Maiman and his employer, Hughes Aircraft Company, announced the laser to the world.

But Maiman found his invention the centre of controversy when he admitted to reporters that the laser, an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, could be used as a weapon.

To Maiman`s dismay, national headlines exaggerated what he had said. A large, red headline in one publication said, “L.A. man discovers scientific death ray.“

The late actress Bette Davis even came up to Maiman at a party once and asked how it felt to be responsible for the possible destruction of humanity.

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Two English boys, being friends of Charles Darwin, thought one day that they would play a joke on him.

They caught a butterfly, a grasshopper, a beetle and a centipede, and out of the creatures they made a strange, composite insect. They took the centipede’s body, the butterfly’s wings, the grasshopper’s legs and the beetle’s head and they glued them together carefully. Then, with their new bug in a box, they knocked at Darwin’s door.

“We caught this bug in a field,” they said. “Can you tell us what kind of bug it is, sir?”

Darwin looked at the bug and then he looked at the boys. He smiled slightly.

“Did it hum when you caught it?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” they answered, nudging one another.

“Then,” said Darwin, “It is a humbug.”

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In 1938, Louis Pasteur was evicted from Paris because he insisted that infection was caused by microbes and that immunity could be gained through vaccines.

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At a French airport one day, the customs official looked suspiciously at Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s passport, in which his occupation was listed simply as “Producer.”

“What do you produce?” he asked.

“Gooseflesh,” Hitchcock replied.

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The U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue astounded Capone by demanding millions of dollars in back taxes.

“They can’t collect legal taxes from illegal money,” he objected.

They could; in 1931 Capone was imprisoned for tax evasion.