March 14, 2005
People"At Princeton, Albert Einstein was more like a kindly uncle. When he arrived in 1935, and was asked what he would require for his study, he replied: 'A desk, some pads and a pencil, and a large wastebasket - to hold all of my mistakes.'"
[To avoid embarrassment, Einstein's salary request was raised by Princeton administrators.]
Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike Contest in Monte Carlo, Monaco. He placed third.
[While visiting his native London, Chaplin, then the most famous man in the world, received 73,000 letters in two days.]
[Trivia: Chaplin's trademark Tramp costume was inspired by the poverty of his early years. When his English mother first saw him wearing it, she cried, "Charlie, I have to get you a new suit!"]
One April, a friend of Vernon Duke's, inspired by his famous song "April in Paris," decided to spend the month there. The weather was terrible.
Upon his return, the traveler complained at great length about his disappointing trip. "Whatever made you go to Paris in April?" Duke asked. "The weather is always terrible then." "I went because of your song!" the friend cried. "Ah," the composer replied apologetically, "well we really meant May, but the rhythm required two syllables."
Duke, Vernon [born Vladimir Dukelsky] (1903-1969) Russian-born American composer
[Sources: C. Fadiman, ed., Bartlett's Anecdotes]
Thomas Edison once had a visitor to his farm who chided him by asking, "Mr. Edison how come a man as smart as you has a gate that is so difficult to open?" Chuckling, Edison replied, "My dear sir, everytime you open the gate to my farm you put five gallons of water in my tank!"
Procter and Gamble was in big trouble when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb as they sold candles. Fortunately, a forgetful employee in Cincinnati forgot to turn his machine off when he went to lunch resulting in a mass of lather with air bubbles. Rather than tossing the product away, it was made into soap. Moreover, the soap floated and was christened Ivory soap! Floating soap was very important in Cincinnati at the time as many bathed in the Ohio River. Having a soap that floated would help to insure that it would not get lost!
Napoleon had just heard discouraging reports from his scouts how his army could not possibly cross the Alps as the roads could not handle all of Napoleon's troops, munitions, and baggage. He thanked his scouts courteously and called for his bugler. Napoleon ordered his bugler to sound "Charge !" His troops not only crossed the Alps, but in record time!
Art Fry, a 3M Company employee and a singer in the church choir, was frustrated each Sunday when his slips of paper marking the hymns to be sung or the Scripture verses to be read kept falling out of the hymnal and Bible. The 3M Company allows the employees to spend 15% of their time on any project that interests them. Fry remembered that one of his co-workers invented an adhesive that did not work very well and found a perfect use for it, "I coated the adhesive on a paper sample and I found that it was not only a good bookmark, but it was great for writing notes. It will stay in place as long as you want it to, and then you can remove it without damage." Art Fry's idea became one of 3M's most successful and profitable products, Post-it!