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These Respected Figures Were Also Some of the Weirdest People in History

Khalid Elhassan August 8, 2022 39 min

1. A Children’s Books Author Who Got Carried Away With Self Pleasure

Hans Christian Andersen statue in Central Park. Central Park

A celibate (which perhaps sheds some light on things), Hans Christian Andersen’s weird kinks went beyond his propensity to masturbate a lot. He also liked to keep meticulous records of his masturbation sessions. He described and listed them in his diary with a pair of plus signs (++). A sample descriptive entry reads: “When they left, I had a doubly sensuous ++“. In Paris, he liked to visit prostitutes and talk with them, then rush back to his hotel to put more ++ sign entries in his diary.

He also had a maudlin and needy streak, and frequently fell in love with people – both men and women – who did not reciprocate his feelings. He often wrote cloyingly mawkish love letters to the objects of his affection, and frequently penned long tracts, in which he gushed about his feelings to women whom he knew were uninterested and would turn him down. In a way, Andersen throve on rejection. Then he would rush back home and earn more ++ entries for his diary.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Ancient Origins – Heraclitus Died When He Covered Himself in Cow Dung

Barrett, Anthony A. – Caligula: The Corruption of Power (1990)

Booth, Martin – A Magick Life: The Biography of Aleister Crowley (2000)

Classical Wisdom – The Cult of Pythagoras

Daily Beast – From Communing With Animals to Obsessive Bean Hatred, Pythagoras Was One Weird Dude

Encyclopedia Britannica – Al Hakim, Fatimid Caliph

Encyclopedia Britannica – Charles VI, King of France

Gizmodo – Was Pythagoras Really a Murderer?

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe III: From the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance (2002)

Guardian, The, January 18^th, 2006 – Bedtime Stories: Was Hans Christian Andersen Really as Pure – and Boring – as Biographers Make Out?

Gunn, Peter – My Dearest Augusta: A Biography of Byron’s Half Sister (1968)

Henderson, Ernest F. – Blucher and the Uprising of Prussia Against Napoleon, 1806-1815 (2015)

History Collection – Strange and Delightful Holiday Traditions of the Victorian Era

Hofschroer, Peter – 1815, The Waterloo Campaign: The German Victory (1999)

Independent, The, March 27^th, 2005 – His Dark Materials

Johnston, William – Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star: A Woman, Sex, and Morality in Modern Japan (2004)

Leggiere, Michael V. – Napoleon and Berlin: The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813 (2015)

Listverse – 10 Strange Facts About Pythagoras: Mathematician and Cult Leader

MacCarthy, Fiona – Byron: Life and Legend (2002)

Mad Monarchs – Charles VI of France

Medium – 7 Disturbing Facts About Sigmund Freud

Murderpedia – Sada Abe

New Yorker, September 18^th, 2015 – Charlie Chaplin’s Scandalous Life and Boundless Artistry

Parkinson, Roger – The Hussar General: The Life of Blucher, Man of Waterloo (1975)

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Heraclitus

Suetonius – The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Book IV, Caligula

Telegraph, The, July 25^th, 2020 – ‘Perverted, Degenerate, and Indecent Acts’: Charlie Chaplin and the Original A-List Divorce Scandal

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.