My fiancé and I were in London this past June. We arrived after a turbulent flight on which neither of us slept, on what may have been the coldest and rainiest day of the summer. Unable to check into our hotel, we decided to ignore our exhaustion, brave the downpour and go check out the oddities on display at the British Museum. Today’s quiz features some of what we saw.

Take the Quiz: Found in the British Museum

1. Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Regarded by many as the best all-around female athlete, Jackie Joyner-Kersee was born in 1962 to teen parents in the south-end slums of East St. Louis. Named for Jacqueline Kennedy (her grandmom insisted that the baby girl was going to grow up to be “the first lady of something”), Joyner-Kersee grew up amidst poverty and, at age 11, saw a man get shot outside the tiny home her family shared. Around that same time, Jackie’s mother started fearing her daughter was growing up too quickly. She decided that her children wouldn’t be allowed to date until they were 18. So, Jackie channeled her energy into sports. By the time she was 12, she could long jump almost 17 feet!

Joyner-Kersee went on to attend UCLA and in 1984 she won her first Olympic medal, in the heptathlon. She spent the next 18 years winning medals (three gold, one silver, two bronze) and setting and breaking world records. She retired in 2001, her place in history solidified as the first lady of track and field.

2. Jack Nicholson

The three-time Oscar winner was raised by his grandparents, and told that his mother was his older sister. In 1936, June Nicholson, a 17-year-old showgirl, was pregnant and in love with a 27-year-old man who was separated but still legally married. Nicholson’s grandparents decided to raise Jack as their own.

Nicholson only learned the truth in 1975.

A Time reporter working on a cover story stumbled across the true nature of Jack’s birth and called him with the stunning news. By the time he figured it out, both June and his grandmother had passed away, taking with them the secret that they hid for nearly 40 years.

3. Daunte Culpepper

In 1977, a teen serving time for armed robbery begged a 62-year-old woman to take in her one-day-old baby. Having already raised 14 children (none of them biologically her own), Emma Culpepper initially refused. But after realizing the child would be placed in foster care, she relented. Emma gave the baby her last name and would spend the rest of her life loving and supporting the eventual first round draft pick. Today, the quarterback is a massive supporter of the African American Adoption Agency. As for Emma Culpepper, she passed away on May 5th, 2007, at the age of 92.

4. Bob Marley

In 1945, the prolific artist credited with bringing reggae to the world was born to a teenage black Jamaican mother and a white Jamaican father in the village of Nine Mile. At the age of 10, Marley’s father died of a heart attack and the family was forced to move to the slums of Trenchtown. Bob quickly found his niche, making friends with musicians in the area; he spent his time recording and would soon form the group that would later become The Wailers.

Bob spread his message of love, peace and music in Jamaica before becoming an international sensation in the mid-seventies. It was then that a soccer injury would lead doctors to find a cancerous tumor in Marley’s toe. They suggested amputation, but as a devout Rastafarian, it was out of the question for Bob. The cancer spread and Marley succumbed to the disease in 1980. Earlier this year, Martin Scorsese announced plans to produce a documentary on the well-loved singer to be released on February 6th, 2010—the date that would have been Bob’s 65th birthday.

5. Eric Clapton

The three-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee (The Yardbirds, Cream & solo) was born in 1945 in Surrey, England. His mother was 16; his father was a 24-year-old Canadian soldier. Like Nicholson, Clapton’s grandparents decided to raise the child as their own, telling Eric that his mother was actually his older sister. Clapton, however, learned the truth when he was nine. He searched for his biological father for years, eventually learning the true identity (and news of his death) from a Canadian journalist. As for Clapton’s father, who died in 1985, he never knew that the famed music legend was his son.

Stefanie Fontanez is an occasional contributor to mental_floss.

1. Spiro Agnew

It should come as no surprise that the right hand man of “Tricky Dick” Nixon may not have been quite on the straight and narrow. In 1973, just after Nixon and Agnew were elected to their second term as President and Vice President (respectively), Agnew became the subject of an investigation that alleged the Vice-President was not only a tax evader, but a money launderer to boot. As a result of the allegations, Agnew would resign as Vice President and would be sentenced to three years probation and fined $10,000. Less than 10 years later, he would be in court again. In 1981 he was ordered by a Maryland court to repay the nearly $300,000 he accepted in bribes while in office.

2. Boris Becker

German tennis star Boris Becker was convicted of tax evasion in 2002. Officials say in the early 90s, Becker was trying to avoid paying notoriously high German taxes by living in Monaco, a tax haven. What he forgot to mention was that he also owned an apartment in Munich, which officials claim was his real place of residence. After a ten-year investigation, Becker admitted to the court that he knew little about German tax laws and may have done something wrong, but that the apartment was only a place to sleep between tournaments. The court was skeptical and forced him to repay the over 3 million euros he owed the government; he was also given a suspended jail sentence. Becker has since sold the Munich apartment and officially moved to Switzerland, another tax haven.

3. Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson is the poster boy for tax evasion. In 1990, the IRS sent him a bill for $16.7 million dollars in back taxes. Faced with this rather large debt, Willie decided to try and pay the IRS back by releasing a double album entitled The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories? The IRS, ever helpful, sped up the process by selling nearly everything he owned. Lucky for Willie, his friends purchased most of the items and returned them to Willie either free of charge or for a nominal fee. He managed to pay back the IRS in only three years.

4. Darryl Strawberry

He was the baseball’s number one draft pick in 1980 and the Rookie of the Year in 1983, but talent, fame and fortune couldn’t keep Darryl Strawberry out of trouble with the law. In addition to allegedly breaking the nose of his first wife, Strawberry was accused of hitting his pregnant girlfriend, violating his probation, soliciting sex from an undercover police officer, possession of cocaine, and a hit-and-run while on painkillers. If that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, in the late 80s, he failed to pay taxes on income he made from autograph and memorabilia shows (The exact same thing Pete Rose would go to prison for in 1990). Strawberry was convicted of the tax charges in 1995 and ordered to pay back more than $450,000 in back taxes. Allegedly, he didn’t. The government sued again, and in February of this year, Strawberry was ordered to pay the more than $430,000 he still owes for not having given the government the money they were due.

5. Richard Hatch

The first winner of the American version of Survivor was well known for his lack of clothing on the show, as well as for his lack of paying his taxes. Hatch was convicted in 2006 of failing to report his over $1 million in winnings as a result of the show. In court, Hatch’s lawyer said his client was “the world’s worst bookkeeper” and that Hatch just forgot to report it. The judge didn’t buy it and now Hatch is serving time in prison for his forgetfulness. He is expected to be released in October of 2009. Hopefully Hatch has learned this very valuable lesson. It’s hard to hide a million dollars from the government, especially when an estimated 51 million people watched you win it.

6. Leona Helmsley

In 1989, the late “Queen of Mean” was convicted of tax evasion relating to renovations she and her husband were making on their $11 million estate. During testimony, Helmsley’s maid quoted her as saying “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes,” an allegation she would later deny. She would spend 18 months in prison for cheating the government out of more than a million dollars. Helmsley passed away in August of 2007. At the time of her death, her estate was worth over $4 billion – $12 million of which she left to her white Maltese, Trouble.

7. Joseph Nunan

He’s not exactly the most high profile tax evader in the world, but Joseph Nunan may hold the record for being the most ironic of our alleged cheaters. That’s because Nunan was a former commissioner of the IRS (1944-1947) and in 1952 was busted for tax evasion. What sort of horrible fraud did he commit? Apparently Nunan won an $1,800 bet that Harry Truman would win the election, but forgot to claim his winnings on his taxes.

8. Wesley Snipes

In 2006, the famous actor was indicted on conspiracy charges that alleged he falsified past tax returns. (He claimed he was due a refund of nearly $12 million.) The government alleges that Snipes claimed the refunds using the “861 argument,” which states not all income is taxable. They also accused him of failing to file tax returns from 1999 to 2004. He was acquitted of the major conspiracy charge, but the court found him guilty of the three lesser misdemeanor charges for failing to file his tax returns. In April 2008, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

9. Al Capone

As head of the Chicago underworld during the 1920s, Al Capone was involved in some less than legal activities. Dubbed Public Enemy #1, he became the focus of an intense investigation by the FBI. It was tough going for law enforcement; Capone owned nothing in his own name and used front men, making it almost impossible to get the charges the government threw at him to stick. That is, until a stack of paper would rat him out.

During a routine raid of one of Capone’s warehouses, Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables” stumbled across a desk drawer containing account information for the mobster. It would be just enough to seal his fate. The man responsible for Chicago’s then-illegal alcohol trade, the corrupting of local government and the St. Valentine’s Day massacre wouldn’t be taken down by some lousy capital murder charge. The king of Chicago would be done in by paperwork. Capone once allegedly said “The income tax law is a lot of bunk. The government can’t collect legal taxes from illegal money.” But this time, the government did collect. After his trial in 1931, Capone was ordered to pay $80,000 dollars in fines and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He would serve only six and a half of those years, but they took their toll. While locked up, numerous attempts on his life were made and the syphilis he contracted during his youth would rapidly progress, leaving him a shadow of his former self. Suffering from syphilitic dementia, he was released 1939 and after another stint in jail, would live out the remainder of his days with his family in Florida.

Stefanie Fontanez is an occasional contributor to mentalfloss.com. She also designed this t-shirt.

Being stinky and human evolution

When we lived in caves and had just figured out the whole standing upright thing, we were less concerned about body odor. Put simply, humans stunk. Anthropologists now believe that our funky selves helped keep us from being some predator’s dinner. Our scent was so rank that the animal about to eat us would actually recoil in horror at the smell and would move on to eat something less repulsive. Now that’s a defense mechanism.

Ancient Egyptians

When they weren’t building pyramids, the ancient Egyptians were working hard at masking their own stench. They invented the perfumed bath and would follow it up by applying a liberal amount of perfume to their underarms. Egyptians also tried using carob, incense, and even porridge as deodorant. Women would place globs of scented wax on their heads that would slowly melt throughout the day, spreading the pleasing scent as well as masking the not so pleasant. Messy, but effective.

Ancient Romans and Greeks

The ancient Greeks took a page from the Egyptians, constantly bathing and dousing themselves in perfume. Greek poet Homer once said that good hosts offered their guests baths and aromatic oils. Romans were so fanatical about smelling good that they not only took baths in perfume, they soaked their clothes in it, doused their horses in it, and even perfumed their household pets.

The Middle Ages

Things took a turn for the stank during the Middle Ages, when the church decided that being naked was bad. Even in the bath. So people all but stopped cleaning themselves. Those with the money for it tried to cover the stink by using perfume, a practice that continued well into the 19th century. Those without money just remained fragrant.

Mums the word

The first trademarked deodorant – Mum – came out in 1888. Created by an unknown Philadelphia inventor, Mum was a paste applied to the underarms. It was soon followed by Everdry, the first effective antiperspirant. Everdry was an aluminum chloride solution that was dabbed on with a cotton swab to less than desirable results. Everdry took forever to dry, was messy, and had a nasty habit of stinging the user and eating through clothes. But hey, at least you weren’t sweating. In the mid 1950s, inspired by the ball point pen, the first roll on (Ban) was released. Ten years later, the first aerosol (Right Guard) launched a multi-billion dollar industry.

[1971 Right Guard ad courtesy of my Rear in Sears.]

Today, about 95% of Americans use deodorant. Whether you wear roll on, use a crystal, take an internal deodorant pill (does that really work?) or even make your own home concoction, just know that the rest of us truly appreciate it.

Stefanie Fontanez is an occasional contributor to mentalfloss.com. Her last story was about the plague.

This highly contagious killer is striking again across the globe. Nearly 3,000 people caught the plague last year, and hundreds have died. It’s an ugly and painful death – if you’re really curious and really brave, here are the some examples via Google Images.

Just days ago the WHO (not that “The Who,” the World Heath Organization) issued a warning, pointing out that precautions need to be taken in case the plague is used as a biological weapon. If an attack like that happened, it most certainly wouldn’t be the first time the plague has been used as a weapon of war. For the last 700 years, the practice has been more common that you might think.

The Corpses of Caffa

In 1346, The Tartar Army was doing its best to capture Caffa, a walled city on the Black Sea in present-day Ukraine. They weren’t having much luck, especially after an outbreak of the plague started killing them off. So in what can only be called a strange bit of inspiration (and one of the first instances of biological warfare), the Tartars gathered up the plague-infected corpses and catapulted them over the city walls, using the flying bodies to spread the disease. After the plague started killing off the city’s inhabitants, the Tartars easily took Caffa. But although they may have won the battle, the Tartars really lost the war. The newly infected fled the city of Caffa to Italy, spreading the plague everywhere they went, effectively starting the outbreak of Black Death that would kill off much of Europe. [Image courtesy of StupidBeaver.com.]

Unit 731

During the Second World War, Unit 731 – a secret unit of the Japanese army – was created for the sole purpose of turning illnesses into weapons of mass infection. Masterminded by General Shiro Ishii, this unit conducted horrible experiments on humans, including vivisections without anesthesia (ouch) and unnecessary amputations. General Ishii was especially fascinated by the plague and numerous possibilities it held as a weapon of war, but testing proved difficult. Japanese scientists tried spreading the plague to unsuspecting victims via the water system and through aerosol, but nothing worked. Until, that is, they went back to the basics of the disease.

Someone came up with the idea of using the animal behind the original spread of the plague: the flea. Ceramic bombs filled with infected fleas were dropped on several unsuspecting cities in China (where in a sad twist of fate, the bubonic plague is said to have originally started before making its way to Europe and the rest of the world). The resulting epidemic killed thousands. In all, Unit 731 would be responsible for the deaths of nearly half a million people. [Image courtesy of BU.edu.]

The Cold War Race to the Plague – USSR

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union ramped up its efforts to find a use for diseases like the plague. This was nothing new, as they had been stockpiling battle-ready bio-terror weapons for decades. During the mid to late 20th century, the Soviet scientists not only came up with a new strain of the plague that was resistant to both vaccines and antibiotics, they found a way to mass produce it. Former Soviet officials say they had 1,500 metric tons of plague ready at all times for use in their intercontinental ballistic missiles. At all times! Soviet research on bio-terror weapons continued well into the 1990s before being shut down by the government. No word on what they did with the stockpile of plague, but in theory, it should all be dead by now. In theory.

The Cold War Race to the Plague – USA

The Soviets weren’t alone in their race to weaponize the plague. For decades, the United States tried to create a plague bomb (and a gay bomb, among other things). Their efforts were decidedly less successful than the Soviets. Scientists said they had numerous problems with production and were unable to overcome the challenge of controlling the disease once it had been created. The U.S. is said to have ceased production of the plague and shut down its offensive biological weapons research during the 1970s.

Holding Tucson Hostage

In September of 1978, Tucson, Arizona, Mayor Lewis Murphy started getting threatening letters. Unless demands were met, the sender warned, he would release bubonic plague-carrying fleas on the hapless city. Among the demands was a $500,000 dollar ransom, food for the poor, and for a local hospital to resume performing abortions. The threat of the plague was enough for Mayor Murphy, because he sent the police to deliver the money. But when they arrived at the delivery site, no one showed up. The sender of the letters is still unknown.

* * * * *

If all these attempts at weaponizing the plague aren’t enough to keep you up at night, then how about this: In 1995, a man in Ohio with “suspect” motives was able to buy plague bacilli using fraudulent means through the mail. In the southwestern U.S., there are reports of extremist groups capturing plague-carrying animals. You might be perfectly healthy now. But just remember, someone out there has the plague, and wants you to catch it.

Stefanie Fontanez is an occasional contributor to mentalfloss.com. She won’t always be this scary.