Name-dropping:
Santa Claus (aka Sinterklaas, Kriss Kringle, Jolly St. Nick—the guy’s got more pseudonyms than a third-rate romance novelist). You might also know him as Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra (who lived and died sometime during the fourth century CE)

When to use Your Knowledge:
Well, whatever you do, don’t use it around kids. The world is hard enough for children without knowing the dark truths of Santology. But your newfound knowledge of all things Santa should be a huge hit at the office Christmas party.

The Basics
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus—or was, anyway. His name was Nicholas, and during the fourth century CE, he was bishop of Myra (a city in Turkey, and consequently, a bit of a walk from the North Pole). Little is known of Nicholas’s life, but he was apparently imprisoned for his faith until the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312. Nicholas also probably attended the influential Council of Nicea in 325, at which the books of the Bible were once and for all decided upon.

As bishop, Nicholas gained a reputation as a friend of the people, and after his death, he gained popularity as a patron saint, protecting everyone from sailors to children. In fact, by the 11th century, he was one of Europe’s most popular saints. But how did the celibate Turkish bishop end up as a fat white guy who was shacked up with a Mrs. in the North Pole?

Well, Nicholas’s patronage of children led many European families to give gifts (like candy, not like dual-exhaust scale- model electric-powered Hummers) to their kids on his feast day, December 6. The tradition was especially popular with the Dutch, who brought the custom over to New York in the 17th century. And since the Dutch called St. Nick Sinterklaas, slowly, St. Nicholas’s feast day became conflated with Christmas, and Sinterklaas became Santa Claus.

But Santa’s big break came in 1822 with the publication of Clement Clarke Moore’s poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (now known as “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas”). The poem was such a huge hit that it single-handedly created many facets of the Santa myth, including the reindeer, the North Pole, and Santa’s talent for squeezing through chimneys. By the mid-19th century, Santa had his current job, but it wasn’t until the Civil War that he landed his world-famous outfit. In 1863, a cartoonist named Thomas Nast, who incidentally also drew the first version of the Uncle Sam we recognize today, published a drawing of a fat, bearded man with a thick fur suit in Harper’s Weekly. Over the next 20 years, Nast’s annual Santa portraits became a staple in Harper’s.

The Santa brand grew further with the help from the masters of marketing: Coca-Cola. In the 1930′s, illustrator Haddon Sundblom drew a series of advertisements featuring a jolly, red-suited Santa drinking Coca-Cola. The campaign helped popularize Coke as a drink for all seasons (it was previously most popular in the summertime), but it also cemented Santa as a universal, and completely secular, American icon. Santa drinking a Coke marked the ultimate triumph of secular commercialism over piety and generosity–and Christmas has been more and more fun ever since.

Not So Jolly St. Nick
Nicholas had a reputation for kindness and benevolence, but he sure hated paganism. After the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, Nicholas personally supervised the destruction of the most beautiful structure in his diocese, the Temple to Artemis. Nicholas also destroyed all the pagan icons in Myra, leading us to wonder how he’d feel about having become a big, fat, reindeer-driving icon himself.

Very Merry Math
Many children figure out the nonexistence of Santa Claus when they begin to contemplate the enormity of his task. And, indeed, Santa would need some rocket-powered reindeer: Assuming the world contains two billion households and Santa visits every one over the course of 24 hours, he would have to travel at a rate of 8,000,000 meters per second, leaving him precious little time to dip cookies in milk.

Conversation Starters
◆ St. Nicholas’s list of patronages is one of the longest in all Christendom. His connection to children led to his role as Santa, but Nicholas also watches over notaries, pharmacists, poets, soldiers, and the imprisoned, among many others. In fact, he’s such a versatile saint that he also serves as a patron for both prostitutes and virgins. (Honestly.)

◆ There’s long been a theory that Clement Clarke Moore did not write “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” but plagiarized it from obscure poet Henry Livingston Jr. The notion gained credibility when literature professor Don Foster, who utilized computer software to out Joe Klein as the author of the previously anonymous Primary Colors, claimed that Moore’s writing style was utterly incongruent with the classic Christmas poem. Moore still has plenty of defenders—but it’s quite possible the man who helped invent the modern Santa was a sham.

◆ In Greece, the Santa role is still sometimes played by St. Basil the Great, who delivers presents not on Christmas but New Year’s (his feast day) riding atop a donkey. Basil, who lived about the same time as St. Nicholas, came from a family of saints: The Eastern Orthodox Church also sainted his mother, grandmother, sister, and two of his brothers.

Name-dropping:
Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi (pronunciation: juh-LAHL ahd-DINN ahr-ROO-mee) (1207–1273 CE).
Sufi poet whose evocative verse earned him fans the world over during his life, and has kept him in print in dozens of languages ever since. Also, the best-selling poet overall in America in the 1980s and 1990s. (Sorry, Jewel.)

Sufism: (pronunciation: SOO-fizm).
Islamic mysticism in which worshippers seek oneness with God.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
Rumi knew his way around the love poem (he composed some 30,000 verses of love poetry), so he can be of vital assistance when trying to woo someone at the tail end of a party. Where Spanish fly and Love Potion #9 will inevitably fail, Rumi will likely succeed.

The Basics
Rumi’s father was a teacher and mystic in present-day Turkey, and when his dad died in 1231, Rumi decided to take up the family business. He was only 24, but he was soon respected for the depth of his study. In fact, Rumi was tutored by some of the greatest Islamic thinkers of the time, including Ibn al-’Arabi, who is Rumi’s only rival for the title of “Greatest Sufi Ever.”

Although Sufism, the mystical sect of Islam that seeks Fana, or annihilation into God, had been around in some form since the very beginnings of Islam, it was coming into its own in the 13th century. Grand philosophies of Qur’anic interpretation, meditative prayer, and trance-inducing rituals were codified, and many people sought out spiritual experiences through Sufi leaders. So Rumi likely would have had a good and quiet life as a Sufi teacher had he not crossed paths with a wandering, unkempt mystic named Shams ad-Din (literally, “the Sun of Religion”).

Shams became Rumi’s spiritual adviser, and Rumi fell for Shams like no one has ever fallen for anybody. Their love—which may or may not have involved a romantic relationship—consumed Rumi, leading him to neglect his duties as a teacher so that he could spend all his time with Shams. In the end, Rumi would write some 30,000 verses about the stages of his love for Shams. And just as Sufis seek unification with the divine, Rumi sought (and found) unification with Shams–so much so that Rumi began using the pen name “Shams.”

The Great strengths of Rumi’s poems are the use of everyday descriptions and a personal, confessional tone rarely before seen in Persian poetry. Poetic technique never overshadows Rumi’s passion, and that is why he remains read today while most of the classic Persian poets do not. Rumi’s poems (at least in their original Persian) are also endearingly rhythmic, lending credence to the legend that he wrote them while listening to goldsmiths’ hammering.

Unfortunately, his love affair with Shams was short-lived. His family had a business to run–albeit a mystical-union-with-God business–and having their best teacher staring dreamily into the eyes of some unkempt dervish all day was not good. So members of Rumi’s family had Shams killed in 1247.

Rumi’s next and final love was for an illiterate goldsmith, Salah ad-Din Zarkub, who had long been Rumi’s disciple, and who inspired Rumi to write his great pilosopho-religio-poetic (we just made that up) work, the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi. The six-volume poem is considered by many Muslims to be more important than any book save the Qur’an. Full of lengthy tangents and twisting narratives, the Masnavi is both a guide to divine love and a story of experiencing that love.

The Quotable Rumi
If only he’d lived to be about 800, Rumi would be stinking rich. The poet Coleman Barks’s translations of Rumi have sold more than 600,000 copies (poet laureate and general poetry superstar Billy Collins, by contrast, sold 55,000 copies of his last book). As Barks himself sheepishly admits in the preface to one of his translations, “I have sold too many books.”

On Love:
“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”

On Love:
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

On Love:
“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”

On Making Waterwheel Metaphors Sexy:
“I become a waterwheel, turning and tasting you as long as water moves.”

Conversation Starters
◆Although Rumi is often viewed in the West as a mystical-poet-who-transcended-religion type, he was in fact quite religious and played an important role in spreading Islam into Asia Minor.

◆ Rumi’s funeral was one of the more impressive interfaith gatherings of antiquity. It’s said that Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists were all in attendance.

◆ The Ellen DeGeneres of his day, Rumi brought dance to the forefront of Islamic ritual. He is said to have danced all night after meeting Shams, and the Sufi order he founded, the Mawlawiyah, was famous for the dance they did as part of prayer. European observers called them “whirling dervishes,” a term that continues to be a popular (if somewhat inaccurate) description of Sufis.

◆ The phrase “whirling dervishes” may have lasted, but the Mevleviyah themselves have struggled. The radically secularist Turkish government disbanded all Sufi orders in 1925, and the Mevleviyah had no real presence outside of Turkey.

Name-dropping:
Rosetta Stone (pronunciation: Roh-ZEH-tuh) (discovered in 1799).
A single ancient stone discovered near the city of Rosetta in Egypt (one does begin to wish after a while that people would be more creative in naming their discoveries) that contains the same text written in two languages (Egyptian and Greek) in three scripts (Greek, demotic, and hieroglyphic). Using a magical decoder ring, or possibly their wits, linguists eventually learned how to decipher hieroglyphics from it.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
At the company Christmas party, when the close-talking, whiskey-gulping manager from Accounts Receivable starts slurring his words to the degree that he is no longer speaking a language that can technically be classified as English, you can just smile brightly, give a bit of Rosetta Stone history, say that you’re off to track down one that translates Drunk Talk, and take your leave of him.

The Basics
For centuries, Egyptian hieroglyphics were absolutely incomprehensible. Pyramid, crow, lion, squiggly line—what? But in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was discovered. Part of the stone was inscribed in ancient Greek, which everybody worth their salt could read back in 1799. The Greek was a (pretty boring, really) decree affirming loyalty to Emperor Ptolemy V (who at that time was all of 13 years old). Beside the Greek, the same decree was repeated in ancient Egypt’s demotic script, and beside that, in hieroglyphics. Problem solved, right?

Not quite. Although the Rosetta Stone was the rare puzzle whose solution had actual consequences for our understanding of history— imagine if you could become famous for finishing one New York Times crossword puzzle—it proved considerably more complicated than a Jumble or a Rubik’s cube.

The first person to make any headway with the Rosetta Stone was not a linguist but a physicist. Thomas Young proved that a certain set of hieroglyphics seemed to align with the Greek rendering for Ptolemy, and by observing the direction in which the bird characters faced (really), Young figured out the direction in which to read the hieroglyphics.

The central hindrance remained that scholars believed particular pictographs stood for ideas (i.e., that the lion meant the word war). It was Frenchman John-François Champollion who finished unraveling the mystery in 1824, when he etablished that some hieroglyphs were syllables and others letters of a kind of alphabet. Upon realizing that hieroglyphics were a phonetic script, Champollion is said to ahve fainted for five entire days (although to be fair, he was generally kind of a drama queen). Upon awaking, supposedly, he used the few hieroglyphs in “Ptolemy” to painstakingly translate the entire Rosetta Stone. The Stone, in turn, allowed scholars to understand the whole body of hieroglyphic literature, from that of the Great Pyramids to that of crumbling papyri.

The Rosetta Project
Lest humans (or aliens!) of the future have to suffer the way Champollion, we will soon have parallel texts recorded in 1,000 languages. Begun in 2000, the Rosetta Project, a collaboration among linguists worldwide, intends to etch the 1,000 parallel texts into nickel alloy plates that are believed to last 2,000 years. The creators of the project argue that between 50 and 90 percent of the world’s current languages will disappear in the next century due to ever-increasing globalization.

Extra Credit: UNCOMMON LANGUAGES
Some languages that may be in urgent need of a Rosetta
Stone of their own:

Eyak. Historically spoken by natives in south-central Alaska, there is exactly one Eyak speaker alive today: Marie Smith Jones of Anchorage, Alaska, age 87 at this writing.

Yanyuwa. Yanyuwa, spoken in Australia’s Borroloola, Northern Territory, and Doomadgee, Queensland, and one of several endangered aboriginal languages, is unique because men and women speak very distinct dialects.

Klingon. A disconcertingly large number of people still speak Klingon (the language, derived from the Star Trek series, has its own dictionary), but with no new Star Trek series currently on the air, one can hope against hope that Klingon’s days might be numbered.

YOU’RE NOT GETTING IT BACK!
Recently, formerly colonized nations have begun noting that a lot of their priceless treasures seem to be located in European museums. And that, according to the once colonized, seems rather akin to stealing. In 2005, Egypt formally requested that the British Museum return the Rosetta Stone to its native land. But British law prevents the museum from giving up anything in its collection (even items looted by the Nazis that ended up in Britain). So, theoretically, if an employee of the British Museum wrenched a lollipop from the tiny hands of the Little Orphan Annie and then put that lollipop in the museum’s collection, it could–literally–not legally be returned to poor Annie. As for the Rosetta Stone dispute, it has yet to be settled.

Conversation Starters
◆ Some scholars now argue that Champollion wasn’t the first to crack the Rosetta Stone’s secrets at all. A London researcher argues that Arabic alchemist Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiya, whose name is equally long in pictographs, translated hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone nearly 1,000 years ago.

◆ Aside from helping to decode the Rosetta Stone, physicist Thomas Young also became a prominent advocate for the theory that light was waves, not streams of particles, as Newton claimed. (Einstein proved that both Young and Newton were right: Apparently, light behaves both as waves and as particles, which is the kind of idea that makes our heads hurt.)

◆ While most of us are content to leave whiskey at Jim Morrison’s tomb in Paris, linguistically inclined visitors to Champillion’s grave in Paris often leave sheets of papyrus at the tomb to honor his accomplishment.

Name-dropping:
Qur’an (pronunciation: kuh-RAHN).
The holy book of Islam. Also spelled Koran. Islam (pronunciation: iss-LAHM).
Literally meaning “submission,” Islam is the religion.

Muslim (pronunciation: MOO-slim in the Arabic world; generally MUZZ-lim in English). Literally meaning “one who submits,” a Muslim is a person who embraces Islam.

Muhammad (pronunciation: muh-HAHM-mud) (570–632 HCE).
The founder of Islam, to whom the Qur’an was revealed.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
They say never to discuss religion, sex, or politics at parties, but don’t let that stop you. Your knowledge of the Qur’an will allow you to talk with great authority on religion, sex, and politics all at once.

The Basics
When a young Meccan businessman named Muhammad first heard the voice in 610, it said, “Recite.” Like most people who hear nonhuman voices, Muhammad was reluctant to do as the voice said, possibly because it’s hard to introduce your fellow Meccans to a radically new monotheism by saying, “So, I’ve been hearing this voice.” But when Muhammad finally did begin to recite what God was telling him through the Angel Gabriel, people listened. Most believe that Muhammad himself was illiterate, but the revelations that came through him over the next 20 years were beautiful, intricately rhythmic Arabic. They advertised one God to a people that had always believed in many—a God of love and justice, whose name in Arabic is Allah. When these revelations were written down and gathered together, they came to be known as the Qur’an.

Unlike sacred texts from most religious traditions, the Qur’an is considered to be the actual, literal word of God. And it isn’t organized into a chronological narrative. Instead, the Qur’an is organized roughly according to the length of its chapters, called surahs—with the longest coming first and the shortest last. In total length, the Qur’an is about as long as the New Testament.

Because of its lack of traditional narrative structure, the Qur’an doesn’t make for the easiest reading in English. So, you’re well advised to just trust us when we say that the Qur’an, in Arabic, is ceaselessly beautiful. Its overarching message is the unity of God, known in Arabic as Tauhid. This one God will one day judge all people by their faith and their actions. Of course, the actions that you should take are covered in depth in the Qur’an–you shouldn’t eat pork; you shouldn’t charge interest on loans; you should treat people as you wish to be treated.

If this sounds remarkably Judeo-Christian–well, it is. And in the interest of bringing people together, we’re inventing a new term: Chrislamo-Judaic. The Qur’an retells many stories from Jewish and Christian mythology, featuring such famous biblical characters as Abraham, Isaac, Moses, and Jesus.

Pillar Fight!
The Qur’an highlights five pillars of Islam. You’re a Muslim if you commit to the first pillar; but if you do all five, you’re a really good Muslim.

1. Shahada. Belief in the unity of God and the Prophethood of Muhammad.

2. Salat. Although Muslims can and do pray whenever they want, there are five ritualized prayers each day: at dawn, midmorning, noon, midday, and sunset.

3. Ramadon. Those who are old enough and healthy enough fast during daylight hours during the month of Ramadon (because the Islamic calendar is lunar, Ramadon moves from season to season). Fasting means no food or liquid–and for smokers, no cigarettes.

4. Zakat. All Muslims are obligated to give a percentage of their income in aims to the poor.

5. Hajj. All Muslims who can afford the journey should make the pilgrimage to Mecca (in Saudi Arabia), the holiest city in Islam, at least once.

While the Qur’an is the supreme authority when it comes to Islamic law, the Hadiths are a collection of stories about and sayings by the prophet, collected by his companions. The Hadiths, some of which are considered unreliable by Muslims and secular historians alike, have become particularly important in places like Iran, where every facet of the law requires a religious justification.

Extra Credit: POLYGAMY
Polygamy was the norm in pre-Islamic Arabia, and Muhammad himself had some seven wives during his lifetime. (He married some of them to cement treaties between tribes.) But the Qur’an asserts that male Muslims can marry four wives at most (prophets, obviously, are an exception). In the Bible, a lot of famous individuals had more than one wife, too, including Jacob, who had two, and Solomon, who had seven hundred. Although wealthy men—particularly in Saudi Arabia—still sometimes practice polygamy, it’s become extremely rare.

Conversation Starters
◆ Can you be a Muslim and a Jew? Well, not so much now, but there was a time in which the identities were not mutually exclusive. That’s right; there were once Jews for Muhammad (although they didn’t hand out pamphlets on street corners). In the seventh century, some Jews embraced Muhammad’s status as a prophet without abandoning their own conception of Judaism. (Most of the major Jewish prophets, including Abraham and Moses, are prophets in Islam as well.)

◆ Jesus is a major prophet in Islam and is discussed periodically in the Qur’an (his Arabic name is Isa). But the Qur’anic Jesus was not crucified—God takes him up to heaven just before his crucifixion is to take place.

◆ Drinking alcohol, or ingesting any intoxicant, is forbidden by the Qur’an. (The same is true of Buddhism.) It’s hard to find booze in much of the Islamic world, and even when you can, you may wish you hadn’t. The Egyptians were among the first to brew beer, but their state-run brewery today reputedly produces the worst-quality brew on the planet.

◆ The Qur’an in its current form was not collected and authorized until nearly 20 years after Muhammad’s death in 632. Uthman, the third caliph of the Arab empire after Muhammad’s passing, brought scholars together to compare notes, and then decided on the exact language and organization of the document.

Name-dropping:
Pythagoras (pronunciation: pih-THAG-or-us) (c. 580–500 BCE).
A man too famous for two names. See also Socrates, Plato, Sting.

Mathematikoi (pronunciation: MATH-ee-mat-ee-koi):
The crazy kids who followed Pythagoras’s crazy teachings. Pythagorean theorem (just in case you need a refresher): Given a triangle with one 90-degree angle, with the shorter legs being a and b, and the hypotenuse being c: a squared + b squared = c squared.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
Obviously, Pythagoras will come in handy at a cocktail party with mathematicians—and if you find yourself at one of those, you’ll need plenty of conversational ammunition. But the man behind the theorem might also be useful when hanging out with vegetarians, doctors, and even Stephen Hawking. Why? Read on.

The Basics
Very little is known about Pythagoras, except that the philosopher, mathematician, and quasi-cult leader almost certainly did not discover the Pythagorean theorem. Born on an island off the coast of Asia Minor, Pythagoras lived most of his life in Croton (in what is now southern Italy). More of a political and moral reformer than a mathematician or philosopher, Pythagoras formed a brotherhood called the mathematikoi, a kind of Math Club for ancient Greece. The mathematikoi believed that numbers held the key to everything: music, poetry, philosophy, and the laws governing the workings of the universe. (As math club alums ourselves, we can report definitively that Pythagoras was incorrect: Numbers do not hold the key to getting a girlfriend.)
Pythagoreanism was primarily a mystical religion (they believed in reincarnation and often sang hymns to Apollo).

Nonetheless, Pythagoras or one of his followers had several important mathematical insights. But it doesn’t seem likely that they were the first to discover the equation we know today as the Pythagorean theorem. Many math historians now believe that the Egyptians used the same theorem in their construction projects a hundred years before Pythagoras was born. Further, the Indian mathematician Baudhayana (who frankly we’re glad didn’t get credit because “the Baudhayana theorem” just doesn’t roll off the tongue) was also playing with those concepts way back in eighth-century BCE.

The Pythagoreans’ greatest mathematical accomplishment was one that finally undermined his belief that whole numbers and their rations (i.e., 2, 2/3, etc.) could express everything in math and the universe. A mathematikoi named Hippasus discovered that the square root of 2 was an irrational number–that is, it couldn’t be expressed as a ration of two whole numbers. Upon learning this, Pythagoras became so upset that he actually had Hippasus killed (the man didn’t kid around when it came to numbers). As for mathematicians, they went ahead and pretended that Hippasus’s discovery hadn’t happened for more than a millennium, because they couldn’t make any sense of it.

Oddly enough, Pythagoras’s greatest contribution to math was to the idea of math. The first “pure mathematician,” he was interested in number as abstractions instead of as practical qualities of math. So really, it’s Pythagoras, at least in part, whose name we should all be cursing when recalling all that math on the SAT.

Veggithagoras
Pythagoras and his followers were vegetarians, a fairly rare phenomenon in ancient Greece. According to the poet Ovid (who, admittedly, lived five centuries after Pythagoras), Pythagoras said, “As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace.”

Although it took Carl Sagan to make the word really famous, Pythagoras is believed to have coined the word cosmos to describe the universe as an orderly, mathematical system.

Music Man
Pythagoras believed that music was an audible expression of mathematical laws. Using intervals of pure fifths, Pythagoras created a method of tuning instruments that was popular with musicians up through the Renaissance. Unfortunately, in his lust to make music out of number, Pythagoras oversimplified the musical scale, creating finely tuned instruments that sounded awfully discordant. Today, you rarely hear Pythagorean-tuned instruments outside of authentic Shakespeare revivals. And trust us: If you do hear them, you’ll rather wish you hadn’t.

Conversation Starters
◆ The Hippocratic Oath’s most quoted line, “First do no harm,” originally comes not from the Greek physician Hippocrates but from the oath Pythagoras’s followers took to join his sect.

◆ The Pythagoreans played the lyre to sick people in an attempt to cure them—which probably wasn’t very effective.
◆ The Pythagoreans’ belief that all music was numbers and all numbers were music might have had its roots in the uncommon but fascinating disorder synaesthesia. Synaesthetics intermingle the senses in their brain: They may see sounds or associate words with a taste or color. Or they might hear numbers, as Pythagoras seemed to.

◆ Pythagoras also believed that planets produced a harmonic sound called “the music of the spheres.” Pythagoras didn’t think the spinning planets made an audible sound; he merely believed that as they rotated around the earth, all heavenly spheres stayed in proportion to musical scales. That, as it turns out, is bunk. But the heavens do make sounds; radio telescopes have shown us that sunbursts sound like hisses and storms on Jupiter sound like popping popcorn.

◆ Proof that maybe your 10th-grade English teacher wasn’t full of it; Pythagoreans regularly recited poetry together in hopes of improving their memory.

Name-dropping:
Alfred Bernhard Nobel (pronunciation: no-BELL) (1833–1896).
A smart Swedish kid who just happened to have a deep and incontrovertible passion for blowing stuff up. And so it came to pass that the most widely respected peace prize in the world was paid for, basically, by explosives.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
It’s admittedly unlikely that you’ll ever be at a party with a Nobel laureate. But should it happen, you’ll surely look dumb if you don’t have anything to say. Also, knowledge of Nobel’s exploits can be helpful when trying to explain your boorish behavior late in the evening. “Sorry,” you can say, “I’m more bombed than Alfred Nobel’s factory in 1864.”

The Basics
Like a lot of kids, the young Alfred Nobel loved blowing stuff up. But little Alfie just never grew up. As a young man, Nobel began experimenting with liquid nitroglycerin, an explosive compound that, while highly unstable, was much better at blowing things up than anything previously invented. In 1862, he built a factory to manufacture and sell nitroglycerin, and shortly after, he invented the first semisafe detonator for it. Later, he also invented the blasting cap, which proved a godsend for miners, and ushered in the modern era of explosives.

But nitroglycerin was by no means safe. In fact, Nobel’s own factory blew up in 1864, killing his younger brother, Emil. But Alfred still believed in the power of explosives, and in 1867, he invented, half by accident, a much safer compound that he named, “dynamite.” The big “D” made Alfred ridiculously wealthy, and the innovative Swede soon owned a host of factories around Europe.

Despite all this, however, Nobel never married. He seemed to find explosives more interesting than any woman, so he left no heirs. Instead, he put the bulk of his fortune (more than $9 million) to establishing a series of prizes. These awards—presented annually in the fields of physics, chemistry, economics, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace making—quickly became the most prestigious intellectual prizes in the world. In the end, Nobel would be better remembered for his prize than for his explosives used in modern warfare—which may be the very reason Nobel’s will ordered that the prize be named for him.

Worst Nobel Prize Winner Ever
Once a Nobel Prize is given, it cannot be revoked. Now and again, the award goes to someone who maybe did not deserve it, but the most undeserving winner has to be Antonio Egas Moniz, the Portuguese physician who won the prize for medicine in 1946 for inventing—yes—the leucotomy prefrontal (lobotomy). Egas Moniz’s surgery consisted of—if we may simplify it a bit—drilling a few holes in a patient’s skull and then repeatedly stabbing the patient in the brain. The lobotomy seemed to be successful at curing people of schizophrenic and paranoid psychoses, but they proved to have fairly serious side effects,
such as “becoming a vegetable” and “becoming dead.” Although lobotomies are rare today, thanks to an improved understanding of mental illness and psychosis treatments, they’re still occasionally performed in some parts of the world.

REPORTS OF MY DEATH…
Alfred’s brother Ludvig died in Cannes, France. French newspapers, never renowned for the fact-checking, somehow mixed up Ludvig and Alfred, and ended up running obituaries for Alfred instead. The headline in one paper read: “The Merchant of Death is Dead.” Some historians have speculated that Alfred was so horrified by the thought that he might be remembered only as a merchant of death that he decided to create a trust fund for the prizes–which would mean that we owe the Nobel Prize to poor reporting.

YOU COULD BE A WINNER:
Your best chance to win a Nobel Prize is to find work as an economist. The economics award usually goes to more than one person, and frequently goes to Americans. But whether you’re an economist, a poet, or just a schmuck who wouldn’t mind winning the Peace Prize (if Henry Kissinger can win it, then, by God, why can’t you?), here’s how to make it happen:

1. Get nominated. Unfortunately, you cannot nominate yourself. Nor can you have just anyone nominate you. Unless you know some former Nobel winners or the president of a sovereign nation, your best bet is to find a college professor teaching the subject in question and have her nominate you. Make sure to be nominated by February 1.

2. From here on out, you’d better be either exceptionally talented or exceptionally lucky, because the Nobel Committees are notoriously averse to bribery. But if they choose you…

3. The committee will submit your nomination to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Usually, the academy agrees with the committee’s nomination, in which case you’ll get an early-morning call sometime in October to inform you that you’ve won the Nobel Prize. Just be sure to thank mental_floss in your speech.

Conversation Starters
◆ According to Dr. Donald W. Goodwin’s book Alcohol and the Writer, half the Americans who won the Nobel Prize for Literature were most likely alcoholics. The drunks: Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway. The nondrunks: Pearl Buck, Saul Bellow, and Toni Morrison.

◆ Mohandas Gandhi—Gandhi!!!—never won the Nobel Prize. Although nominated five times between 1937 and 1948, Gandhi was beaten out by the likes of Lord Edgar Algernon, R. G. Cecil, and Cordell Hull (who? our point exactly). After Gandhi’s death, the Nobel Committee publicly expressed regret for the omission. And although posthumous awards aren’t given, the Nobel Committee came as close as possible in 1948, the year Gandhi died, when they did not give out an award because “there was no suitable living candidate.”

Name-dropping:
Martini (mar-TEE-nee) (developed around 1900).
These days, of course, you can get anything in a martini glass: apple martinis, chocolate martinis, serve-your-own mashed potatoes. But the original martini is the only cocktail you’ll ever need to look sophisticated. Probably the single best—or worst, if you hate olives—result of Prohibition in America.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
Well, if your angle is stuffy pretension, you can bring up the real martini whenever people start drinking wimpy vodka martinis. But even if you’re not an obnoxious purist when it comes to drinking, you’ll have ample opportunity to talk martinis. People love to talk about drinking when they’re drinking.

The Basics
It started with the Martinez. Back in 19th-century California, the Martinez was a drink featuring a shot of gin and two shots of dry vermouth, cherry juice, and a lemon slice. Around 1900, someone got an idea: “If we had more gin than vermouth and got rid of the cherry juice, we could sure get drunk a lot faster.” Not a bad idea. Add an olive, and the martini was born! As H. L. Mencken once put it, the martini is “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.”

Traditionally, a martini consists of 1.5 ounces of gin, .5 ounce of dry vermouth, ice, and an olive (other acceptable garnishes include lemon twists, capers, or cocktail onions). The drink quickly gained in popularity, but it wasn’t until Prohibition that the martini became the American cocktail. When booze was legal, Americans on the whole preferred drinking whiskey. But it takes skill and time to make good whiskey, whereas pretty much any sap with a bathtub in the woods can make a few gallons of bathtub gin. Vermouth’s central purpose in the Prohibition days was to improve the taste of the gin.

When Prohibition ended, gin stopped tasting like burning gasoline. That’s when the dry martini truly came into fashion. A dry martini has a mere splash of vermouth, and soon, martinis were so incredibly dry that they were often just gin on the rocks with an olive. For those who want just a hint of vermouth, we suggest “coating the cubes,” which involves pouring vermouth over the ice and then pouring the vermouth back into the bottle. After falling out of favor in the 1970′s, the martini has made a comeback. And although martini purists scoff at the endless varieties, the old standby remains a cocktail party favorite.

Shaken, Not Stirred
James Bond is perhaps the most famous of all martini drinkers. His trademark order, “shaken, not stirred,” has been a catchphrase for decades. Only one problem: James Bond does not drink martinis, which contain only gin, vermouth, and an olive. Real martinis are generally best stirred, not shaken. But Bond drinks vodka martinis. Martini snobs will tell you it’s the equivalent of racing in the Tour de France on a bike with a banana seat. Shaking a drink does cool it faster, though, which is necessary because warm vodka martinis taste like olive-flavored lighter fluid. And Bond clearly knew this. In Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953), Bond tells the bartender: “Shake it very well until it’s ice cold.” Today, the vodka martini is probably more popular than the orignial, perhaps due in part to 007, but mostly because gin is an acquired taste that many people just never really acquire.

As perviously noted, martinis are considered best when stirred. However, it’s possible that shaken martinis might improve you longevity. A recent study in the British Medical Journal argued that shaken martinis may release more antioxidants than stirred martinis. The antioxidant properties of alcohol are thought to help prevent heart attacks and stroke. But if you really want antioxidants (and still want to get drunk) avoid martinis altogether and drink some red wine.

The Quotable Martini
“One martini is all right, two is too many, and three is not enough.” —James Thurber

“I like to have a martini/Two at the very most./Three, I’m under the table/Four, I’m under the host.” —Dorothy Parker

“Happiness is a dry martini and a good woman. Or a bad woman.” —George Burns

Conversation Starters
◆ Ernest Hemingway called his martini recipe a “Montgomery.” It featured a gin to vermouth ratio of 15:1. Hemingway named it after Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery—whom, the joke went, required a 15:1 advantage before he’d go into battle.

◆ Early film actor W. C. Fields is today remembered primarily for being extremely funny about his intractable alcoholism. This is a man who drank two bottles of gin a day when he was in rehab. Fields always kept a thermos filled with a gigantic martini on the sets of his films, but he invariably referred to it as “pineapple juice.” One day, a member of the film crew decided to play a prank on Fields. After taking a swig from the thermos, Fields cried, “Somebody put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice!”

◆ During World War II, French vermouth became exceedingly rare in Britain, but noted prime minister and alcoholic Winston Churchill wasn’t going to let that stop him from drinking his martinis. Instead, it is said that he took his martinis very, very dry: He poured himself a glass of gin over ice, plopped an olive in the glass, and then tipped his glass in the direction of France.

◆ Speaking of Churchill and booze: Most people know the “I may be drunk, but I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll still be ugly” story, but our favorite Churchill boozing story goes like this: Lady Astor to Churchill: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink.” Churchill in response: “Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it.”

Name-dropping:
Magna Carta (MAG-nuh CAR-tuh—Latin for “Great Charter”) (agreed to in 1215).
Document granting certain liberties to the English people (by which we mean mostly “English landowning men”) that, in retrospect, seems sort of like the first step toward democracy. At the time, however, it just seemed like a fun and easy way to avoid civil war.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
Like the Articles of the Confederation and the Big Mac Special Sauce, the Magna Carta is something we’ve all heard of but in the end don’t know a lot about. So you’re bound to impress people by dropping it into conversations about, for instance, the Big Mac Special Sauce. “I mean,” you’ll say, “I know more about King John’s grudging ratification of the Magna Carta than I do about this special sauce.”

The Basics
King John’s acceptance of the Magna Carta in 1215 set a precedent (albeit one that wouldn’t always be followed) for English monarchs: It established that monarchs were subject to earthly law. Future generations of Britons would use clauses from the Magna Carta to assert their right to a fair trial, and the U.S. Constitution would be inspired by it as well. (All this from a document that was basically plagiarized!)

In the year 1100, King Henry I issued a “Charter of Liberties,” which granted some measure of freedom and liberty to British citizens, just so long as they were English and male and of noble birth. But this docu- ment was conferred upon the people, not extracted from the king, which made it revocable (indeed, monarchs rarely abided by it).

A century later, the king was named John, and fortunately for the cause of liberty, he was awful at being king. John took the throne by murdering his nephew, and then proceeded to lose a war to the French, and finally threw a hissy fit when the Catholic Church appointed an archbishop of Canterbury whom John didn’t like.

The barons of England could rarely agree on anything back then, but they did agree that John was an idiot. So, they banded together and stormed London. Soon afterward, in the meadow at Runnymede (which to us sounds like a kind of British food), they cajoled King John into signing a document that granted them increased power and freedoms, and gave the Church a measure of autonomy. Consisting of a preamble and 63 clauses, the Magna Carta’s most important clause, to the barons at least, was number 61, which gave them the right to overrule the king if 25 barons agreed he was violating the Magna Carta. But it’s lasting importance lay in requiring fair trials before sentencing and affirming the right to dissent.

The document was repeatedly was reissued until it became permanent in 1225. While the aristocracy sometimes used it in negotiations with monarch, its primary importance was not to the 13th century but to the 18th, when those seeking liberty and representative government turned to it when drafting their own great charters.

Selections from the Magna Carta
The vast majority of the Magna Carta is devoted not to bold statements about the rights of mankind, but rather to the minutiae of aristocratic life in 13th-century Britain. Among the very important issues discussed:

Whether or not widows should be forced to marry (they should not, although they may have to leave their dead husband’s house forty days after his death).

The rights of men “who live outside the forest” (they should not have to appear before courts inside the forest).

And, of course, no Great Charter would be complete without a little misogyny. The entire 54th clause of the Magna Carta: “No one shall be arrested or imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman for the death of anyone except her husband.”

The Cutting Room Floor
In the centuries after the Magna Carta took effect, the power of the British monarchy actually increased. By the 16th century, the document was thought so insignificant that it isn’t even mentioned in Shakespeare’s play King John. Too bad, since it might have improved the pay–one of Shakespeare’s lesser efforts.

Conversation Starters
◆ Believe it or not, the original Magna Carta has been lost. But about 17 copies dating from 1297 or earlier survive, and early copies of the Magna Carta are among the most sought after rare documents in the world. In fact, very few are in private hands. One notable exception is that owned by the chart-loving, big-eared, former presidential candidate/billionaire Ross Perot.

◆ In those days, anyone who lent money with interest could be excommunicated by the Catholic Church for the sin of usury. So, it’s no wonder that Jewish people became the primary lenders in medieval Europe. But debtors in default often brought their cases before Church courts, where the loans were usually declared illegal and the debts erased. As such, the Magna Carta was the first document in Britain to give some recourse to Jewish lenders, although it did annul some debts in the event of a debtor’s death.

◆ Technically, one should always say “Magna Carta” and never “the Magna Carta,” because there is no definite article in Latin. Most reference sources adhere to this rule, but we’re ignoring it due to our principled and deeply held belief that “the Magna Carta” just sounds better.

Name-dropping:
Niccolò Machiavelli (NEEK-o-low mak-ee-a-VELL-ee) (1469–1527).
Florentine writer and diplomat whose The Prince we were all supposed to read in high school but didn’t, because while it is extremely short, it somehow also manages to be extremely boring.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
Every cocktail party has its evil dictator: the one who yells when speaking softly would suffice, monopolizes the resources by constantly hovering around the food and drink, and ruthlessly murders perfectly pleasant conversations with unfunny jokes. The Cocktail Party Dictator may believe his malevolent antics are justified by Machiavelli—but with your knowledge of the first great political philosopher, you’ll be able to explain that Machiavelli wasn’t nearly as evil as his totalitarian disciples.

The Basics
Born to a prominent family down on its luck, Niccolò Machiavelli was, in life, little more than a midlevel diplomat in Florence. Think of him as similar to the U.S. Ambassador to Fiji. Can’t recall the name of the U.S. Ambassador to Fiji? That’s our point.

And had Machiavelli kept his government job, he likely never would have become famous. His early writings, which had scintillating titles like “On the Way to Deal with the Rebel Subjects of the Valdichiana,” were forgettable. But in 1512, the Medici family returned to power in Florence, and Machiavelli was fired. Accused of conspiring against the Medicis, he was briefly tortured and thrown into jail. Unable to find a job after his release, Machiavelli had time on his hands, so he wrote two works that would change the world: Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius and The Prince.

In the Discourses, Machiavelli asserted his belief in democracy as the best possible form of government. He did, however, endorse a kind of amorality—the
Discourses mark the first appearance in political philosophy of the idea that the ends justify the means. He believed Florence was too weak and corrupt to support a republic. So in 1513 he wrote The Prince, his most famous and most controversial work, a kind of primer for would-be tyrants. What Italy needed, Machiavelli believed, was a “redeemer,” a man who would rule with an iron fist, crush dissidents, build up the military, and rein in the malevolence in human nature. In short, you have to screw the people to save the people.

Machiavelli never achieved wide fame for his work during his life, but The Prince has been in print ever since–and more than a few modern dictators have used it as a blueprint, particularly in postcolonial Africa and South America. Because The Prince is so quotably blunt, Machiavelli has been a bit unfairly maligned. His contributions to philosophy and political theory are immense–he was the first person, for instance, to note the now trite maxim that history repeats itself. So really, a truly Machiavellian person isn’t evil so much as relentlessly pessimistic and consistently unlucky–your basic philosophical Rodney Dangerfield.

The Quotable Machiavelli
On Friendship:
“You should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

On How Not to Have a Happy Marriage:
“It is better to be feared than loved.”

On the Second Amendment:
“Before all else, be armed.”

On Acting Rashly:
“The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.”

One Bad Marriage
Machiavelli was married for 25 years to Marietta Corsini. It rather goes without saying that he cheated on her frequently. (The ends of wanting to make out, after all, justify the means of breaking your marriage vows.) Marietta was a loving and devoted wife, but it seems Machiavelli never thought much of marriage: In one of his plays, a devil chooses to return to the fires of hell rather than spend time with his wife.

Machiavellian
One of the surest paths to immortality is to get a word named after you–but sometimes the price of fame is association with malevolence. Below, enjoy our guide to bad words and the bad people they’re named for.

Machiavellian: Meaning “characterized by cunning and treachery.” From the fellow in question.

Draconian: Meaning “extremely, unnecessarily harsh.” From seventh-century Athenian politician Draco, whose codification of Athen’s legal code was considered too severe.

Luddite: Meaning “one who stubbornly opposes technological advancement.” From Ned Ludd, a British workman who supposedly destroyed weaving equipment around 1779.

Bowdlerize: Meaning “to censor or prudishly edit.” From Bowdler, who, in keeping with the excessive prudishness of the times, published an expurgated version of Shakespeare in 1818.

Conversation Starters
◆ Some argue that “Old Nick,” a slang term for the devil, derived from Machiavelli’s first name, Niccolò, which would mean that we have Machiavelli to blame not only for despotism, but also for the Adam Sandler vehicle Little Nicky. Which is the greater crime? We’ll leave that for you to decide.

◆ Although he courted the favor of several popes, Machiavelli didn’t think much of Christianity, what with its emphasis on meekness, humility, and justice. But then, the popes of the time weren’t such great Christians either. Leo X, who gave Machiavelli a job, spent the Vatican into bankruptcy and then tried to get out of it by selling get-out-of-hell-free cards called indulgences. The moral vacuity of the indulgences led, at least in part, to the Protestant Reformation that would irrevocably split the European Church.

◆ Besides being a revolutionary political philosopher, Machiavelli was also a published poet. It’s hard to imagine a guy like Machiavelli writing good poems—fortunately, he didn’t. His poetry is universally regarded as drivel.

◆ Tupac Shakur, the thinking man’s gangster rapper, read from Machiavelli extensively during a stint in prison. Late in his ca- reer, Tupac began recording under the name Makaveli. Why the changed spelling? Well, maybe Tupac wanted to play on the gangster slang word “mack,” which can mean flirting (to put it mildly) or a gun (Mac-10). But conspiracy theorists who believe Tupac’s death was faked point to the fact that Makaveli is an anagram of “K, am Alive.” Not the strongest evidence perhaps, but how’s this: Since his (purported) death in 1996, seven (seven!) new Tupac albums have been released.

Name-dropping:
John Locke (pronunciation: like Master Lock, not like Ton Loc) (1632–1704).
British philosopher, political scientist, and guy from whom Jefferson borrowed extensively in the Declaration of Independence.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
When party conversations get excessively political, it’s sometimes wise to steer the group toward something you can all agree on. Like “You know what’s a bad idea? Slavery.” And “I sure like having liberty. Remember back in the 17th century when liberty hadn’t even really been invented?”

The Basics
John Locke was a complicated figure about whom it is difficult to say anything with much authority. His belief in “government with the consent of the governed” and the inherent liberty of all people formed the cornerstone of democracy, particularly in the United States, and his philosophy and morality were hugely important in the Enlightenment and forever after. But paradoxically, he embraced slavery, and his philosophy at times reads like mere hedonism.

But before he was famous as the forefather to the American forefathers, Locke studied medicine. Although he was never licensed as a medical doctor (not that it meant much in 17th-century Britain), his medical studies led him to take up residence with the (later) earl of Shaftesbury. Locke successfully treated the earl for a liver infection, and the earl was so grateful that he agreed to patronize Locke, which would now be an insult but back then meant “I will give you money and you don’t have to do any work.”

In the coming years, Locke would write two books that have been forced upon college students ever since. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, written over a period of 18 years, is a philosophic treatise concerned in part with the differences between how we learn simple ideas (like “red”) and how we learn abstract ones (like, for instance, “liberty”).

Two Treatises on Civil Government, his most famous book, was concerned with that very liberty. It was here that Locke expressed his belief that all human beings—whether serf or king—were born with the right to life, liberty, and property. This wasn’t the sort of thing that one ought to say when living under the rule of a king, so Locke didn’t acknowledge his authorship of the treatises for many years. But it’s a good thing that he did—his excellent reputation as the man who paved the way for the democratic revolutions in Europe and America is due entirely to that one short book.

His Cheating Heart
Locke believed that the primary point of a marriage was to bear and raise children. Locke himself never married or had children, but he may have participated in some cheating. Locke fell for Damaris Cudworth (who, although you wouldn’t know it to look at her name, was a woman), one of the first British women to publish philosophical writings. John and Damaris exchanged love poems, and later they lived together (with Damaris’s then husband, Sir Francis Masham, and his eight children, oddly enough) for a number of years, leading to speculation that Locke might have cuckolded Mr. Masham.

In the Course of Human Events…
…it sometimes becomes necessary to plagiarize. Thomas Jefferson toed the line between inspiration and outright theft in the Declaration of Independence. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with borrowing Locke’s conceptions of liberty and freedom. But Jefferson’s famous assertion that people have a natural right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” comes perilously close to Locke’s assertion that people have a natural right to “life, liberty, and property.”

THE PHILOSOPHICAL FRAT
Along with a small group of fellow Oxford students, John Locke formed the Experimental Philosophy Club, which sounds like a really dumb club. That is, until you consider that some of the other member included Robert “Father of Chemistry” Boyle, Christopher “Architect of St. Peter’s Cathedral” Wren, and Robert “Inventor of the Modern Microscope” Hooke.

Conversation Starters
◆ Locke’s theories on childhood, as outlined in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, might not fly with today’s child labor laws. For instance, he expressed regret that poor children’s labor “is generally lost to the public until they are 12 or 14 years old,” and believed that kids from families on welfare ought to attend a sort of vocational school for toddlers, so as to be “from infancy inured to work.”

◆ In the 1660s, Locke contributed to the text of the “Fundamental Constitutions” for the territories of the Carolinas in the New World. Although Locke professed to believe in the natural freedom of all people (well, men) and that enslavement created a “state of war,” the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina granted slave owners total ownership over their slaves. Like we said, he wasn’t the most consistent of moral philosophers.

◆ Although his most famous books are short, college students everywhere complain that Locke had a tough time expressing a thought succinctly. Take this famous quote, for example: “I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.” Just come out and say it, Johnny: People can know right from wrong.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that Locke’s self-written epitaph on his tombstone runs 137 words.