Viagra
Inventors: Scientists at Pfizer
Year: 1992
What Happened: A Welsh hamlet was ground zero for a test on a pill to fight angina. Unfortunately for the afflicted, it had little success against the disease.
Big Discovery: Though it didn’t work, the men taking part in the study refused to give up their medicine.
As a Result: The scientists switched gears and marketed the drug, Viagra, for a very different purpose.
Botox
Inventors: Alastair and Jean Carruthers
Year: 1987
What Happened: The couple were using small doses of a deadly toxin to treat ‘crossed eyes’ eyelid spasms and other eye-muscle disorders when they noticed an interesting side effect.
Big Discovery: Wrinkles magically disappeared.
As a Result: The expressionless face became the ‘it’ look, thanks to Botox.
Anecdotes about Cyclists – One
Two Nerds on a Tandem
Two nerds are riding along on a tandem bicycle when, suddenly, the one on the front slams on the brakes, gets off, and starts letting air out of the tires.
The one on the back says: “HEY! What are you doing that for?!”
The first nerd says, “My seat was too high and was hurting my butt. I wanted to lower it a bit.”
So the one in the back has had enough. He jumps off, loosens his own seat and spins it round to face the other direction.
Now it’s the first guy’s turn to wonder what’s going on. “What are you doing?” he asks his friend.
“Look, mate,” says the rider in the back, “if you're going to do stupid stuff like that, I'm going home!!”
Anecdotes about Cyclists – Two
Problem Dog
“I've really had it with my dog,” says a guy to his neighbor. “He'll chase anyone on a bicycle.”
“Hmmm, that is a problem,” said the neighbor. “What are you thinking of doing about it?”
“Guess the only answer is to confiscate his bike!”
Anecdotes about Cyclists – Three
The Pedestrian and the Cyclist
A pedestrian stepped off the curb and into the road without looking and promptly gets knocked flat by a passing cyclist.
“You were really lucky there,” said the cyclist.
“What on earth are you talking about! That really hurt!” said the pedestrian, still on the pavement, rubbing his head.
The cyclist replied, “Well, usually I drive a bus!”
Anecdotes about Cyclists – Four
Cyclist in Heaven
A very devout cyclist dies and goes to heaven. Saint Peter meets him at the gate. The first thing the cyclist asks is if there are bicycles in heaven.
“Sure,” says St. Peter, “let me show you,” and he leads the guy into the finest Velodrome you can imagine.
“This is great,” the cyclist says.
“It certainly is,” says St. Peter. “You will have a custom bike and the best cycling clothes you've ever seen, and your personal masseuse will always be available.”
As they speak, a blur streaks by them on the boards, riding a gold-plated bike.
“Wow!” the cyclist exclaims. “That guy was so fast that can only be Mark Cavendish!”
“No,” says St. Peter, “that was God on the bike. He only thinks he's Mark Cavendish.”
Anecdotes about Cyclists – Five
Spousal Tandem
A tandem rider is stopped by a police car.
“What've I done, officer?” asks the rider.
“Perhaps you didn't notice, sir, but your wife fell off your bike half a mile back . . .”
“Oh, thank God for that,” says the rider – “I thought I'd gone deaf!”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher known for his thinking on politics and sociology. Early in his life, Rousseau fathered five children and abandoned all of them to a home.
He did this because abandoning children and sexual boasting was in fashion among his social circles, and men who had abandoned the most children were highly applauded.
Such despicable behavior isn’t quite what one would expect from a theorist on education and child-rearing, but that didn’t stop Rousseau from becoming one. His past didn’t escape the eye of rival philosophers – such as Voltaire – and he was severely criticized for being a hypocrite.
Despite having the most evil name of all time, Demonax was a popular philosopher and celebrity figure. One thing that earned him that admiration was his love of solving disputes. According to a biography of his life, “he was fond of playing peace-maker between brothers at variance, or presiding over the restoration of marital harmony.”
So not only was he willing to use his ideals to solve the problems of squabbling couples, he did it for free because he enjoyed it.
When he got so old that he thought he couldn’t take care of himself, he just stopped eating until he died. He was nearly 100 at the time.
Alexinus was an ancient Greek philosopher you’ve probably never heard of – and for good reason. Alexinus thought he was good enough to start his own philosophy school, and he moved all the way from Elis to Olympia to do so.
When asked why he made the move, he said it was because he wanted the school to be called the “Olympian,” and that wouldn’t make sense in Elis.
Unfortunately, the school was not prepared, ran out of provisions quickly after students arrived, and wasn’t cleaned. The students decided the place was dirty and left, leaving Alexinus with one servant.
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was an existentialist and political philosopher in the ’60s and ’70s. Some of his work was so good that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964. The only problem was that he didn’t want it.
He claimed that winning the award would associate him with the Nobel committee forever. The press was very interested in someone turning down a Nobel Prize, but their attempts to contact Sartre went unanswered. Sartre hid in his sister-in-law’s apartment until they all went away
Rene Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” is possibly the most quoted idea in all of philosophy. His ideas are said to be the grounding for most Western philosophy, and he may have come up with many of those ideas in an oven. Exactly when and where is up for debate, but according to Descartes himself, it did happen.
It wasn’t an oven as you might imagine, but a stone room where a fire always burned. Temperatures were raised when it was needed for cooking, but it was kept relatively low during other times of the day. They certainly weren’t designed for people, but that didn’t stop Descartes from sleeping in one and having dreams that he eventually turned into the grounding of his life’s work.