Miscellany and Trivia

Picasso was relaxing on a beach in the south of France when he was accosted by a small boy clutching a blank sheet of paper. The child had evidently been dispatched by his parents to solicit an autographed drawing. After a moment's hesitation, Picasso tore up the paper and drew a few designs on the boy's back instead. He signed his name with a flourish and sent the child back to his parents. Relating the incident at a later date, Picasso remarked thoughtfully, “I wonder if they'll ever wash him again?”

American Gertrude Stein was a big fan of Picasso, buying many paintings from him in the early days of his career. She is known for the portrait that Picasso painted of her in 1905. The painting required 90 sittings and when it was completed it was given to Stein as a gift. She told Picasso that the portrait didn’t look like her. He responded: “it will.”

People often asked Picasso to pay his bills with a drawing. He reportedly once refused to sign one of these drawings saying, “I’m buying a meal, not the whole restaurant.”

During World War II Picasso suffered some harassment from the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Paris. An inquisitive German officer, coming into his apartment, noticed a photograph of Guernica lying on a table. “Did you do that?” he asked Picasso. “No, you did,” said Picasso.

“When I was young I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock, “Einstein once recalled. “So I stopped wearing socks.”

Speaking at the Sorbonne during the 1930s, Einstein said, “If my relativity theory is verified, Germany will proclaim me a German and France will call me a citizen of the world. But if my theory is proved false, France will emphasize that I am a German and Germany will say that I am a Jew.”

Einstein went to look at a kibbutz while on a visit to Palestine in 1921. He asked many questions of the 22-year-old girl who was head of the young community. One question was, “What is the relationship here of men to women?”

Thinking that he was one of the many visitors, who thought that women were common property in the kibbutz, she stammered, very embarrassed, “But, Herr Professor, each man here has one woman.”

Einstein's eyes twinkled. He took the girl's hand and said, “Don't be alarmed at my question – by “relationship” we physicists understand something rather simple, namely how many men are there and how many women.”

In 1931 Charlie Chaplin invited Albert Einstein, who was visiting Hollywood, to a private screening of his new film City Lights. As the two men drove into town together, passersby waved and cheered. Chaplin turned to his guest and explained:

“The people are applauding you because none of them understands you and applauding me because everybody understands me.”