Top 10 ‘Craziest’ Mental Disorders

Throughout history, mental disorders have been regarded with fear, bias, and ignorance.  Though medicine has drastically improved for the mentally ill in the last century, mainstream society still has a relatively uninformed and biased view against individuals with mental disorders.  This is particularly harmful because every year up to ¼ of Americans fit the criteria for being mentally ill.

Media has done its best to show us the crazy sides of the mentally ill, but how crazy is crazy?  If ¼ of the population is “crazy”, how dangerous is society?  This list counts down the most life-interfering disorders, and explores how the individuals fit into our life.

Note: There are many other disorders, some similar to the disorders mentioned.  All information is received from the American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision”.

For more information about Mental Health please visit MentalHealthAmerica.org. Formerly known as the National Mental Health Association, they also have a crisis line 1-800-273-TALK that you can call if you, a friend, or a love one is going through a tough time.

10. Type One Bipolar Disorder

What It Is

Bipolar disorder has been talked about a lot.  It has received vast media coverage and most individuals have at least a general idea of what it is.  Bipolar disorder makes an individual switch between two main moods: mania (emotions like happiness and anger) and depression (emotions like sadness and guilt).  Unlike the media interpretation, Bipolar disorder’s mood swings actually take a long time.  Each swing lasts about a week on average, with a few days’ transition in between.  Bipolar has been known to cause psychosis in some patients, but for the most part it manifests in irrational actions, heightened emotions, and lack of sleep during mania; and tiredness, aches, and lethargy during depression.  Patients often have very little self control and are at the mercy of their moods.

How It Fits

2.6% of the adult population is bipolar.  The disorder is genetic, and is generally easy to treat with medications.  In some cases therapy isn’t needed.  The biggest risk is unmedicated patients, who are often a harm to themselves (unmedicated bipolar disorder has a 25% suicide rate) and sometimes to those around them.

9. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

What It Is

OCD is another widely known disorder, but few understand it.  Firstly, OCD isn’t an obsession with cleanliness.  It can manifest in being clean, but that’s only one aspect.  Obsessive-Compulsive patients are often plagued with recurring thoughts, worries, and fears that can only be relieved by repeating tasks (cleaning, touching surfaces, making noises, etc.)  Obsessive-Compulsive individuals can realize their fears are unreasonable, but the anxiety will keep mounting unless they relieve them by their repetitive tasks.

How It Fits

1% of adults have OCD.  Psychiatrists haven’t figured out the cause of OCD yet, some think it may be caused by environments, others by chemicals in the brain.  The treatment varies per patient, but is generally manageable through psychotherapy and certain medications.  OCD patients are not really dangerous to others, but their lives can be difficult and their behaviors may seem odd.

8. Factitious Disorder

What It Is

Factitious Disorder is an obsession with being sick.  Unlike hypochondria, in which patients actually think they are ill, individuals with Factitious Disorder intentionally make themselves sick or play sick for attention.  They often tell elaborate stories about medical complications, visit hospitals, tamper with their medications, and inflict harm upon themselves for attention.

How It Fits

Factitious Disorder is rare in adults, and occurs in less than .5% of the population.  The disorder stems from past trauma.  There is no cure or treatment for the disorder, though psychotherapy can be effective in limiting the behavior.  Most individuals with the disorder are not receptive to treatment.

7. Schizoaffective Disorder

What It Is

Schizoaffective Disorder is a bizarre combination of severe Bipolar Disorder and mild Schizophrenia.  Patients will have manic and depressive mood swings, and, as a third swing, will lose touch with reality.  Most often, Schizoaffective patients will experience low emotional responses in the third, psychotic phase.  They can become delusional, and sometimes may hallucinate.  The psychotic swing is mild in comparison to most psychotic disorders, however, and can often go unnoticed, leading to a misdiagnosis of severe Type One Bipolar.

How It Fits

.5% of Americans have Schizoaffective Disorder.  Psychiatrists believe the disorder is genetic and chemical.  The disorder is relatively easy to treat with combinations of medicines.  Most people with the disorder can function normally in society as long as they are medicated.  Like Bipolar Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder has a very high suicide rate when untreated.

6. Depersonalization Disorder

What It Is

Depersonalization Disorder gives individuals a sense that they are not in their body.  Individuals will feel like they aren’t their physical self, or that their life is some sort of movie or dream.  They struggle to form connections with people because they don’t feel as if anything is real.  They have the ability to logically know they are ill, but cannot shake the feeling of detachment.

How It Fits

Depersonalization is also very rare, effecting less than .5% of the population.  It is caused by traumatic events.  The reason depersonalization is so “crazy” is because there are no treatments.  No medicationsare effective on the disorder, and psychotherapy seems to only help some patients, but not all.  Some people will feel detached from reality for the rest of their life after a traumatic event.

5. Trichotillomania

What It Is

Possibly one of the most physically disruptive disorders, Trichotillomania is an obsession with pulling out hair.  Individuals with this disorder will constantly pull out body hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes.   Patients get overwhelming urges to pull at their hair, only reaching relief when they’ve done it.  Individuals will go to great lengths to hide their bald spots, but for some the disorder becomes too bad to cover up.

How It Fits

Trichotillomania is also very rare.  No one knows what causes it, but it is possible to overcome through psychotherapy.  Some cases benefit from medication.  People who have the disorder may be feared because of their appearance, and it’s not uncommon for them to be featured on daytime talk shows.

4. Specific Phobia

What It Is

It seems strange that Phobias rank so high up on the list, but they are where they are because they can be so interfering with lives.  Most people think a phobia is just an unease or mild fear of an object; actually, a phobia is an unmanageable terror of everyday things.  There are many subcategories and specific names for different Phobias, but they all fall under the same disorder.  Phobic individuals will go to extreme lengths to avoid their unreasonable fears.  They can experience physical symptoms such as racing pulses and strained breathing if exposed to their fear.

How It Fits

Phobias are incredibly common, effecting 8.7% of people.  They are caused by traumatic childhood events- most of the time patients can’t remember the event.  The most common techniques for treating phobias are exposure therapy (in which the patient must confront their fear slowly and with the guidance of a psychiatric professional) and hypnotherapy (which helps patients to remember the cause of the fear).  Patients are able to recover, and even untreated patients may blend in to normal society.

3. Antisocial Personality Disorder

What It Is

Amongst the most basic, common, but dangerous disorders, antisocial disorder is also known as sociopathy and psychopathy.  Individuals with this disorder either have no empathy, leading to no morals, or no emotion at all.  The ones who have emotion, but no empathy, are extremely dangerous.  They make excellent liars, are often charismatic, and feel no remorse for any harm they cause anyone.  Their brains simply can’t make the connections to evoke empathy.  Because of this, they can do terrible things without a care.  As you might imagine, most Antisocial patients become involved in crime.  A majority of serial killers have been diagnosed with this disorder.   Some individuals, especially the emotionless ones, are able to fit in to society without causing any harm, but can never relate to people on the same level normal individuals can.

How It Fits

1% of Americans have Antisocial Personality Disorder, but only 50% are treated.  A majority of people with the disorder end up involved in crime.  There is no cure for the disorder, and the only treatment for it is to teach the patients to act normal, although they’ll still never be able to grasp ethics or even emotion.

2. Dissociative Identity Disorder

What It Is

DID, formerly Multiple Personality Disorder, is a very severe disorder caused by severe trauma.  An individual with this disorder will split his/her personality into two or three different identities and cycle between them.  A 50 year old man may think he’s a 6 year old girl, and spend his time playing with dolls and wearing dresses.  This disorder has also had a lot of media coverage but is very misunderstood.  Individuals with this disorder rarely take on more than three identities, and it’s almost impossible to make them aware that they have it.  They cannot live normal lives because they may switch identities at any point, sometimes staying an identity for years, sometimes for hours.

How It Fits

This disorder is also very rare.  It can only be found in about .1% of Americans.  There are no medications to fix the disorder, but hypnotherapy can be useful in merging the identities.  Patients cannot live in normal society unless they have gone through extensive therapy and their identities have been merged.  Otherwise, they live in psychiatric institutions or they are constantly cared for by family and friends.

1. Schizophrenia

What It Is

Schizophrenia, in short, is a loss of reality.  Symptoms include inappropriate (or few) emotions, paranoia, obsession with media, false beliefs about the body, beliefs of being famous or powerful, auditory and visual hallucinations, and catatonia (a completely unaware and unresponsive state).  Unmedicated schizophrenics can’t tell what is in their head and what is real, leading them to act strangely.  There are different levels in the loss of reality, some are able to function normally for short periods of time.

How It Fits

For such a severe disorder, a giant 1% of Americans have it.  This means that for every 100 people, one is schizophrenic.  Schizophrenia is very genetic, and is often treatable with medication.  Most medicated Schizophrenics are able to function completely normally, as long as they take medication every day.  The disorder will never go away and skipping just one day of medication can jeopardize the patient’s sanity.  The crime rates of schizophrenics are actually not as high as other disorders, but the individuals are much more troubled and much farther from reality.

Top 10 Crazy Bastards Who Actually Changed The World (For The Better)

The Top 10 Crazy Bastards Who Actually Changed The World (For The Better)

Comment

G. K. Chesterton once said that imagination does not breed insanity, but reason. He argued that artists and poets rarely go crazy, but with scientists it’s pretty much par for the course, and one good look around the halls of fame of the scientific community seems to confirm this. Hell, Newton once stuck a giant needle under his eyelid to see what was back there. In tribute to the certifiable lunatics that made the world the way it was, we at Spike.com present nine doctors and scientists, and one president, who changed the world in spite of, and perhaps by virtue of, being completely bats**t insane.

Source: Source: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

10. W. C. Minor

Source: Oxford University Press

What he did:

The Oxford English Dictionary was notable as being one of the first well-organized and well-compiled dictionaries. Indeed, it was more or less the first dictionary that didn't suck, and which made an attempt to catalogue all the words in the English language, not just the ones that were tricky. Eventually, a few professors realized that all the dictionaries of the time were aggravatingly laid out and just generally crappy, so they set about making a better one.

One of the many problems they identified was that there weren't any good example quotations that demonstrated how to use the word in a sentence. Unfortunately to rectify that problem, they needed someone who could compile such quotations and definitions, and match them up to every word ever written. They were to busy to do it, and they didn't have the funding to pay anyone to do it, so they put out word that they needed volunteers for an frighteningly menial task. They didn't get a whole lot of go-getters.

Of the people who did volunteer was William Chester Minor, an American surgeon who loved the English language. Minor compiled an enormous quantity of words with quotations and definitions that he could call up on demand. He compiled lists of every instance of every word in all the books he owned, and was by far the most efficient of the volunteers for the OED. He became close friends with the Editor of the OED, Dr. James Murray, and they would eat lunch several times a week. Indeed without his contribution, the OED would have probably been as poorly done as all the others and dictionaries would continue to suck to this day.

So what's so crazy about him?

He did all of this while incarcerated in the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane, after going nuts and killing a father of six-with-one-more-on-the-way named George Merett, who Minor thought was out to get him. During his interment he had little else to do, so he hoarded definitions and quotations the way that lady down the street hoards stray cats. Meanwhile his mental condition became continued to deteriorate until he cut his dick off with a straight razor, and they shipped him back to America.

9. Tycho Brahe

Source: Eduard Ender

What he did:

Before Galileo, there was Tycho Brahe. Tycho Brahe catalogued the motion of every star, planet, UFO, and ball of ignited swamp gas in the heavens for much of his life, information that was surprisingly important for its time and allowed the creation of the laws of planetary motion.  His carefulness and scientifically rigorous methodology are considered to have been essential for setting the stage of the scientific revolution.

So what's so crazy about him?

Many famous geniuses were drunks, but few were as spectacularly so as Tycho Brahe. Dinner at his house would put most modern day drunken college frat parties to shame. Not only did he tend to do stupid things when he was drunk (at a Christmas party when he was 20 he got into a duel with a man in a pitch black room and lost his nose in the process), but his house was like a goddamn circus. Since Brahe at one time had a net worth of about one percent of the entire wealth Denmark and lived in a castle, the guy knew how to throw a hell of a party. Among other shenanigans, one thing he was known for was having a dwarf in his employ named Jepp who Brahe maintained was clairvoyant. Jepp's full-time job consisted of wearing a jester's outfit, sitting under the table at dinner, and whatever else a psychic midget is supposed to do. He also had a pet moose that would drink with the rest of them, until one day it got totally s***faced and fell down a flight of stairs.  When was the last time you were at a party and a drunk moose fell down the stairs? We thought so.

8. Samuel Morse

 

Source: Project Gutenberg

What he did:

He invented the first electrical telegraph, and made Morse code, the language used in communication for over a hundred years. This worked wonders in the advancement of civilization, as it provided a means of communication over long distance in short time, as well being the forerunner of modern binary code.

So what's so crazy about him?

He was a little paranoid. He was determined that the Blacks, Jews, Catholics and the entire nation of Austria were working to destroy the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants of America. He wrote several books on the subject in which he talked about how the immigrants and lesser races were oppressing all the white people, how the Jews and Catholics were working together to kill Protestants, and how all of these groups met on a regular basis in the basement of an orphanage in Ireland. Oh, and Austria's in there too somewhere.

Ironically, when the telegraph became widespread it allowed people to arrange in advance for their arrival when they immigrated. This led to a massive storm of immigration into the USA and filling it with people of different ethnicities, religions, and all the other things that are obviously conspiring against the poor oppressed WASPs of the country. So Morse ended up dying locked in his house afraid of going out for fear of the Catholic-Austrian-Immigrant Jews that were taking over the world.

7. Yoshiro Nakamatsu

Source: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images

What he did:

At 81 years old, Nakamatsu has over 3,000 patents, giving him the record for the most patents in the history of ever (Thomas Edison only had a little over a thousand, most of which he ripped off).

Chances are you encounter several of his inventions on a regular basis. He invented the CD, the DVD, the digital watch, and the taxicab meter.

So what's so crazy about him?

Nakamatsu meticulously catalogues, records, and analyses everything he eats, in a bid to survive to the age of exactly 144. No more, no less, he is determined to die at that exact number. He sleeps only four hours a night, saying that sleeping over six hours is "very, very bad." His diet is almost exclusively made up of his "Yummy Nutri Brain Food", a combination of seaweed, cheese, yogurt, eel, eggs, beef, and chicken liver.

What is most interesting is his method for inventing things. He holds his breath underwater until he almost dies.He himself says "A lack of oxygen is very important... I get that flash just 0.5 sec before death. I remain under the surface until this trigger comes up and I write it down with a special waterproof Plexiglas writing pad I invented."

Usually when you need a near death experience just to get through the day, you're either insane, or you just have stones the size of basketballs. Or both.

6. Sergei Bryukhonenko

Source: Experiments in the Revival of Organisms/Prelinger Archive

What he did:

Sergei Bryukhonenko made enormous leaps for medical science, and indeed mankind, when in the early 1920s he invented The Autojector, the worlds first ever life-support machine. It acted as a mechanical heart and lung, and while primitive by today's standards it did the job pretty well. This was the template for pretty much all life support machines that came after, and we probably don't need to tell you how important those are.

So, what's so crazy about him?

In order to test his machine, he needed the dead and the dying, and even though this was back when medical ethics were pretty much left up to whatever the doctor's scruples were, he couldn't very well use people. Instead, he used dogs. Lots and lots of dogs. He would first kill them, then use his system of pumps and bowls to get them going again. As he went on, he got increasingly dramatic, practicing draining the blood from dogs' body, then restoring it and bringing the dog back alive (however brain damaged). Later he started testing if his machine would work only on the whole dogs, or if he could get away with only part of a dog. Like, say, just the head. As it turns out, it is possible to sever a dog's head, hook it up to a bunch of tubes, and keep it alive. Well, only for a few minutes, and in sort of a stupor, but it's the principle that counts.

All things considered, the man was only a castle, a hunchback, and poorly recorded lightning track from being Victor freaking Frankenstein.

5. Henry Cavendish

Source: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

What he did:

Cavendish was an instrumental figure in the scientific community. Aside from discovering hydrogen, he also calculated the density of the planet earth with surprising accuracy using only a couple of lead balls and his own intellect. This may not sound too important, but it was influential in the field of astrophysics, because it led to many important breakthroughs, including the calculation of the gravitational constant of the universe. He also did great work with electricity, discovering the concept of voltage, the formula for the capacitance of a capacitor and a unit for it (now called the Farad), Ohms law, Coulombs Law, Richter's law of Reciprocal Proportions, Dalton's law of Partial Pressures, and Wheatstone's laws of parallel circuitry.

So, what's so crazy about him?

You may have noticed, all his discoveries are named after other people. Henry was a bit of a loner. He almost never left his house, except when he needed equipment, or to go to the Royal Society Club, where he barely talked to anyone unless they had something really important to say. He never entertained visitors at his house, and actually had a hidden staircase in his house so he could get around without encountering his housekeeper, who he communicated with via letters left on a special table. There is one account where a fan of his work ambushed him at his door in an attempt to tell him how great he was, only to have Cavendish scream and run into the woods, to be coaxed out two hours later.

All the discoveries listed above under someone else's name, are there because Cavendish didn't publish them. Instead they sat in his attic for almost a hundred years collecting dust, until a man named James Clerk Maxwell showed up, and found them. By that point, people were starting to make these discoveries on their own. In essence, Cavendish was almost a century ahead of his time, but didn't get any credit for it because of his terrifyingly bad social skills.

4. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg

Source: Project Gutenberg

What he did:

Back in the 1800s, breakfast meant one of two things. If you were rich, it meant eggs. If not, it was porridge. John Kellogg and his brother Will changed that. They invented the first cereal in the world: Corn Flakes! A cheap and tasty (albeit slightly bland) breakfast food. This paved the way for a whole new era in the land of breakfast. An era where instead of gruel, porridge, or other boiled grains, one had dozens of foods to choose from, each represented by it's own anthropomorphic cartoon animal, with dozens of games and puzzles on the back, and toys and decoder rings on the inside.

So what's so crazy about him?

The thing which no one pays attention to, and which will never make that little side-panel on the box with the explanation of how "ever since its conception, Kellogg's has been dedicated to quality" is why he made Corn Flakes in the first place.

Dr. Kellogg was a strong believer in nutrition, and felt that a simple diet low in sugar and energy, would be paramount in preventing little children from masturbating. Yes, for real. You see, Kellogg felt that masturbation was what was eating away at society and destroying all that was good in the world. You may laugh, but it's proven to cause a number of serious health problems including (but not limited to): insomnia, fatigue, excessive hair-loss, excessive hair growth, weight-loss, weight-gain, blindness, nausea, insanity, gout, cancer, homosexuality, and communism.

He was the founding father of several movements including the "Race Betterment Foundation," part of the early eugenics movement. He was also a strong advocate of circumcision. Not circumcision at birth, mind you. He felt that it should be done as punishment when little Billy is caught fiddling with his boner in the bathtub:

[The procedure] should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid [phenol] to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement.

He maintained that circumcision would work almost one hundred percent of the time, because "following the cicatrisation of the wounds, the skin will cover the organ tight...which will considerably hamper masturbation or eradicate it altogether."

For the record, it doesn't.

Along with restrictive dieting, circumcision, and his diabolical acid treatment, he also advocated tying the subject's hands together, putting their genitals in special devices that would make an erection intolerably painful, electroshock therapy, and sewing the foreskin shut.

He also once preformed a clitorectomy on a nine-year-old. If you don't know what that is, just take our word for it that you're better off not knowing.

So that's why we have Corn Flakes. Oh, his brother Will was the one who invented Frosted Flakes. Johnny flipped s***, we don't mind saying.

3. Nikolai Tesla

Source: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

What he did:

Tesla's contributions to humanity are too many to all be listed here. Among other things, he invented AC, the Induction motor, the Tesla Coil, Wireless Technology, Radio Astronomy, Radar, and Robotics. He was also the guy who thought up the Death Ray, although he never actually got around to building one (that we know of).

So what's so crazy about him?

Tesla was very OCD. And that doesn't just mean he washed his hands more often than Lady Macbeth. He had an obsession with the number 3 to an almost frightening extent. Whenever he entered a building, he first had to circle the blocks 3 times clockwise, he only stayed in a hotel room if the room number was divisible by 3, and he always used exactly 9 napkins, which he kept in three stacks of three, and spent many of his meals calculating the volume of his food before eating it. He also loved pigeons to the point that he would import special seeds for feeding them in the park, and would sometimes capture them live and take them back to his apartment with him.

He hated jewelry (especially pearls, earrings, and pearl earrings), refused to touch anything with any amount of dust on it, and was terrified of anything round and/or metal. Of course that last one could just be a healthy reaction to working in a lab where most of the round, metal objects would fry you on contact.

2. Andrew Jackson

Source: Stock Montage/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

What he did:

Won a major battle in New Orleans in the War of 1812 (the one where Canada burned down the White House), securing the respect of his peers. He was elected as the seventh president of the U.S.A., where he helped form the American Political system, and got his face on the 20 dollar bill. In his term he reduced national Debt, caused several structural changes to the bureaucratic and political system (including the implementation of the Spoils System), and pushed for expansionism, allowing the US to grow to the size it is today. He also helped screw the Indians out of all their land.

So what's so crazy about him?

Jackson was what we in the Biz call a "Badass Motherf***er." He earned the nickname "Old Hickory" in his war days for being almost completely indestructible, and for regularly beating the s*** out of people with a hickory walking stick. He won the battle at New Orleans by virtue of his both being a hard-ass, and by hiring a crap-load of pirates to help out. That's right, freaking pirates. They even brought their cannons down into the artillery. His men won with only about 24 deaths.

He was also known for participating in a great many duels. Understand that back then, duels were fought with muskets, the most hideously inaccurate gun in the history of guns. This meant a duel consisted of just shooting at one another until the other guy was so scared and/or bloodied that he surrendered. During his duels, Jackson sustained so many bullet wounds that (according to biographer Chris Wallace) he was known to "rattle like a bag of marbles" when he walked, and cough up blood on a regular basis. After seeing the guy take a few shots to the abdomen, and taking a few themselves, most surrendered, and Jackson only once ever actually killed a man in a duel.

This unlucky individual was Charles Dickinson, who was convinced by Jackson's political opponents to make fun of his wife, who Jackson he married before she divorced her first husband. Jackson, who just didn't stand for that kinda s***, challenged him to a duel. Then, even though Dickinson was well known as being an award-winning marksman, he let Dickinson shoot first. Just to reiterate, he actually had made money off of being particularly good at shooting things, and Jackson let him be first to try to shoot at him. Dickinson shot him square in the chest, missing his heart by about one inch. While any sane human being would have screamed all bloody hell and called for a medic, Jackson straightened up and shot the guy in the face, killing him instantly.

Jackson was also the first president on whom an assassination was attempted. The would-be assassin (a guy named Richard Lawrence who thought he was King Richard the Third) opted to try to shoot Jackson, even though he was by now probably more bullet than actual living flesh. Lawrence ran up to him, pulled out his gun, pointed at Jackson's heart, and pulled the trigger.

The gun misfired. So he pulled out a second gun he brought with him, pointed it at his heart, and pulled the trigger. In what can only be called a statistical miracle, it also misfired. Jackson charged the man with fire in his eyes, and proceeded to beat the living s*** out of him with his walking stick until his aides pulled him off, with the help of local bystanders (including Davy Crockett). Lawrence later said that he "only felt genuine fear when he saw the 67-year-old president charge."

1. Pythagoras

Source: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

What he did:

Pythagoras was one of the founding fathers of mathematics. Aside from being credited with writing the Pythagorean Theorem, he also conducted a great deal of work with sound and harmonics, and discovered the Golden Ratio. The Golden Ratio is a number that represents the geometric relationship "A is to B what B is to C" and it appears a good deal in nature as well as art. You may recall that there was a long and overall pointless chapter in The Da Vinci Code completely devoted to the subject.

Pythagoras also created a model of the universe in which the universe was a series of glass spheres, all turning in harmony, with the earth at the center. This dominated astronomy for about 2,000 years, and was the favored view of the Catholic church who felt it was proof of God. And we all know that you can't argue with the Catholics, or they'll send the black Austrian Jews after you.

So what's so crazy about him?

He had a cult. A weird one. Not, you know, one of the average, Jesus-lives-in-a-spaceship-under-Antarctica cults. No, this was a number cult. Sure, they had all the weird rules. Have sex in the summer, not the winter, only drink water, only eat uncooked foods, don't wear wool, etc. Oh, and never ever eat beans. They make you fart and are "like the genitalia" therefore they are pure evil.

But they were also obsessed with numbers and geometry. Every number was a shape and every shape represented a number. And every number-shape had a purpose, a divine meaning, and a place in the order of everything. And Pythagoras loved them all.

Their symbol was a number-shape (of course), it was the number five, the pentagram, because the pentagram was infinite. The pentagram contained a pentagon. The pentagon, if all corners were connected, formed another pentagram, which was proportionate in every way to the original and which formed another pentagon. Pythagoras saw more numbers in music, in the ratios of the strings and the beauty of the notes. In fact, his views on philosophy can be summarized in his own words "All is numbers."

Unfortunately his idea of numbers and geometry can only allow numbers to be expressed as ratios with nice whole numbers (i.e. 2/3 instead of .66666). Decimals didn't exist. This meant that irrational numbers such as Pi, which continue forever in a non-repeating decimal fashion and can't be represented as fractions, are impossible to represent.

So when a guy named Hippasus said "hey guys, this doesn't work here..." Pythagoras did what any rational person does when someone is a threat to their beliefs. Which is to get their secret brotherhood of math nerds to kidnap him, tie him up, take him out in the middle of a lake, light the boat on fire, and disappear into the night.

That's right, they killed the guy over Pi. And he wasn't the only one. Anyone who had a proof that was a threat to Pythagoras' vision of a perfect, rational, measurable universe was to be silenced.

Pythagoras' end came when he denied a few people entry into his elite group of math nerds. They came in a mob to torch his house, and he ran away out the back with them hot in pursuit. Supposedly this continued until he came to a large field of beans. Given the option between the Angry Mob and the Bean Field, he just turned around and let them kill him.

This guy made math what it is today. Damn, eh?

The Top 10 Craziest Science Stuff you didn't know

The Top 10 Craziest Science Stuff you didn't know 

You can Hypnotize Chickens

A chicken can be hypnotized, or put into a trance by holding its head down against the ground, and continuously drawing a line along the groundwith a stick or a finger, starting at its beak and extending straight outward in front of the chicken.

If the chicken is hypnotized in this manner, it will remain immobile for somewhere between 15 seconds to 30 minutes, continuing to stare at the line.

You can have an erection once dead

A death erection (sometimes referred to as "angel lust") is a post-mortem erection which occurs when a male individual dies vertically or face-down – the cadaver remaining in this position. During life, the pumping of blood by the heart ensures a relatively even distribution around the blood vessels of the human body. Once this mechanism has ended, only the force of gravity acts upon the blood. As with any mass, the blood settles at the lowest point of the body and causes edema or swelling to occur; the discoloration caused by this is called lividity.
Sorry, no photo for this one!

Your hand can have a life of it's own

Alien hand syndrome (or Dr. Strangelove syndrome) is an unusual neurological disorder in which one of the sufferer's hands seems to take on a life of its own.

AHS is best documented in cases where a person has had the two hemispheres of their brain surgically separated, a procedure sometimes used to relieve the symptoms of extreme cases of epilepsy. It also occurs in some cases after other brain surgery, strokes, or infections. The HAND is after you!

Don't laugh too much, it can kill you

Fatal hilarity is death as a result of laughter. In the third century B.C. theGreek philosopher Chrysippus died of laughter after seeing a donkey eating figs (hey, it wasn't THAT funny).

On 24 March 1975 Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn, England, literally died laughing while watching an episode of The Goodies. According to his wife, who was a witness, Mitchell was unable to stop laughing whilst watching a sketch in the episode "Kung Fu Kapers" in which Tim Brooke-Taylor, dressed as a kilted Scotsman, used a set of bagpipes to defend himself from a psychopathic black pudding in a demonstration of the Scottish martial art of "Hoots-Toot-ochaye". After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure. His widow later sent the Goodies a letter thanking them for making Mitchell's final moments so pleasant.

A weapon could make you Gay

Gay bomb is an informal name for a potential non-lethalchemical weapon, which a U.S. Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing.

In one sentence of the document it was suggested that a strong aphrodisiac could be dropped on enemy troops, ideally one which would also cause "homosexual behaviour". So that's how they got Saddam!

It's true, Men can breastfeed

The phenomenon of male lactation in humans has become more common in recent years due to the use of medications that stimulate a human male's mammary glands.

Male lactation is most commonly caused by hormonal treatments given to men suffering from prostate cancer. It is also possible for males (and females) to induce lactation through constant massage and simulated 'sucking' of the nipple over a long period of time (months).

Bart Simpson's Tomacco (half tomato, half tobacco) was possible

A tomacco is originally a fictional hybrid fruit that is half tomato and half tobacco, from the 1999 episode "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)" of The Simpsons; the method used to create the tomacco in the episode is fictional.

The tomacco became real when it was allegedly produced in 2003. Inspired by The Simpsons, Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon successfully grafted a tomato plant onto the roots of a tobacco plant, which was possible because both plants come from the same family.

It's OK to have a third nipple

A supernumerary nipple (also known as a third nipple) is an additional nipple occurring in mammals including humans. Often mistaken for moles, supernumerary nipples are diagnosed at a rate of 2% in females, less in males. The nipples appear along the two vertical "milk lines" which start in the armpit on each side, run down through the typical nipples and end at the groin. They are classified into eight levels of completeness from a simple patch of hair to a milk-bearing breast in miniature.

You can die on the Toilet

There are many toilet-related injuries and some toilet-related deathsthroughout history and in urban legends.

In young boys, one of the most common causes of genital injury is when the toilet seat falls down while using the toilet.

George II of Great Britain died on the toilet on 25 October 1760 from an aortic dissection. According to Horace Walpole's memoirs, King George "rose as usual at six, and drank his chocolate; for all his actions were invariably methodic. A quarter after seven he went into a little closet. His German valet de chambre in waiting heard a noise, and running in, found the King dead on the floor."

Picking one's nose and eating it might be healthy

Mucophagy (literally mucus-eating, also referred as picking one's nose and eating it) is the consumption of the nasal mucus, boogers, and other detritus obtained from nose-picking.

Some research suggests that mucophagy may be a natural and even healthy activity, which exposes the digestive system to bacteria accumulated in the mucus, thereby helping to strengthen the immune system.

So what crazy science stuff do you know? Comment it!