7. Pythagoras wasn’t just a philosopher and math genius, he was an obsessive maniac who had a particular fear of fava beans
The Pythagoreanism movement started in the 6th century BC. For more than 200 years, people lived according to the beliefs of the great man. And this included taking on some of his strange obsessions, including his fear of beans. He believed that they took away a piece of one’s soul. As he told his followers: “Eating fava beans and gnawing on the heads of one’s parents are one and the same.” One version of his death has him even refusing to run across a field of fava beans, preferring to let the men chasing him catch him and slit his throat.
This obsession with beans may have been partly understandable. Some types were known to be poisonous and almost all caused flatulence, which, Pythagoras believed, led to some of the soul escaping the body. But most of the philosopher’s other obsessions were simply bizarre. He worshiped the number 10, always put his right shoe on first – and warned his followers of the dangers of not doing so – and abstained from sex and meat, although he was quite a weak-willed hypocrite on both counts.