28. Edgar Allan Poe was thrown out of two American universities
The University of Virginia was but one year old when Edgar Allan Poe enrolled there, living in Thomas Jefferson’s Academic Village. The school, which Jefferson had created as self-governed, forbade gambling, alcohol, tobacco, and several other activities and perceived vices, but the students generally did as they wished. After one year of studying languages at the school, Poe left, under somewhat murky circumstances, apparently having lost money intended for study by gambling. He later secured an appointment to West Point and found the curriculum so distressing that he deliberately got himself court-martialed in order to leave the school after a few weeks.