11 Very Smart People Who Have Done Very Dumb Things

    Don't worry, even geniuses are idiots.

    Alex Naidus
    by Alex Naidus

    BuzzFeed Staff

    1. W.B. Yeats was denied a post at Trinity College in Dublin for spelling “professor” wrong on the application.

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    REAL SMOOTH, ONE OF THE FOREMOST FIGURES OF 20TH CENTURY LITERATURE.

    2. Ben Franklin nearly killed himself giving an electric shock to a turkey.

    Hulton Archive/Stringer / Getty Images

    Oops.

    3. Charles Darwin ate an owl.

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    He described the experience as... "indescribable." Cool.

    4. Isaac Newton served in Parliament for a full year and only spoke one sentence.

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    That sentence was to ask for an open window to be closed because the room was drafty. YES, REALLY.

    5. Einstein forgot his own address.

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    He just asked a cabbie to take him to "Einstein's house."

    6. Edgar Allan Poe split his pants playing leapfrog with his wife.

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    Apparently he "blushed furiously." Pretty endearing, actually.

    7. Virginia Woolf accidentally baked her wedding ring into a pudding.

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    Better stick to cooking up that modernist fiction, amirite?!? *slinks away*

    8. Thomas Edison electrocuted an elephant.

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    Probably should not have done that.

    9. Steve Jobs let live snakes loose in his third grade classroom.

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    Granted, he was nine, but LIVE SNAKES?

    10. Gertrude Stein wrote on her philosophy exam, "I am so sorry but I do not feel a bit like an examination in philosophy."

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    It worked, though! Her professor responded, "Dear Miss Stein, I understand perfectly how you feel. I often feel like that myself," and gave her the highest mark.

    11. Shakespeare couldn't decide how to spell his own name.

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    He signed his name six different ways.

    Also, William Shakespeare is an anagram of "I am a weakish speller." (!)