‍Genius Einstein laid down his cruel rules of marriage to his wife Mavic 

‍

‍THE STAR of physics who cracked the Theory of Relativity also laid down his theory of infidelity to his wife, Maliva Maric, his letters revealed.

‍

‍In a series of cruel demands that only came to light in 1987 Albert Einstein, who solved the relationship between space, time, mass, and gravity, laid down his relationship rules for his marriage. 

‍

‍He told her:  “You will make sure that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order; that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room; that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.”

‍

‍In the letters from 1914, later sold at auction, and featured in the Press, he also demanded that: "You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons.

‍

‍“Specifically, you will forego my sitting at home with you and my going out or travelling with you.

‍

‍“You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

‍

‍“You will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way, and you will stop talking to me if I request it. You will also leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I tell you to.

‍

‍“You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behaviour!”

‍

‍At the time he was having an affair with his first cousin Elsa Lowethal and his fame was spreading. The Times hailed his work as a 'Revolution in Science' that was overturning Newtonian ideas of time and space. Although journalists and the general public didn't fully understand it. 

‍

‍Newspapers kept the headlines simple: The New York Times said: “Einstein explains his new discoveries – eminent scientist shows the meaning of his latest contribution for gravitation, electro-magnetism, and our ideas on time and space.”

‍

‍Einstein's marriage collapsed. They had two sons and he vowed to his 39-year-old wife Mileva, also a brilliant mathematician and physicist, that he would give her any money if he won a Nobel Prize, which he did. The Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. Some scientists say it was guilt money because her contribution to his theories was never really revealed. 

‍

‍Next came marriage to Elsa and a home in Berlin that led to a fling with her best friend. From then on lovers came and went as Einstein rolled from one bed to another making the coming of Free Love in the Swinging Sixties pale in comparison. He told reporters: “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”

‍

‍In 1933, he and Elsa emigrated to Princeton, New Jersey in America, where he was much sought after for work and lectures. More lovers came and went, even though he began to look dishevelled with long straggly hair. He even stopped wearing socks because he hated them. “They get holes,” he said. 

‍

‍Einstein, a lifelong, heavy pipe smoker, died on April 18, 1955, aged 76, from an internal haemorrhage. He declined surgery, viewing death as a natural, inevitable event. 

‍

‍He had been in poor health with digestive system disorders; liver ailments, a stomach ulcer, inflammation of the gall bladder, jaundice and intestinal pains.

‍

‍A handwritten letter by him a year earlier, in which he grappled with the concept of religion was sold for £3million at auction at Christie's in New York in 2018. 

‍

‍“The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses,” he wrote. “The Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends." 

‍

‍When he died his brain was removed without his permission and parts were distributed to museums...     

‍

‍THE LAST WORD:

‍Did you know that the last words of Humphrey Bogart were: “I should never have switched from Scotch to Martini!”

‍

‍Bogart died of throat cancer aged 57 on January 14, 1957. The Press reported that a gold whistle was placed in his urn by his wife Lauren Bacall, a charm from a bracelet he gave her as a symbol of their first film together To Have and Have Not. It was engraved: "If you want me just whistle." 

‍        

‍Sinatra with Bacall and Bogart in Las Vegas … the original Rat Pack

‍

‍THE LONG NIGHTS THAT GAVE BIRTH TO SINATRA'S RAT PACK  

‍SEX, cigs and alcohol were a major part of life with Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack who gained worldwide fame. But it wasn't Sinatra who created the hell-raising club. 

‍

‍According to the Desert Sun, the crooner's own local paper in Palm Springs, it was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall who were at the heart of this select band of hard-drinking party lovers.  

‍

‍And Noël Coward was the reason they got their nickname. The actor and playwright was at a low point in his career when Sinatra pulled some strings and got him a gig at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas in 1955.

‍

‍Sinatra had always been a fan of the typically English gentleman and was determined that Coward's four-week show in Vegas would be a great success. So, he invited his favourite pals to a four-day party to celebrate the opening night. 

‍

‍Sinatra was paying and arranging everything — transport to Vegas, hotel suites for all his guests, tickets to all the shows, booze, food and even bags of silver dollars for the women to gamble with. 

‍

‍David Niven was one of the guests and he later revealed the story: “When anything is organised by Sinatra, the arrangements are made with legendary efficiency and generosity,” he said. 

‍

‍"We boarded a hired luxury coach outside Bogie's front door in Hollywood. Caviar and champagne sustained us during the drive downtown to the Union Station, and there, with a cry from our leader of 'Yellow armbands, follow me,' we trooped aboard a private coach on the train for the overnight trip to Las Vegas. 

‍

‍The group consisted of Lauren Bacall and Bogie, Mike and Gloria Romanoff, owners of the swish Beverley Hills restaurant; comedy star Ernie Kovacs and his wife, stars lawyer 'Swifty' Lazar, Sid Luft and Judy Garland, Angie Dickinson, and myself.

‍

‍Sinatra had provided individual apartments for everyone at the Sands Hotel and a large communal suite with hot and cold running food and drink twenty-four hours a day, he added.

‍

‍"We saw Noël's triumphant first night, and on subsequent evenings we visited all the other shows in Las Vegas. We gambled endlessly, only occasionally poking our noses outside to sniff the desert air and gauge the time of the day. 

‍

‍"After four days and nights of concentrated self-indulgence, awash with alcohol, the only one of the party who seemed physically untouched was Sinatra. The rest were wrecks, and it was then that Lauren surveying the bedraggled survivors, pronounced the fatal words: 'You look like a goddamned rat pack!'

‍

‍"A week after we returned to Los Angeles and forced ourselves back into some semblance of good health, the Rat Pack gave a testimonial dinner to Sinatra in the private room, upstairs, at Romanoff's.

‍

‍"A surprise package, tied with pink ribbon and flown down by the owner of the Sands Hotel, awaited us. Inside was a white rat for each of us."

‍

‍And so, the Rat Pack was born. 

‍

‍ROLL UP, ROLL UP, FOR A VICTORIAN 

‍MUMMY UNROLLING WITH CLARET

‍MUMMY unwrapping parties were all the rage in high society London in the 1880s.

‍

‍As the claret flowed the bandages of long past Egyptians came off in sitting rooms of the gentry.

‍

‍Sometimes they got out of hand as guests clamoured to pick off little keepsakes of what they saw — fingers wrapped in linen and locks of Egyptian princess hair along with amulets of snakes and ropes. 

‍

‍The Victorians were obsessed with death from coffins with bodies in front rooms to say goodbye, and photographing their dead children dressed up in their Sunday best, to spiritualism and buying Egyptian mummies to dissect in public, it was all perfectly normal. 

‍

‍For the general public who couldn't afford to throw mummy unwrapping parties, public halls, theatres and medical centres opened their doors and raked in money from people who wanted to see dead bodies being prodded about. 

‍

‍As more Victorians travelled to Egypt a roaring trade grew of wrapped mummies being dug up and sold to English tourists on street corners, for unwrapping back home.

‍

‍Newspapers such as the Daily Mirror would send reporters and photographers along to mummy unwrappings to capture the excitement of these events. 

‍

‍A 1907 report in the Daily News claimed that a high-quality dead pharaoh could be bought for £200. A military commander or a prince could be yours for the low price of £30. 

‍

‍But if you really wanted to save your money, you could always go for a priest mummy at £12 to £15, or even a common pleb for just £1.10s. And if you were lucky enough, you could even walk out with a complimentary set of amulets and scarabs on the streets of Cairo. 

‍

‍On December 28, 1889, The Illustrated London News published an article under the headline: Unrolling a Mummy.

‍

‍It described how the audience sat tensed as the mummy was slowly unbandaged and examined, bit by bit.  But the gender of the preserved corpse was unknown. 'The person appeared to have been called Bek-Ran or Bek-Ranef,' the reporter wrote. 

‍

‍In the homes of the rich, guests were invited to soirees to dine, drink, and dissect. As these upper-class parties often involved copious amounts of alcohol, they could end up quite raucous. 

‍

‍Often artefacts, wrappings, and even body parts would be tossed around amongst the curious guests for laughs.

‍

‍Such parties were almost always purely for entertainment with little regard to respect for the dead or preserving archaeological artefacts.

‍

‍One example was held by Lord Londesborough. In 1850, he invited a large party of friends to his Piccadilly residence to witness the unrolling of a mummy from Thebes. He even printed lavish invitations to the event, and it was widely reported in the Press.

‍

‍What was left of the bodies was often used for medicines by grinding up mummies into powder and they were even used for the creation of a paint colour called Mummy Brown.

‍

‍TERRY MANNERS

‍2 March 2026