Inventor Nikola Tesla fell in love with his favorite pigeon and tried to broadcast his own thoughts, while playwright-chemist August Strindberg injected apples with drugs to see if they could get high. Science has a reputation as the most logical and rational of human pastimes, but through the centuries, it hasn't always been the case. Collected here are mindboggling accounts of the scientists who embraced such fads and fallacies as alchemy, spontaneous generation, and the doomed quest to raise the dead.