5 Icons Who Believed The Exact Opposite Of What You'd Guess

Mitchell was absolutely convinced that we are not alone in the Universe. But plenty of people would own up to that belief -- considering the staggering number of galaxies, stars, and planets that we know to exist, that's called playing the odds. Mitchell, however, took it one step further. He was an avid devourer of UFO sightings and any and all speculation of alien activity. Furthermore, he was 100-percent convinced that the sheer volume of such reports was concrete evidence that not only have we been visited on multiple occasions by otherworldly tourists, but also that the fact that said visitations were not common public knowledge indicated a government cover-up on a massive scale.

Slap a multi-million-dollar spacesuit on Fox Mulder, and you've got yourself a pretty good approximation of Edgar Mitchell. Except replace the crippling obsession with uncovering evidence with a crippling reliance on batshit supposition.

Oh, and in case you're thinking all this came about in his later, more senile years: Even back in 1971, while riding a fiery trail of human ingenuity to the Moon, Mitchell conducted a set of unsanctioned experiments with ESP. Basically, he came up with a series of random numbers and thought them real hard toward Earth, while his cohorts back home tried to pick up his think-signals. (You have to admit, if he had gotten results, it'd have been a much bigger discovery than anything we found on the Moon.)

Perhaps overexposure to cosmic radiation pummeled Mitchell's gray matter with crazy beams. Or perhaps, him having stepped closer to the cosmos than damn nigh 100 percent of humanity and all, we should skip any such speculation and grant him a pass on this one.

Related: 5 Reasons Conspiracy Theories Are Destroying the World

If we were to ask you to picture an eccentric artist, there's approximately a bajillion percent chance that you'd imagine the pointy visage of Salvador Dali. If we were to then ask you to make an assumption on Dali's political views based entirely on his wacky mustache, you'd likely assume he leaned to the left. It'd be a safe bet -- most of his compatriots in the Surrealist movement subscribed to some degree of Marxism -- but it turns out that Dali instead had a thing for the far right.

And by "a thing," we absolutely mean he jerked it to fascism. Dali noted in his autobiography that Hitler "turned him on in the highest," and he unabashedly admitted to dreaming of the Fuhrer in the way other men dreamt of women.

This, um, infatuation even found its way into Dali's artwork. He maintained some modicum of subtlety in 1939's The Enigma Of Hitler:

But any trace of restraint went straight out the window with his later work, Hitler Masturbating. Yes, it's precisely what it sounds like (except add tiny horses, because Dali):

While that's entirely bad enough, it seems Dali's fascism boner went far beyond a bizarre sexual obsession with tiny mustaches and pressed khaki. Long after Captain America put a decisive end to the Nazis' bullshit by punching Hitler square in the jaw, Dali continued to suckle the ideological teat of the much-hated Caudillo of Spain, Francisco Franco -- a dictator responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths of those who had the severe bad luck of possessing ideologies that conflicted with that of Francisco Franco. While this later obsession didn't result in any paintings of the Caudillo himself, Dali did paint a portrait of his granddaughter. Thankfully, it's dick-free.

Related: 15 Time-Bending Facts About Salvador Dali

Back in 2005, Crichton was called to testify before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works by none other than Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who once famously called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Why would a guy who wrote about dinosaur gonads be chosen as an expert witness for such a hearing? Probably because he had recently published State Of Fear, an eco-thriller in which his characters discover that climate change is at best an inaccurate conclusion reached by way of shoddy science, and at worst an elaborate scam concocted to line the pockets of Big Hippie.

And lest you think this was simply a work of fiction intended to employ controversy to help Crichton reach the top of yet another best-seller list, the text was rife with footnotes pointing to real "studies" which went against the overwhelming scientific consensus. All to convince those in charge that less money should be thrown toward reeling in human-induced climate change, presumably in favor of more velociraptor-based science.

Nuttier yet were Crichton's views on secondhand smoke. The author's aforementioned medical expertise apparently qualified him to tour our nation's universities and inform the up-and-coming generation that, despite the opinion of the entirety of the medical community to the contrary, spending prolonged periods in nightclubs with thick, tobacco-flavored air couldn't possibly hurt you.

Now, to be fair, Crichton was always clear that he was in favor of anti-smoking legislation, and that smoking did in fact cause cancer ... but only for those actively doing it. So we're honestly not sure what his endgame was here, other than to demonstrate that he -- a scientist who chose to make shit up for a living -- was smarter than all the collective scientists who actually science for a living.

Related: The 6 Most Bizarre Global Warming Side Effects

At the height of his fame, Jolson's popularity dwarfed that of later stars such as Frank Sinatra, and his captivating stage presence and infectious singing voice brought heaps of Broadway audiences to tears. However, due to his career having hit at a ... oh, let's say "tumultuous" time in our nation's history, and his heavy reliance on blackface, his true impact is difficult to gauge today.

Another thing that's difficult to gauge? The monumental leaps and bounds he made for civil rights in the entertainment industry.

As early as 1911 -- the same year Nebraska outlawed interracial marriage -- Jolson was fighting like hell for the inclusion of a black dance team in his show on the aptly named "Great White Way." It was thanks to Jolson's support (plus an assist from then-POTUS Calvin Coolidge) that African-American playwright Garland Anderson was able to mount the very first all-black production on Broadway in 1925. As a result of his efforts, Jolson was reportedly the only white man permitted to enter Leroy's (a popular Harlem nightclub), and he returned the favor by integrating his own private parties.

It seems it's important to keep things in perspective, even when said perspective feels icky. Though we tend to look back on The Jazz Singer's reliance on blackface with disgust, at the time of its release, Harlem newspaper Amsterdam News highly praised the film and said that "every colored performer is proud of ." It's like America said, "Okay, we'll let you expose us to black culture, but you have to do something weird and racist at the same time, it's only fair."

Related: Netflix Apparently Didn't Realize It Was Peddling Blackface

That's right: As a civil rights attorney in Topeka, Kansas -- one of the most important battlegrounds of the Civil Rights Movement -- the man who spent the latter half of his life teaching humans to hate other humans spent his younger years defending the victims of similar hatred. Not only that, but he was the go-to civil rights attorney in Topeka. The "first lawyer blacks would call when they thought they were being discriminated against."

Phelps tackled the cases that everyone else in racially charged Topeka shunned, earning scads of African Americans their God-given rights and earning a shitload of money doing so ... money which, sadly, must have come in handy for the founding and expansion of a certain church that will forever be his legacy. While his defense of black rights seems at odds with his utter disdain for gay rights, according to his daughter, it all makes sense because blacks never chose to be black, while gays choose who they're attracted to on a multiple-choice exam at puberty or some shit.

Phelps' ability to whip his followers into a destructive frenzy -- as well as his startling racial equality track record -- shares a disturbing parallel with Jim Jones of "drink the Kool-Aid" fame. Long before he was luring his followers to his remote eponymous cult-city and convincing them to commit mass suicide, Jones was such a radical integrationist that it cost him his first preaching gig. Before he ever thought of cutting grape drink with cyanide, he helped desegregate schools and hospitals as the director of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission.

He was also the first white man to adopt a black child in the state of Indiana -- and he did so the same year civil rights activists were fighting simply to sit wherever they wanted on the goddamned bus. His ultimate dream was to father a rainbow family to head up an entire rainbow congregation ... a dream which he arguably accomplished, right before he fucking murdered them all.

Teachers: America's unsung heroes ... and secret drunks ... and all-around degenerates. To shed light on the dark side of this trusted profession, Cracked Podcast host Jack O'Brien, along with comedians and truTV's Those Who Can't cast members Maria Thayer (Abbey Logan) and Andrew Orvedahl (Coach Fairbell), will interview some real-life (probably anonymous) teachers, who will share all the filthy, outrageous, and hilarious tales from this supposedly squeaky-clean occupation. Get FREE tickets to this LIVE podcast here!

For more things about celebrities that'll make you double take and spit your grape drink, check out 23 Insane Things Your Favorite Celebrities Believe and 18 Of Your Favorite Celebrities Who Believe Hateful Things.

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Last Halloween, the Cracked Podcast creeped you out with tales of ghost ships, mysteriously dead people, and a man from one of the most famous paintings in U.S. history who years later went all Jack Nicholson in The Shining on his family. This October, Jack and the Cracked staff are back with special guest comedians Ryan Singer, Eric Lampaert, and Anna Seregina to share more unsettling and unexplained true tales of death, disappearance, and the great beyond. Get your tickets for this LIVE podcast here!