Find out what all those dead white men didn’t tell you about their masterpieces.

The original title of The Iliad was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Rape Helen.

The story of Genesis was actually an attack ad from the Pear Advisory Council intended to discredit apples.

Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises in forty-eight minutes while under the influence of barbiturates provided by Gertrude Stein.

Newton’s Principia Mathematica was originally pitched as a graphic novel, but it was accepted for publication only on condition that it be rewritten as the seminal text in the history of the physical sciences.

On his death bed, Franz Kafka asked not only that all his works be destroyed, but also that someone please drown his cat.

John Milton was inspired to write Paradise Lost after he was locked out of his apartment for an entire night.

Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a last-ditch effort to get out of jury duty.  It didn’t work.

Cicero’s On Duties was considered pornographic and banned upon publication by the Holy Roman Emperor until someone explained to him what sex was.

William Shakespeare was a corporate composite character for the firm Thousands of Captive Monkeys Ltd., known to have tested in the low fifties with Elizabethan focus groups.