As anyone who has seen this famous photograph will attest, Einstein was not lacking in a sense of humour. Among the great thinker's lesser-known papers is one based on the lyrics of 1920s novelty song 'When It's Night Time In Italy, It's Wednesday Over Here'. What started as a spoof of scientific jargon, written to amuse his pupil Cristobal Snarfi, became a month's work, as Einstein started to look at possibilities of actual logic in the nonsense lyrics of the ditty. One section of the essay, titled 'How High is up?' later became the inspiration for the dissertation of subsequent Nobel prize nominee physicist Charles Bartram Phillips.
