Thomas Macaulay was a child prodigy — and, one imagines, a trial to his parents:

• On seeing a chimney as a toddler, he asked his father, “Is that hell?”
• At 3 his mother told him he must learn to study without his bread and butter. He said, “Yes, mama, industry shall be my bread and attention my butter.”
• When he was 4 years old a servant spilled hot coffee on his legs; when the hostess inquired how he was feeling, he said, “Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.”
• When a housemaid threw away some oyster shells he’d been using to fence a garden plot, he marched into the drawing room and said, “Cursed be Sally, for it is written, ‘Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor’s landmark.'”

Reputedly his great gifts stayed with him throughout his life: As an old man he recited two poems he hadn’t seen since age 13.