Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a watchmaker, 240 years ago invented a robot that could write, and the parts could be interchanged to say whatever you want.
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In 1918, a homing pigeon saved over 190 American soldiers by delivering a message to nearby support despite having been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, covered in blood, and with a leg hanging on by just a tendon.
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Astronomer Percival Lowell believed that he was the first person to observe canals on Venus, but because of a faulty adjustment of the eyepiece on his telescope, he was in fact looking at the blood vessels in his own eye.
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Scientists are excavating the ruins of a major civilization which pre-dates both the pyramids and Stonehenge by over 7,000 years. In 15 years, they have uncovered only about 5% of the site.
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Leonardo Da Vinci loved animals so much that he used to buy caged animals at the market just to set them free.
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Beethoven, was told by a music teacher that he had no talent for music. In fact, this teacher once remarked, “As a composer he is hopeless.”
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The ‘@’ sign is centuries old, and was used in Europe to denote a unit of weight (the “arroba”) equivalent to 25 lbs.
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