Et tu Brutus
Why did Shakespeare write this famous line? Well, first of all Shakespeare wrote it in Latin, which translates to “Even you, Brutus?” which isn’t so dramatic as “et tu Brutus”, so it was obviously written for effect. In the play, Caesar utters these words as he is being stabbed to death, having recognized his friend, […]
A man looks for a cure for Malaria, but finds ….
I wonder how often does this happens, you start looking for something and find something totally different? It happened to William Perking who by mistake found the first synthetic organic dye he discovered, mauveine, a colour we now call Mauve. In 1856 William Perkin started looking for a cure for malaria. He was an 18-year-old […]
A novel way to invent
On September 10th 1846 Elias Howe Jr was granted a patent for the sewing machine. However, I am fascinated by the story he told of how he came up with the invention. He claimed it came to him in a dream! Basically, he dreamed he was building a sewing machine for a savage king in […]
Would you fill a small wooden box with paper and light it!
Well, that is exactly what Joseph Montgolfier did, and it led to him, with his brother, Étienne Montgolfier, coming up with the first air balloon, which in turn led to the first untethered manned hot-air balloon flight by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes on November 21, 1783, in Paris, France, in a balloon created by the Montgolfier […]