An 1874 engraving showing the probably apocryphal account of Newton's lab fire.
Diamond was, according to legend, Sir Isaac Newton's favourite dog, who, by upsetting a candle, set fire to manuscripts containing his notes on experiments conducted over the course of twenty years. According to one account, Newton is said to have exclaimed: "O Diamond, Diamond, thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done."[1] The story is largely apocryphal: according to another account, Newton simply left a window open when he went to church, and the candle was knocked over by a gust of wind.[2] Some historians claim that Newton never owned pets.[1]
This pet of Newton's was also mentioned in Thomas Carlyle's book The French Revolution: A History, employed in discussing the deathbed of Louis XV. Carlyle writes "To the eye of History many things, in that sick room of Louis, are now visible, which to the courtiers there present were invisible. For indeed it has been well said, 'in every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.' To Newton and to Newton's dog Diamond, what a different pair of Universes; while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most likely, the same!"
Nevertheless, Diamond is the subject of several anecdotes concerning Newton. In another tale, Newton is said to have claimed that the dog discovered two theorems in a single morning. He added, however, that "one had a mistake and the other had a pathological exception."[5]
1 2 Alfred Rupert Hall, Isaac Newton: Eighteenth Century Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 175. ISBN0-19-850364-4.
↑ Jason Socrates Bardi, The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz, and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Times. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006, p. 159. ISBN1-56025-706-7.
Sir Isaac Newton was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His pioneering book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics. Newton made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus, though he developed calculus years before Leibniz. He contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science.
Robert Hooke was an English polymath who was active as a physicist, astronomer, geologist, meteorologist and architect. He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665, using a compound microscope that he designed. Hooke was an impoverished scientific inquirer in young adulthood who went on to become one of the most important scientists of his time. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Hooke attained wealth and esteem by performing more than half of the property line surveys and assisting with the city's rapid reconstruction. Often vilified by writers in the centuries after his death, his reputation was restored at the end of the twentieth century and he has been called "England's Leonardo [da Vinci]".
Saint Nicholas of Myra, also known as Nicholas of Bari, was an early Christian bishop of Greek descent from the maritime city of Patara in Anatolia during the time of the Roman Empire. Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, toymakers, unmarried people, and students in various cities and countries around Europe. His reputation evolved among the pious, as was common for early Christian saints, and his legendary habit of secret gift-giving gave rise to the folklore of Santa Claus through Sinterklaas.
Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, is the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton and his family home. The orchard in the grounds is home to the famous Newton apple tree. A Grade I listed building, it is now owned by the National Trust and open to the public.
The Affair of the Diamond Necklace was an incident from 1784 to 1785 at the court of King Louis XVI of France that involved his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette.
Brook Taylor was an English mathematician and barrister best known for several results in mathematical analysis. Taylor's most famous developments are Taylor's theorem and the Taylor series, essential in the infinitesimal approach of functions in specific points.
"An eye for an eye" is a commandment found in the Book of Exodus 21:23–27 expressing the principle of reciprocal justice measure for measure. The earliest known use of the principle appears in the Code of Hammurabi, which predates the writing of the Hebrew Bible but not necessarily oral traditions.
The following article is part of a biography of Sir Isaac Newton, the English mathematician and scientist, author of the Principia. It portrays the years after Newton's birth in 1643, his education, as well as his early scientific contributions, before the writing of his main work, the Principia Mathematica, in 1685.
Beethoven is a 1992 American family comedy film, directed by Brian Levant and written by John Hughes and Amy Holden Jones. The film's story centers on a St. Bernard dog named after a German composer who finds a home with a suburban family. The film received mixed reviews from critics but was a surprise hit at the box office, earning $147.2 million worldwide. The film spawned a franchise, including a short-lived animated TV series. A direct sequel, Beethoven's 2nd, was released the following year.
An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture is a dissertation by the English mathematician and scholar Isaac Newton. This was sent in a letter to John Locke on 14 November 1690. In fact, Newton may have been in dialogue with Locke about this issue much earlier. While living in France, Locke made a journal entry, dated 20 December 1679, where he indicates that while visiting the library at Saint-Germain-des-Prés he saw:
[T]wo very old manuscripts of the New Testament, the newest of which was, as appeared by the date of it, at least 800 years old, in each of which 1 John, ch.v. ver. 7, was quite wanting, and the end of the eighth verse ran thus, "tres unum sunt;" in another old copy the seventh verse was, but with interlining; in another much more modern copy, ver. 7 was also, but differently from the old copy; and in two other old manuscripts, also, ver. 7 was quite out, but as I remember in all of them the end of the eighth verse was "tres unum sunt."
Nestlé Purina PetCare, or simply Purina, is an American subsidiary of the Swiss corporation Nestlé, based in St. Louis, Missouri. It produces and markets pet food, treats, and cat and dog litter. Some of its pet food brands include Purina Pro Plan, Purina Dog Chow, Friskies, Beneful and Purina One. The company was formed in 2001 by combining Nestlé's Friskies PetCare Company with Ralston Purina, which acquired it for $10.3 billion. As of 2012, it is the second-largest pet food company globally and the largest in the United States.
Gef, also referred to as the Talking Mongoose or the Dalby Spook, was an allegedly talking mongoose which inhabited a farmhouse owned by the Irving family, located at Cashen's Gap near the hamlet of Dalby on the Isle of Man. The story was given extensive coverage by the tabloid press in Britain in the early 1930s. The Irvings' claims gained the attention of parapsychologists and ghost hunters, such as Harry Price, Hereward Carrington, and Nandor Fodor. Some investigators of the era as well as contemporary critics have concluded that the phenomenon was a hoax that the Irving family perpetuated by using ventriloquism.
The Ingoldsby Legends is a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poems written supposedly by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of an English clergyman named Richard Harris Barham.
Snap-dragon was a parlour game popular from about the 16th century. It was played during the winter, particularly on Christmas Eve. Brandy was heated and placed in a wide shallow bowl; raisins were placed in the brandy, which was then set alight. Typically, lights were extinguished or dimmed to increase the eerie effect of the blue flames playing across the liquor. The game is described in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755) as "a play in which they catch raisins out of burning brandy and, extinguishing them by closing the mouth, eat them". According to an article in Richard Steele's Tatler magazine, "the wantonness of the thing was to see each other look like a demon, as we burnt ourselves, and snatched out the fruit". Snap-dragon was played in England, Canada, and the United States, but there is insufficient evidence of the practice in Scotland or other countries.
Isaac Newton was considered an insightful and erudite theologian by his Protestant contemporaries. He wrote many works that would now be classified as occult studies, and he wrote religious tracts that dealt with the literal interpretation of the Bible. He kept his heretical beliefs private.
Craigenputtock is an estate in Scotland where Thomas Carlyle lived from 1828 to 1834. He wrote several of his early works there, including Sartor Resartus.
A pet door or pet flap is a small opening to allow pets to enter and exit a building on their own without needing a human to open the door. Originally simple holes, the modern form is a hinged and often spring-loaded panel or flexible flap, and some are electronically controlled. They offer a degree of protection against wind, rain, and larger-bodied intruders entering the dwelling. Similar hatches can let dogs through fences at stiles. A related concept is the pet gate, which is easy for humans to open but acts as a secure pet barrier.
"The pot calling the kettle black" is a proverbial idiom that may be of Spanish origin, of which English versions began to appear in the first half of the 17th century. It means a situation in which somebody accuses someone else of a fault which the accuser shares, and therefore is an example of psychological projection, or hypocrisy. Use of the expression to discredit or deflect a claim of wrongdoing by attacking the originator of the claim for their own similar behaviour is the tu quoque logical fallacy.
Edmund Stone was an autodidact Scottish mathematician who lived in London and primarily worked as an editor of mathematical and scientific texts and translator from French and Latin into English. He is especially known for his translations of Nicholas Bion's Mathematical Instruments and the Marquis de l'Hospital's Analyse des Infiniment Petits (1730), and for his New Mathematical Dictionary. Stone was celebrated for having risen from uneducated gardener's son to accomplished scholar.
The first reflecting telescope built by Sir Isaac Newton in 1668 is a landmark in the history of telescopes, being the first known successful reflecting telescope. It was the prototype for a design that later came to be called the Newtonian telescope. There were some early prototypes and also modern replicas of this design.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
