Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to observe the curvature of the human spine. Until then everyone had assumed it was straight.
Early reports of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, were covered in the New York Times by their golfing correspondent.
The historic news of the first manned powered flight by the Wright Brothers first appeared in magazine Gleanings in Bee Culture.
Dune, by Frank Herbert, the world's bestselling science fiction novel, was rejected more than 20 times before being accepted by a publisher of car manuals.
In 1900, all world's mathematicians knowledge could be written in about 80 books; today it would fill more than 100,000.
Charles Darwin's editor thought The Origin of Species was too obscure. He suggested a book about pigeons, as "everybody is interested in pigeons."
In particle physics, a "barn" is an area that covers a billionth of the cross-section of a silk fiber. It's called a barn because (in subatomic terms) it's so huge.
There is no known scientific way of predicting earthquakes. The most reliable method is to count the number of missing cats in the local paper: if it trebles, an earthquake is imminent.
Sending a man to the Moon and finding Osama Bin Laden cost the US about the same amount of time and money: ten years and $100 billion.
