Back to school - another day, another dollar. Wednesdays aren't too bad as I have no contact whatsoever with the class from hell, Nine Zed Are, so this is as good a start as can be wished. So, in other times, what happened on this day?
I've always found it rather odd that Isaac Newton, who was born on this day 369 years ago, should be regarded as one of the most brilliant minds in history. All right, he was passably competent at mathematics and gravitational apples, but his chemistry was far below that of the average Year 7 kid. He believed in elixirs of life, alchemists' stones and long-leggity beasties. His Principia Mathematica has been hailed as one of the Most Important Books of All Time - which is equally odd because it was written in Latin and only about six people in Britain at the time could read it.
Today, nobody can.
P.S, (That's Post Scriptum to you) this was also the day another great scientist, Galileo Galilei died. But curiously, he and Newton never met.
In other news, Jakob Grimm, one of the famous Brothers, was born in 1785. The importance of these guys is that their collection of folk tales told it like it was - a nasty world of rape, murder and terrifying demons. This is what kids want to read about - not the schmaltzy stuff of Mother Goose and Walt Disney.
