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today is venerated as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived --
the father of classical mechanics and co-creator of calculus. But in his
day, Newton was known for many things, including some very bizarre
behavior and a personality that might be considered quirky at best.
Consider these 10 fascinating facts about Newton:
Fact #1: Newton was a big-time sinner. At least he thought he was. At the tender age of 19, the future mathematician committed to paper a list of 48 sins
of which he was guilty. Transgressions ranged from "peevishness" at his
mother to "having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese." He
also confessed to "eating an apple at Thy house," though he gave no
word as to whether it was THE apple (see #9 below).
Fact #2: He stuck a needle in his eye socket -- on purpose.
In Newton's time little was known about the properties of light. In
fact, people weren't even sure whether the eye created light or
collected it, James
Gleick, author of a 2003 biography of Newton, told
HuffPost Science in a telephone interview. Curious, Newton embarked on
his own detailed study of optics -- and he wasn't above acting as his
own guinea pig, probing his eye with a blunt needle known as a bodkin.
As he wrote in his journal:
I tooke a bodkine gh & put it betwixt my eye & [the]
bone as neare to [the] backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my
eye [with the] end of it (so as to make [the] curvature a, bcdef in my
eye) there appeared severall white darke & coloured circles...
