In 1913, the largely self-taught Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan mailed 120 of his theorems to three different British mathematicians; only one, G.H.Hardy, recognized the brilliance of these theorems, but thanks to Hardy’s recognition, Ramanujan was eventually elected to the Royal Society of London.

Unlike the virginal, whose single set of strings runs parallel to the front edge of the instrument, the harpsichord’s several sets of strings are placed at right angles to its front edge. 

Air traffic routes over the North Pole are currently used by only two or three planes a day, but it was found by a joint Canadian-Russian study to be both feasible as well as desirable if those routes are opened to thousands more commercial planes a year.

The widely accepted big-bang theory holds that the universe began in an explosive instant 10 to 20 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since.

Developed by Pennsylvania's Palatine Germans about 1750, Conestoga wagons, with high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie and they had a floor curved upward on either end so as to prevent cargo from shifting on steep grades.

Once numbering in the millions worldwide, it is estimated that the wolf has declined to 200,000 in 57 countries, some 11,000 of them to be found in the lower 48 United States and Alaska.

The type of behavior exhibited when an animal recognizes itself in a mirror comes within the domain of "theory of mind," thus is best studied as part of the field of animal cognition.

By devising an instrument made from a rod, wire, and lead balls, and employing uncommonly precise measurements, in 1797-1798 Henry Cavendish's apparatus enabled him to arrive at an astonishingly accurate figure for the weight of the earth.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was making the case for women's equality long before the cause had a name: Born in the mid-seventeenth century in San Miguel Nepantla, Mexico, the convent was the perfect environment for Sor Juana to pursue intellectual pursuits, achieving renown as a mathematician, poet, philosopher, and playwright.

Despite Japan's relative isolation from world trade at the time, the prolonged peace during the Tokugawa shogunate produced an almost explosive expansion of commerce.