The Greatest Discoveries. Part 1

Welcome to this new series of some of the greatest discoveries.
I have previously written about some of the greatest inventions of all time and got good response from you, so I decided to start a new series about some of the biggest discoveries of all time.

This is the first part of the series and I will be covering 4-5 discoveries in each post.

According to Wikipedia

Discovery is the act of detecting something new, or something "old" that had been unrecognized as meaningful. With reference to sciences and academic disciplines, discovery is the observation of new phenomena, new actions, or new events and providing new reasoning to explain the knowledge gathered through such observations with previously acquired knowledge from abstract thought and everyday experiences. A discovery may sometimes be based on earlier discoveries, collaborations, or ideas. Some discoveries represent a radical breakthrough in knowledge or technology.

The discoveries started when man set foot on this planet earth and with time we have witnessed a huge number of discoveries till date that have had an impact on our lives.
If it were not for some of the important discoveries we would have been lagging far behind.

Here is a list of some of the greatest discoveries :

Fire

Fire is one of the earliest discoveries and is credited to early humans called homo erectus during the early stages of stone age.

It is said that man struck two stones with each other and there was a spark which led to the discovery of fire, however it is next to impossible to know exactly how fire was discovered and controlled.
The controlled use of fire is believed to have occured about a million years ago.

Fire over the years has been used for lighting purposes during the night, to keep warm and most importantly for cooking purposes, etc.
Even in today's world we can't imagine life without it.

Round Earth

It was during the 3rd century B.C when Hellinistric Astronomy developed the the spherical shape of earth by a physical model although the early speculations can be traced back to 6th century B.C in Greek philosophy where the concept was first introduced.

This paradigm was gradually adopted by most people during the middle ages.
Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano's achieved the practical demonstration of the spherical sphere of earth during 1519-1522.

Prior to the discovery of spherical earth, people believed that the earth was flat and the sailors feared that if they reach the end of the earth, they will fall.
With the discovery of spherical earth, this myth was busted and sailors no longer feared their voyages.

Oxygen

A highly reactive non metal and an oxidising agent which readily forms oxides upon reaction with other metals, oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley and Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1772 independently.
They produced oxygen by heating mercuric oxide with some nitrates.
Both of them called the gas produced by different names, Priestley called it 'dephlogisticated gas' while Scheele called it 'fire air'.
The name 'oxygen' was given by Antoine Lavoisier and he was able to show that oxygen supported animal respiration.

Gravity

One of the greatest scientists of all time Issac Newton discovered gravity and his law of gravitation is perhaps his most important discovery.
Issac Newton was an English mathematician and physicist who has numerous contributions in science.
He saw an apple falling from a tree and that lead to the discovery of gravity.

After the discovery of gravity, people knew why things fall down instead of going up and why do celestial bodies revolve around the earth.

Stay tuned for the next part

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Image source : Pixabay.