--- title: Explorers, scientists and inventors — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Explorers, scientists and inventors», a lesson of the myths course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: We love a story with one lone hero and one magic moment: an apple bonks Newton on the head, Edison alone lights up the world, a kite get --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Myths](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/) / Explorers, scientists and inventors # Explorers, scientists and inventors Lesson 20 of the myths course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/). - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/2/) — We love a story with one lone hero and one magic moment: an apple bonks Newton on the head, Edison alone lights up the world, a kite gets hit by lightning. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/3/) — Real discovery is slower and shared. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/4/) — Most big ideas were built by many people over many years: someone made the first try, others improved it, and one name got famous because it made a good story or sold well. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/5/) — Educated Europeans knew the Earth was round two thousand years before Columbus; the argument was about how BIG it was, and Columbus got that badly wrong. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/6/) — To check a hero story, ask "who did this before?" and "who helped?"; the answer usually makes the hero more human, not less great. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/7/) — Educated people in Europe knew the Earth was round since ancient Greek times; Eratosthenes estimated its size more than 2,200 years ago. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/8/) — Columbus's critics argued that the Earth was much bigger than he claimed, and they were right; he was sailing west to reach Asia, which was far too far for his ships' food and water, and he only survived because the Americas lay in the way. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/9/) — The idea that people in Columbus's time thought the Earth was flat was spread in the 1800s, partly by a popular book by Washington Irving. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/10/) — Einstein did not fail maths; he was very good at it as a boy, and the myth may come from a failed entrance exam he took two years early, where he did well in maths and physics but not in other subjects. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/11/) — Newton said seeing an apple fall from a tree helped him think about gravity; there is no evidence it hit him on the head. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/12/) — Many inventors made electric light bulbs before Edison, including Joseph Swan in England; Edison's team at Menlo Park made a long-lasting, practical bulb and a whole system to power it. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/13/) — Indigenous peoples (the first peoples of a land), millions of them, had lived in the Americas for many thousands of years before Columbus, and Norse sailors led by Leif Erikson reached North America around the year 1000. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/14/) — Columbus first landed in the Bahamas in 1492 and never reached the land that is now the United States. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/15/) — The telescope was invented in the Netherlands in 1608; Galileo built better ones and in 1609 and 1610 turned them to the sky, discovering Jupiter's moons. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/16/) — Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896; Marie Curie named it, studied it, and with Pierre Curie discovered polonium and radium; she won two Nobel Prizes. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/17/) — In Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment, reported in 1752, the kite collected electric charge from storm clouds; he was not struck by lightning, which would very likely have killed him, and some historians doubt the experiment happened as told. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/18/) — Walt Disney was not frozen; he was cremated (his body was burned to ashes, as many families choose) after he died in 1966. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/20-explorers-scientists-and-inventors/19/) — The Wright brothers made the first powered, controlled, sustained (kept going, not just a hop) flight in an aeroplane in 1903; people had already flown in hot-air balloons since 1783 and in gliders. - ← previous: [Kings, queens and emperors](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/19-kings-queens-and-emperors/) - next →: [Ancient times and famous stories](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/21-ancient-times-and-famous-stories/) - ↑ back to [Myths](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/)