Having recently read a bit of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque cycle, I got chills reading that a long-lost manuscript of the Royal Society’s minutes in Robert Hookes’ handwriting has been found in a cupboard in Hampshire in the UK.
The notes describe in detail some of the most astounding and outlandish scientific thinking from meetings of the society between 1661 to 1682. There is the very earliest work with microscopes, confirming the first sightings of sperm and micro-organisms. There is correspondence with Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Christopher Wren over the nature of gravity, with the latter’s proposal to fire bullets into the air to see where they might drop. And there is a page that lays to rest the bitter controversy over who designed the watch that would eventually lead to the first measurements of longitude.
How cool is that?