In a few days time the Space Shuttle Atlantis will take off for space carrying, amongst other tings, a sliver of the tree Isaac Newton was sitting under as he felt the impact of gravity first hand.
Ironically British Astronaut Piers Sellers will be taking this item into space.
"I'll take it up into orbit and let it float around a bit, which will confuse Isaac," Sellers said in an interview with The Associated Press earlier this week.
"After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank tea, under the shade of some apple trees. He told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself." Writes William Stukeley, one of Newton’s first biographers.
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