House flies can carry more than 100 different pathogens, potentially fatal to humans, making them more deadly than rattlesnakes or man-eating sharks.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is about as big as Earth. The hurricane-like storm is at least 300 years old.

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe.

Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer.

During the 1840s, Scotsman Alexander Bain invented a primitive fax machine based on chemical technology. He used a clock to synchronise the movement of two pendulums for line-by-line scanning of a message. For transmission, Bain applied metal pins arranged on a cylinder made of insulating material. An electric probe that transmitted on-off pulses then scanned the pins. The message was reproduced at the receiving station on electrochemically sensitive paper.

Max Planck made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame as a physicist rests primarily on his role as an originator of quantum theory, which revolutionized human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes.

Makemake was discovered in 2005 by Michael E. Brown and recognized as a dwarf planet by the IAU in 2008. Its name derives from the god of fertility in the mythology of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island.

Michael S. Turner helped establish the interdisciplinary field that combines cosmology and elementary particle physics to understand the origin and evolution of the Universe. His research focuses on the earliest moments of creation, and he has made contributions to inflationary cosmology, particle dark matter and structure formation, the theory of big bang nucleosynthesis, and the nature of dark energy.

Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel. She also won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.

The first fire extinguisher of which there is any record was patented in England in 1723 by Ambrose Godfrey, a celebrated chemist at that time. It consisted of a cask of fire-extinguishing liquid containing a pewter chamber of gunpowder. This was connected with a system of fuses which were ignited, exploding the gunpowder and scattering the solution.