Sometimes our best ideas come when we least expect them. For Greek mathematician Archimedes, this happened during a trip to the local baths. The king of Syracuse had put him in charge of finding out how to detect fraud in the manufacture of a golden crown. The king suspected his goldsmith was leaving out some of the gold and substituting it with silver.
Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining
In 1606, the bubonic plague returned to London. Two years earlier, it had killed 30,000 of its inhabitants. The plague hit like a hammer that winter. This time the city took no chances. It shut down on a massive scale. All the theaters closed. This was a bitter blow for playwrights and actors. Out of work and under house arrest, they had little to do but twiddle their thumbs and play the waiting game.