An apple fell on Isaac Newton's head

Explanation

This detail is a later embellishment: Newton's own account, told to his friend William Stukeley, describes him simply sitting in a contemplative mood in the garden at Woolsthorpe Manor when he saw an apple fall, without any head contact. The bonk version appears in Isaac D'Israeli's popular Curiosities of Literature, first published in 1791, more than a century after the events of 1666. That apple inspired Newton to ponder why objects fall perpendicularly toward the Earth's center, setting him on the path to the law of universal gravitation, and the original tree is still alive at Woolsthorpe Manor today, over 350 years later.