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You think you know, Isaac Newton, the guy who got bonked on the head with an apple, invents gravity, becomes the father of calculus. But that is the version that your textbooks kind of just tell you, because the real Isaac Newton was sort of insane. We're talking about a man who spent more time trying to summon ancient secrets and reading the Bible and trying to turn lead into gold than actually doing physics. I mean, he literally jammed a needle behind his own eyeball just to see what happened. He used Bible math to predict the end of the world. He actually founded the first intelligence agency, which, when he was in charge of the mint in London. Newton may have been a genius, but he was also one of the most obsessive, secretive, and downright weirdest men in history. And today's story isn't just about a scientist. It's about a man who believed he was chosen by God to unlock the secrets of the universe. Maybe even, like, Jesus himself. Anyway, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to History Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent, where every single week, we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world, from all time, throughout history. As always, I'm joined by a dear friend of mine, my good friend Gabrielle Reyes. What's up, Gabe? All right, all right, all right, all right. We don't have time to be chatting about the weekend and what you did and didn't do, because we are going to dive in to the most fascinating man, maybe, in all of science. I mean, I am truly just enamored with Isaac Newton. I find him to be very mysterious, and there are so many layers to his personality and so many things that he's contributed to the world, but also so many different reasons why he was doing them. So you might think that, you know, Isaac Newton, right? This is the guy that, you know, revolutionizes physics, develops these three laws of motion. And what most people don't know about Newton is that he was also a kind of living just a secret double life as an alchemist or a theologian. And when I say secret, I mean pretty secret. I mean, this guy was pretty paranoid about people finding out about his work, that he was using fake names, and he would write things in, like, a coded cipher. And when he died, his family literally stamped his alchemy papers with the he quotes not fit to be printed. And here's what blew my mind. That Newton didn't just, like, dabble in alchemy or, you know, theology as, like, a side Hobby. He was obsessed. And we're talking, I mean, over 1 million words of alchemical writing. And that's more than he wrote about physics and mathematics combined. The man who gave us the laws of motion spent more time writing about, you know, turning lead into gold or other types of cryptic sort of, you know, ethereal occult works than ever trying to explain the true, you know, scientific nature of physics. So picture Newton's laboratory for a second, right? You walk in and it's not what you would expect to find from the father of modern sciences. There are massive furnaces and tables covered in glassware and bubbling chemicals. And this isn't just a physics lab. It's. It kind of almost looks like this medieval, like wizard workshop. And that's basically what it is. I mean, Newton was chasing the ultimate prize in alchemy. This is the philosopher's stone. Now if you only know this from like Harry Potter, let me tell you what alchemists actually believed that they were trying to do. These philosopher's stone wasn't just supposed to turn cheap metals into gold, though. That was definitely part of the appeal. It was supposed to be able to be the key to eternal life, basically capable of curing any disease and granting immortality to whomever possessed it. And think about that for a moment. The same guy who figured that gravity follows mathematical laws was also convinced that he could create a magical rock or something that would give him sort of immutable powers. But here's the thing that makes Newton different from every other alchemist of his time. He approached it with the same methodical, obsessive precision that he brought to everything else. One of his favorite experiments was called Diana's tree. It's actually pretty incredible when you see it happen. Newton would take an amalgam of silver and mercury and drop it into a solution of nitric acid with dissolved silver. Over the next few days, something that looked absolutely magical occurs. Tiny twig like branches of solid silver start growing upwards from the bottom, creating what basically looks like a metallic tree. Now we understand today that this is just basic chemistry. And a lot of the early, you know, alchemy and alchemical work was basically the precursors to what we know as chemistry. Now the silver is crystallizing out of a solution in this dentric pattern. But to Newton, this was mind blowing evidence that metals were potentially alive. And he genuinely believed that silver could grow like a plant. And that if silver can grow, then maybe all metals had some kind of life force that could be manipulated. And if you could figure out how to control that Life force. Maybe you could create gold. The coolest part is how Newton documented all of this. I mean, he had his own form of shorthand, which is where you write in different signs instead of writing out the whole word. So instead of writing Mercury, he'd use symbols or call it Mercury's Caducean rod. Lead became Saturn, and silver was Diana. But the weirdest codes were the ones that he invented himself. Things like green lion or Neptune's trident that modern researchers are still trying to decode. And this wasn't just Newton being dramatic. He had to write in code, because getting caught doing alchemy could potentially destroy his career. In 17th century England, alchemy sort of occupied this kind of gray area between science and witchcraft, and people weren't really sure what it was doing, but they knew that it was doing something. And as a result, the government authority as well as the church was quite suspicious. Universities frowned upon it. And if the wrong people decided that you were practicing something too close to sorcery, you could find yourself in serious trouble. So Newton swore these things to secrecy. He'd even used different handwriting styles, false names, and even had his assistant copy things out so that the writing couldn't be traced back to him. When he ordered the alchemical equipment or rare chemicals, he'd have them sent to a fake address. But the most incredible thing about Newton's alchemical obsession was that he never saw it as separate from the legitimate science. If anything, it was actually in tandem with it. To him, studying gravity and, you know, trying to find or create this philosopher's stone were just different aspects of the same thing, trying to understand how God had designed the universe to work. So for Newton, he believed that the same divine intelligence that created mathematics and mathematical laws that governed planetary motion had also inside of it, possess the hidden secrets in these chemical processes. If you could decode those secrets, you might understand not just how to make gold, but how literally the universe fits together at large. And his experiments with prisms and light, the work that led to his revolutionary understanding of optics, happened right alongside his attempts to transmute metals. In fact, some historians think his optical discoveries might have actually come from his alchemical work. When you're spending hours watching chemical reactions change colors and heating different metals to see how they glow and observing how various substances interact with light, you're going to notice things about the nature of light itself. And this is what made Newton so peculiar and so brilliant. He refused to accept that there were limits between what can be understood or the boundaries between different types of knowledge. To Him. If it existed within the natural world, Newton believed that it could be figured out whether it was the orbit of planets or planets potentially creating gold from lead. I mean, think about it. Newton is on the forefront of chemistry and calculus and at the same time is also fascinated with theology. And if all of these things are existing simultaneously, they all are working together, all by some original author, God himself. And that obsessive boundary crossing approach to understanding everything is exactly what led him to some of his more strange experiments. What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick because you own a small business or maybe you work for a small business and I am about to make your life so much easier. Let's say hypothetically, you own a little, you know, furniture business, right? And you're struggling to keep track of the raw materials, the production schedule, invoicing clients, all that stuff. Well, that's why I want to tell you about Odoo. Okay? Because with Odoo, it's an all in one business platform that streamlines everything. Now you have inventory management, you have manufacturing, you have accounting apps that will make everything so simple. So now if you have a small business, you can monitor the inventory in real time so schedule productions calls more effectively. And you can send invoices automatically, all from one platform. 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Let's get back to the show. And it's important to understand this about Newton. He didn't do anything halfway when he Got interested in something, he dove in all the way with the same intensity, and whether that was, you know, planetary motion or decoding ancient prophecies of the Bible. And oh boy, did he get interested in the Bible. Newton didn't just read scripture. He dissected it, analyzed it, and treated it like a massive puzzle that contained the hidden mathematical truths about humanity itself. The first thing he did, he taught himself Hebrew. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to read the Old Testament in its original language. Newton was convinced that centuries of translations had corrupted the true meaning of these biblical prophecies. So he decided to go straight to the source. Imagine spending years learning an ancient language just so you could check if the English translation was accurate. That is the kind of guy that Newton was. And once Newton got his hands on the Hebrew texts, he went wild with the analysis. He filled his personal Bible with over 500 notes where he would cross reference different, pass and calculate timelines and look for mathematical patterns like he was trying to crack a cipher. But Newton's biblical obsession was actually part of something a lot bigger. You see, Newton was completely convinced that ancient civilizations had figured out cosmic secrets that modern people just lost. And so he was obsessed with what scholars call hermeticism, basically the idea that the ancient Egyptians, the builders of Solomon's temple and other early cultures had possessed knowledge about how the universe really worked. And that this wisdom had been either lost to time or deliberately hidden in cryptic symbols and mysterious texts. And this is where we get Newton spending enormous amounts of time studying ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, trying to decode what he thought were scientific formulas disguised as religious symbols. And he was convinced that if you could crack these ancient codes, you could unlock everything. And his biggest obsession was the Temple of Solomon. Newton believed that the architectural measurements and design of this ancient temple was, weren't just random. They were a blueprint for understanding the cosmos and God himself. He spent years trying to reconstruct the exact dimensions and lay out the temple, convinced that Solomon had encoded the secrets of the universe into the physical structure. Here you can actually see an image of Newton's original temple of Solomon and basically what he figured it could look like. So when Newton was analyzing biblical prophecies, he's not just looking for religious meaning. He's trying to uncover the scientific knowledge within it. Newton also believed that God had these mathematical prophecies throughout the Bible, specifically in the books of Daniel and Revelation to him. Again, these weren't just spiritual writings. They are instruction manuals for understanding when and how history would unfold. So Newton did what he always did when faced with this puzzle. He applied math. He focused on specific time spans mentioned in the prophecy, like 1260 days, 1290 days, 2,300 days, and used something called the day year principle. That meant that he interpreted each day in prophecy as representing an actual year in real time. And here's basically how he believed that it all worked out. Newton believed a key event happened in the year 800 AD when Charlemagne was crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor. He saw this as the beginning of the a corrupt religious empire as described in Daniel's visions. And from there, he added the prophetic period of 1260 years to 800 AD, landing on the year 2060. But here's what sets Newton apart from the usual doomsday crowd. He didn't claim that the world would end in 2060. Instead, he said that it wouldn't end before 2060. That might seem like a small difference, but it reveals how Newton's scientific mindset guided his religious beliefs. He wasn't preaching fear. He was trying to calculate the divine plan as precisely as he could could. He actually wrote about why he was being so cautious. Newton said that he wasn't trying to predict exactly when the end would come, but he wrote and said that he wanted to, quote, put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who were frequently predicting the time of the end and by doing so bring these sacred prophecies into discredit as often as their predictions fail. Think about that. Newton was basically saying, listen, all these other people are making wild claims about the Bible and about the Apocalypse and they're making Christianity look bad and they're kind of discrediting the Bible when their dates don't actually pan out. So I'm going to use actual math to give you a potential reasonable early possible date. So he's basically saying any prophecy before 2060 is basically bunk. And Newton's idea of the end wasn't what you might expect either. He's not predicting fire and brimstone or the destruction of Earth itself. Instead, he believed 2060 would mark the beginning of transformation, the establishment of what he called God's perfect kingdom on Earth. To him, this isn't about ending the world, but rather a rebirth or a fixing of the world. See, Newton had become convinced that Christianity had been corrupted over centuries, starting around the time of Emperor Constantine of the 4th century. He believed that what most people considered orthodox Christianity was actually a distortion of the original faith. So his 2060 prediction isn't a wrath, but rather a Divine correction. And here's what Newton's biblical studies get really interesting and borderline dangerous because all this research led him to some conclusions about Christianity that if they had become public, would would have landed him in prison or potentially worse. Newton rejected the Trinity. If you're not familiar with Christian theology, the Trinity is pretty much the cornerstone of mainstream Christianity. It is this belief that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, but one divine essence. So for most Christians, denying the Trinity is like denying Christianity itself that Jesus Christ is fully God and human. But God the Father is also God and the Holy Spirit is also God. And they exist separately but together form one singular divine end entity. But to Newton, after years of studying early Christian texts and analyzing Scripture, he became convinced that the Trinity was a later addition to Christian doctrine, not a part of the original Christian faith. He believed that Jesus was divine, but not equal to God the Father. And this was a position that was very similar to an early church blasphemy known as Arianism, a belief system named after the early Christian priest Arius. Arianism taught that Jesus was created by God and therefore not co eternal or equal to him. And the Church declared this heretical at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. in Newton's time, being an Aryan wasn't just religiously controversial, it was legally dangerous. England at the time had laws against heresy, and Newton could have lost his university position or been imprisoned or potentially even been executed had his beliefs become public. So he did what he always did with secret knowledge. He kept it completely secret. And this created an incredible tension in Newton's life. Here is this guy who held one of the most prestigious academic positions in England. I mean, he was adored and revered across all of England and Western Europe, and he was celebrated as a pillar of the, you know, natural philosophy world. But he simultaneously believed that the Church of England, the Church he was supposed to support, was teaching fundamental lies about the nature of God himself. Newton had to take an oath affirming his belief in the 39 articles of the Anglican Church to keep his position at Cambridge. But he privately rejected the core doctrines and the stress of living this double life of being celebrated for his public work while hiding beliefs that could destroy him, probably contributed to his paranoia and much of his social isolation that marked his later years. So at this point, we've established that Newton was willing to risk his career and his freedom to pursue this forbidden knowledge. But it turns out Newton was willing to risk something even more precious, even his own body. Let me paint you a picture of what actually happened. Newton is in his room at Cambridge sometime around 1665, in the middle of his optical research. He's trying to figure out whether the colors that we see come from light itself or from something happening inside our eyes. So he decides the best way to test this is to physically alter the shape of his own eyeball. To see what happens, Newton takes what's called a bodkin, basically a sewing needle about the size of a pencil, and he slides it between his eyeball and the bone socket behind his eye, Then presses the needle against the back of his eyeball to change the shape. Now, you'd think anyone doing this would be screaming in pain or would have passed out immediately, but not our boy Isaac Newton. Instead, Newton is calmly taking notes on what he's seeing, and he's drawing detailed diagrams of all the colored circles and weird patterns that appear in his vision, While this sewing needle is literally pressing against his eye. In his notebook, he writes about seeing several white, dark, and colored circles that would get brighter when he moved the needle around and would fade when he held everything still. And the really crazy part is that this wasn't some one time experiment. This was a part of Newton's systematic approach to understanding vision. He did this experiment multiple times, trying different pressures and angles, all while carefully documenting the results. And the eye experiment wasn't even his most dangerous self experiment. Newton had this thing where he'd stare directly at the sun to study how light and color worked. Not for a few seconds. We're talking long enough to seriously damage his eyesight. He'd look at the sun until he couldn't see anything else, and then lock himself in a dark room, waiting for his vision to recover. On one occasion, Newton stared at the sun so long that he had to sit in complete darkness for three days before he could see normally again. And what does he do during those three days? He takes notes on how his vision gradually returns. And then there's this habit of tasting and smelling every chemical that he came across in his laboratory. Remember in the 1600s, there's no safety protocols really, or warning labels or really understanding of toxic exposure. And Newton would literally taste mercury or smell deadly fumes or handle corrosive substances with his bare hands, all in the name of understanding their properties. And speaking of mercury, this is where Newton's story takes a crazy turn. Because of all those years of alchemical experiments, Breathing mercury vapor and handling liquid mercury directly. It may have been slowly poisoning him. In 1979, scientists got a hold of some of the strands of Newton's hair that had been preserved by his family for centuries. And when they tested it, they found mercury levels that were 40 times higher than normal. Now, here's the thing with mercury poisoning. It doesn't just affect your body. It messes with your brain in very specific ways. It causes paranoia and mood swings and social withdrawal and erratic behavior. And if you look at Newton's personality, especially as he got older, those symptoms seem to match up perfectly. In 1693, Newton had what can only be described as a mental breakdown. He accused his friends of betraying him, and he wrote paranoid letters claiming that people were plotting against him, and he couldn't sleep for weeks on end. He became convinced that philosopher John Locke and astronomer Christian Huygens were trying to embroil him with women and destroy his reputation. Newton wrote to Locke and said, being of the opinion that you endeavored to embroil me with women and by other means, I was so much affected with it as that when one told me you were sickly and you would not live, I answered that it were better if you were dead. He later apologized to Locke in another letter, which suggests that he regained some composure after the episode. But it remains one of the most telling examples of how Newton's genius was also accompanied by some serious emotional and psychological struggles. And the paranoia only got worse over time. Newton became famous for holding grudges that lasted decades. If someone criticized his work or questioned his theories, Newton would spend years plotting ways to destroy their reputation. He'd write these scathing attacks and lobby against their appointments and basically dedicate enormous amounts of mental energy to getting revenge on people who had crossed him. And Newton's social life at this point completely fell apart. He rarely spoke to people outside of work. He would forget to eat meals because he was so absorbed in his projects. And his friends described him as impossible to have a normal conversation with. His housekeeper later said that she would often have to remind him to eat and that she'd frequently find plates of untouched food in his room for days on end after she'd brought them. Newton would get so focused on a problem that he would literally forget that his body needed food. But here's what's really fascinating about all of this. Even as Newton's mental state was deteriorating, and even as the mercury poisoning was making him increasingly paranoid and antisocial, it seems as though his intellectual capabilities remained razor sharp. He could still solve mathematical problems that stumped everyone else, and he could still conduct these brilliant experiments, and he could still even analyze complex data with perfect clarity. And when Newton finally left academia and took a government job, he brought that same obsessive, paranoid energy into hunting down ruthless criminals. In 1969, Newton's buddy Charles Montague hooked him up with a job as the warden of the Royal Mint. It was supposed to be an easy government gig, right? Good pay, not much work. And the role was mostly for show back then. You'd show up every now and again, check that the coins were getting made and basically collect your payment. And within weeks of starting the job, Newton discovered something that horrified him. The English economy was being destroyed by counterfeiters. We're talking about a scale of fraud that's kind of hard to imagine by today's standards. But by Newton's calculations, one out of every five coins circulating in England was faked. The entire monetary system was on the verge of collapse and no one seemed to be doing anything about it. So Newton did what Newton always does when faced with a problem. He became obsessed. But this time, instead of studying planetary motion or biblical prophecies, he was studying criminals. He studied the techniques that counterfeiters used and analyzed their materials and mapped out their networks of distribution. But unlike his previous obsessions, this one involved actual human beings who could fight back. So Newton went undercover. He'd dress up as a rough tavern man, you know, with his messed up hair, and he would spend hours in criminal hangouts and bars in London just listening to conversations and gathering information. And he even hired a network of informants, people like thieves and pickpockets and small time criminals who were willing to rat out other guys in exchange for money or reduce their sentences. He learned the slang, understood the hierarchy of criminal organizations, and basically became an expert in the London underworld. But Newton's real genius was in building cases. He didn't just want to catch counterfeiters, he wanted to destroy them so completely that no one else would dare try. So he'd spent months gathering evidence, tracking down witnesses, and building prosecutions that were absolutely airtight. Newton personally conducted over 100 cross examinations of witnesses, informers and suspects. He'd visit notorious Newgate Prison and would regularly sit in these horrible rat infested cells for hours at a time, interrogating prisoners and slowly piecing together the details of counterfeiting operation. And here's where Newton's increasingly paranoid personality actually was a massive advantage. His natural suspicion and his obsessive attention detail made him incredibly good at spotting lies and inconsistencies in people's stories. Criminals who thought that they could outsmart this guy quickly discovered that they couldn't and this is where things get a bit dark. Newton gathered evidence to successfully prosecute 28 counterfeiters. Almost all of them ended up on the gallows. In Newton's time, counterfeiting wasn't just a crime, it was treason against the Crown and punishable by being hung or drawn and quartered. Now, here's something that really shows you how Newton's mind worked. He privately opposed the death penalty. In his personal writings, he expressed doubts about whether the state should be executing people at all. But when it came to counterfeiters, Newton showed absolutely no mercy. He saw them as threats to the fundamental order of society, and he was willing to send them to their deaths in order to protect that order. But Newton's biggest challenge came in the form of William Shaloner, who was basically the master criminal of this era. Shaloner had started out at the bottom of the crime ladder, selling some fake documents and some small time scams. But he was brilliant and charismatic and had figured out how to counterfeit not just coins, but early forms of paper money and even lottery tickets. Challoner had become incredibly wealthy from his counterfeiting operation, and he lived in a mansion and rode in fancy carriages and presented himself to London society as a respectable gentleman. But what really got under Newton's skin was that Challoner had the audacity to publicly challenge him. You see, he actually published pamphlets claiming that he could solve England's counterfeiting problem better than Newton could, and accused Newton of being incompetent at his job and possibly even corrupt. And this is exactly the wrong thing to do with a guy like Isaac Newton. Remember, this is a guy who held grudges for decades and became obsessed with destroying anyone who questioned his abilities. And Shaloner had just made himself Newton's number one target. So Newton spent the next 18 months going all in on taking down William Shaloner. He flipped all of his friends into informants, hunted down his suppliers, and built a rock solid case that mapped out every part of this guy's counterfeiting operation for over a year. It was a full on cat and mouse game. Challoner kept on trying to charm Parliament, acting like he was the answer to England's counterfeiting crisis. I mean, it's a pretty good scheme, right? You create the counterfeiting problem and then you offer the government to solve it. And Newton was infuriated, but all the while stayed quiet, stacking up evidence to prove that Challoner was actually the mastermind behind it all. Though Newton rarely showed emotion, reports and writing suggested that he felt a deep sense of satisfaction and vindication after Challenger's execution. To him, this wasn't just about punishment. It was about restoring order, protecting the economy, and defeating someone who had so openly mocked the system and Newton himself. Now, if you're thinking we've covered all the weirdest stuff about Newton, we're not done. Let's start with something that might explain a lot about Newton's antisocial and obsessive behavior. The guy was a virgin, never had sex, ever. We're talking about a man who lived to be 84 years old, and according to every historical account, we have died that way. Now you might think, okay, maybe he was just really focused on his work. And sure, Newton was definitely focused on his work. But this wasn't just about being too busy. To date, this appears to have been a deliberate choice based on his religious beliefs. Remember how Newton had those secret heretical views about Christianity? Well, one thing he wasn't heretical about was his belief that Jesus had remained celibate. And Newton, who saw himself as someone chosen by God to uncover divine truths, apparently decided that if celibacy was good enough for Jesus Christ, it was good enough for him. And it wasn't like he didn't have opportunities. I mean, Newton was famous and wealthy and well respected, but according to people that knew him, he showed absolutely no interest in romantic relationships with anyone. His friends and colleagues often commented on how he seemed completely oblivious to the concept of a long term monogamous relationship. This probably contributed to his reputation as someone who was impossible to have normal conversation with. When you've voluntarily cut yourself off from one of the most fundamental human experiences, it's going to potentially affect how you relate to other people. And that brings us to one of the pettiest things that Newton ever did. And that's the story of how Newton got into a fight with another mathematician and literally tried to erase him from history. The mathematician was a man named Gottfried Leibniz, a German genius who was working on some of the same mathematical problems as Newton. And both of them independently developed what we now call calculus. Now, you'd think having two brilliant minds come up with the same breakthrough would cause, you know, a massive celebration, but you'd be thinking like a normal person, not like Isaac Newton. Newton was absolutely furious that someone else had figured out calculus around the same time that he did. In Newton's mind, he had discovered it first, and he was potentially chosen by God to discover it. And Leibniz must have somehow stolen his ideas, even though they were working in different countries. So what did Newton do? He used his position as the president of the Royal Society, basically the most prestigious scientific organization in England, maybe the world, to set up an investigation into who really invented calculus first. Now, you'd expect a fair hearing where both sides could present their evidence, but Newton sort of rigged the entire thing. He handpicked committee members, all of whom were his friends and supporters. He fed them evidence that supported his case, while the entire time downplaying anything that might favor Leibniz. And then, and this is where it gets really petty. Newton anonymously wrote the final report himself and presented it as if it came from an impartial body, concluding that he was the sole inventor of calculus and Leibniz was essentially a fraud. And for years, nobody knew that Newton had written his own vindication. He literally created a fake impartial judgment that declared himself the winner of the dispute. I mean, this is like you and your girl get into an argument, and then you go to, like, a couple's therapist, and then you tell your therapist what exactly to read, and he reads it off, claiming that you are completely in the right and your girl did nothing wrong at all. I mean, to be honest, kind of a good idea. I should write that down. The last sad part is that modern historians think both Newton and Leibniz deserve credit for developing calculus. I mean, they approached the problem from different angles, and they both made genuine contributions. But Newton's ego couldn't handle sharing credit with anyone. And the whole calculus controversy consumed Newton for years. I mean, he wrote angry letters and vented to his friends and basically turned what should have been a celebrated mathematical breakthrough into a bitter international feud. And in the end, he won. I mean, Leibniz's reputation was damaged, and for a long time, Newton was credited as the sole inventor of calculus. But here's the thing about trying to erase someone from history. It usually doesn't work long term. Today we call it the Newton Leibniz calculus controversy. And most mathematicians acknowledge that both men deserve credit in some capacity. But Newton's commitment to his work sometimes backfired spectacularly. And I'm talking about the time he nearly burned down his entire laboratory and possibly his house because of an experiment gone wrong. Now, there are actually two versions of this story, and historians still debate which one is the true version. The most famous version involves Newton's dog, Diamond. According to this story, Newton had been working for years on a massive collection of experimental notes and calculations. And one day, he left a candle burning in his lab and went out for a walk, and his little dog, diamond came in and knocked over the candle, setting fire to the papers and destroying years of Newton's work. And when Newton came back and found that his lab was basically in ashes, he supposedly looked at diamond and said, oh, diamond, diamond, thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done. But here's the thing. Some historians think that the diamond story is completely made up, a kind of legend that grew around Newton after his death. What we do know for sure is that Newton himself reported a catastrophic fire that destroyed years of his experimental work. Whether it was caused by a dog or just Newton being, you know, so absorbed in his experiments that he forgot about basic fire safety, we will probably never know. But either way, this story perfectly captures something sort of fundamental about who Newton was as a person. This is a guy who could lose years of work to a fire and just start over. Most people would have had like a complete breakdown or been angry or just quit altogether, but Newton treated it like just a minor setback. So now you've got the complete picture. Newton was this brilliant virgin who burned down his lab and tried to erase a rival mathematician from history. And also was in charge of the mint, and basically created the first intelligence operation, Secret Service thing, and was also obsessed with end time prophecies. And look, I get it. When you first learn about Newton in school, he seems like the perfect example of this rational scientific thinker. This guy who sits under a tree and an apple falls on his head and then out of nowhere understands gravity. But the real Newton, he was this walking contradiction who somehow managed to be both the most brilliant and perhaps the most bizarre person of his era. He could figure out mathematical laws that govern the entire universe, but he also thought that he could calculate exactly when God was going to come back or rebirth a new era on Earth. And he revolutionized physics while believing in magic in some capacity. And he helped create the Age of Reason while being completely unreasonable about almost everything else. And maybe that's exactly what made him so extraordinary. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Brief life of Sir Isaac Newton. Truly a fascinating guy, and I think just another example of the crazy genius sort of dichotomy that, you know, everyone wants to be a genius, but oftentimes geniuses are pretty crazy. And you can't only pick one side of it. You know, like so often you see people that are just like, so obsessed with their work, like the Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant dedication to being great, but then they look at the dark side of their behavior. You know, they see Michael Jordan. Oh, he's like, maybe a gambler, maybe he's got some other issues. You know, was he the best dad? Yada, yada. And it's like, look, you can't have one without the other. You're going to be so focused and obsessed with greatness in one capacity that things are going to slip through the cracks on the other side. And I think Newton is another great example from history that just kind of proves right that, you know, great men that achieve great things that contribute to human society and life as we know it oftentimes have some massive shortcomings that the average person would not do. And I think Isaac Newton is definitely a genius and definitely a fascinating person and someone that I actually would love to read a full biography on. If anyone knows any good books on Isaac Newton, I would absolutely jump into that. But I think, like, with most people, it's worth holding that two things can be true at once and that he can have tried to erase his rivals out of history and, you know, can be somewhat obsessed and, you know, strange in other capacities. But yeah, that's Isaac Newton. I would love to know if anyone's read or, you know, done significant research on Newton. Was there anything that I missed? Is there anything that I glanced over? Is there anything I got completely wrong? Please drop a comment. I read all of them on YouTube and Spotify and be nice about it, for Jesus sakes. I shouldn't cuss for Jesus sakes. Gabe, what did you think about Isaac Newton? Follower of Jesus, pretty based in my book. Follower of Jesus, pretty based. I happen to agree. Anyway, this has been another episode of History Camp. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I appreciate it and I will see you guys again in the future to discuss the past. See you next time. Peace. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more fascinating than any fiction, and we deeply appreciate that about you. I'll be honest, that's exactly why I personally invite you to sign up for Today in History, our free newsletter that goes beyond the surface of historical events. 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