HISTORY PAINTS THEM AS HEROES, BUT REALLY, THEY'RE HUMAN

When we think about the Founders of the US Constitution and of America, we think of brave men who forged a nation of freedom. Since childhood, we were taught that these men were heroes, without them we would never have had the America we know today. What our history books and history teachers conveniently forget, or at best gloss over, is that these men were slave owners and elitists who believe the only people who should be allowed to vote were land owners--who were all white and rich. Poor whites, women, ethnicities of any kind couldn't vote because in most cases they didn't own land. Does that sound like a free country to you? Don't worry, this kind of white washing isn't limited to just the Founding Fathers of America. Another Founding Father, this one of physics, also had not so much of a dark side, but a weird side. Isaac Newton, the man who "discovered" gravity, also happened to be such a religious zealot that he was convinced that due to extensive study of the Bible, that he had determined the absolute earliest point at which the world would end. [http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23401099-details/The+world+will+end+in+2060%2C+according+to+Newton/article.do|A June 19, 2007 article explains:

His famously analytical mind worked out the laws of gravity and unravelled the motion of the planets. And when it came to predicting the end of the world, Sir Isaac Newton was just as precise. He believed the Apocalypse would come in 2060 – exactly 1,260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, according to a recently published letter. ... Luckily for modern scientists in awe of his achievements, Newton based this figure on religion rather than reasoning. In a letter from 1704 which has gone on show in Jerusalem's Hebrew University, Newton uses the Bible's Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the Apocalypse. The note reveals a deeply spiritual side to a man more usually regarded as a strict rationalist. Newton, known as the founder of modern physics, secured a royal exemption from ordination in the Church of England – something normally expected of academics in his day – so he would not have to follow its teachings. But he confidently stated in the letter that the Bible proved the world would end in 2060, adding: "It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner." Continuing in a decidedly sniffy tone, he wrote: "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail." The exact words from the Book of Daniel that inspired his prediction are not clear.

So, great. The founder of physics was convinced that a book written and re-written, edited, translated, interpreted and reinterpreted, roughly 1700 years before he was born is such a perfect book that it could accurately predict the earliest point at which the world would end. No wonder it took an apple falling on this dude's head to get him to "discover" gravity. I put "discover" in quotes because he sure as hell didn't discover it. He just explained it. Any time you trip or spill something or drop something you discover gravity. What he is famous for was something that someone else probably would have done if he hadn't. For all we know, someone else had done it. He was just the first rich white guy to do it. Oh wait, I mean, he was the first, rich, white, Christian to do it.

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