Changing Spelling has Happened in the Past

Objection to simplified spelling has been made on the supposition that it "wil cut us off from the literature of the past," meaning that those taught in the new way wil be unable to read the books red today. This can not be so, because the present spelling wil be no more difficult to read by one who has learnd to spel the new way, than is the new spelling by one who has learnd the old way. Children who hav learnd to spel in the simplified way wil, in fact, read the books printed toda...

 The Earliest Account of Newton and the Apple

In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge... to his mother in Lincolnshire & whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (wch brought an apple from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but that this power must extend much farther than was usually thought. Why not as high as the moon said he to himself & if so that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a c...

 Roberto Bellarmino's Condemnaton of Galileo's Theory

It seems to me that your Reverence and Signor Galileo act prudently when you content yourselves with speaking hypothetically and not absolutely, as I have always understood that Copernicus spoke. To say that on the supposition of the Earth's movement and the Sun's quiescence all the celestial appearances are explained better than by the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is to speak with excellent good sense and to run no risk whatsoever. Such a manner of speaking is enough for a mathematicia...

 Benjamin Franklin on Vaccinations

In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.