Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Book ·21 of 348
"An apple fell on Newton's head and gravity was born."
They never said that.
What people say
"An apple fell on Newton's head and gravity was born."
What was actually said
"…as he sat in a contemplative mood … the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple." William Stukeley — Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life (1752)
Why it stuck
Newton told Stukeley the apple fell in the garden, not on his head. The "bonk on the head" version is a 20th-century cartoon embellishment of Voltaire's earlier paraphrase.
A scion of the actual tree from Woolsthorpe Manor is still growing at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.