1. Unusual for a painter, Leonardo left no definitive image of himself.
2. Researchers at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Illinois used face-recognition software to determine that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful, and 2% angry.
3. In 1994 Microsoft founder Bill Gates purchased perhaps Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous scientific writings, the ‘Codex Leicester’. It contains explanations of water movement, fossils and the moon among other things.
4. He is used to study in detail and create hundreds of drawings to explain his thoughts. The Vitruvian Man one of his famous drawing depicts the relationship between the human proportions and geometry.
5. Leonardo was the first to explain why the sky is blue. (It's because of the way air scatters light.)
6. His conceptual drawings included plans for musical instruments, war machines, calculators, boats and other ideas. Many of these plans were limited by the level of technology at the time.
7. Different to a typical surname you might think of today, "da Vinci" simply means "of Vinci", the Tuscan town where he was born. So Leonardo da Vinci literally means Leonardo of Vinci.
8. In December 2000, skydiver Adrian Nicholas landed in South Africa using a parachute built from one of Leonardo's designs.
9. He was a big fan of puns and word games, and Folio 44 of his Codex Arundel contains a long list of playful synonyms for penis.
10. According to a theory, Mona Lisa's smile means she was secretly pregnant.
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