This delightful history of science focuses on surprising facts and bizarre discoveries by Britain's scientific heroes. Readers will delight in such true adventures as how smallpox vaccination inventor Edward Jenner was elected to the Royal Society for his paper on cuckoos and turned down an invitation to sail around the world with Captain Cook; the practical joker who defied incredible odds to build the first Eddystone Lighthouse and then died when it was swept away by the greatest storm England has ever known; the failed Scottish minister who invented the first kaleidoscope; Sarah Guppy's modified tea urn which simplified breakfast; and Hertha Marks's research on ripples which led to the invention of the Ayrton fan that saved thousands of soldiers' lives in World War I gas attacks.