Oddlets tagged self-taught.

He tripped on a stone in 1879 and spent the next thirty-three years building a palace out of the ones he found on the way home.

He discovered oxygen two years before the man history credits with discovering oxygen.

He described hydrogen cyanide as having a 'pleasantly sharp acidulous flavor,' the way someone else might describe a good Riesling.

A goddess wrote equations on his tongue in dreams, and when mathematicians finally checked his work, he was right.

The four equations that power every phone on Earth were written by a man who lived on granite blocks and signed his letters W.O.R.M.