One of the great things about science is that when scientists make a discovery, it's not always in a prescribed manner. It's not only in a laboratory under strict settings, with white lab coats and all sorts of neat science gizmos that go peep. In reality, the events and people involved in some of the major scientific discoveries are as weird and varied as they get. My case in point: the weird history of the cell theory. There are three parts to the cell theory. One: all organisms are composed of one or more cells. Two: the cell is the basic unit of structure and organization in organisms. And three: all cells come from pre-existing cells. To be honest, this all sounds incredibly boring until you dig a little deeper into how the world of microscopic organisms and this theory came to be. It all started in the early 1600s in the Netherlands, where a spectacle maker named Zacharias Jensen is said to have come up with the first compound microscope, along with the first telescope. Both claims are often disputed, as apparently he wasn't the only bored guy with a ton of glass lenses to play with at the time. Despite this, the microscope soon became a hot item that every naturalist or scientist at the time wanted to play with, making it much like the iPad of its day. One such person was a fellow Dutchman by the name of Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who heard about these microscope doohickeys. Instead of going out and buying one, he decided to make his own. And it was a strange little contraption indeed, as it looked more like a tiny paddle the size of a sunglass lens. If he had stuck two together, it probably would have made a wicked set of sunglasses that...