Checking the weather today? Thank an Italian scientist and a tube of mercury.

Evangelista Torricelli died in Florence on October 25, 1647, at just 39. In 1643, he filled a glass tube with mercury, turned it upside down in a dish, and watched the mercury drop and stop at a certain height. The space above was a vacuum, and the column was held up by the weight of the air.

That experiment gave us the barometer, a tool for measuring air pressure that helped make weather forecasting possible.

What everyday invention do you think deserves more credit?

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