Template:Are You Sure/April 29

• ... that polymath John Arbuthnot published his translation of Christiaan Huygens's De ratiociniis in ludo aleae as "Of the Laws of Chance" in 1692 (the first work on probability published in English), and that in 1701, Arbuthnot wrote another mathematical work, An essay on the usefulness of mathematical learning, in a letter from a gentleman in the city to his friend in Oxford, in which Arbuthnot praises mathematics as a method of freeing the mind from superstition?

• ... that mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist" by Eric Temple Bell, since Poincaré excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime?

• ... that Wilford Brimley was offered the lead role in The China Thing based on the strength of his work in both The China Syndrome and The Thing?

• ... that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) believed, in the words of his friend Georg Henrik von Wright, that "his ideas were generally misunderstood and distorted even by those who professed to be his disciples. He doubted he would be better understood in the future. He once said he felt as though he was writing for people who would think in a different way, breathe a different air of life, from that of present-day men."?