Leonardo da Vinci was most famous as an artist but he was also an architect, inventor and archiver of science. His painting Mona Lisais widely recognized as the most famous painting in the history of art.

Fact 1: Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452 in a Tuscan hill town known as Vinci, Florence.

Fact 2: In reality Leonardo had no surname. ‘˜Da vinci’ simply meant ‘˜of Vinci’. Though his full birth name was Leonardo di ser piero da Vinci’, which means ‘˜Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci.

Fact 3: Leonardo was born out of wedlock. His mother Caterina, was a peasant, and his father Ser Piero, was a lawyer and landlord.

Fact 4: He was homeschooled and he did not receive any formal education in Greek and Latin.

Fact 5: Leonardo had a vast range of knowledge and skills regarding drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry beside the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modeling.

Fact 6: The earliest dated work of Leonardo is a drawing of Arno valley drawn on 5 August 1473 with the help of ink and pen.

Fact 7: He was once charged with sodomy along with three other men but was later set free.

Fact 8: The Mona Lisa is Da Vinci’s greatest artistic achievement. Historians believed that he made it to honour the birth of their second child but it was never hung in their home as da Vinci never presented it.

Fact 9: Sixty beggars followed his casket which was in accordance to his will.

Fact 10: When he was first presented in Milanese court it was as a lyre player.

Fact 11: There exists no definitive image of Leonardo, which is quite unusual for a painter.

Fact 12: The Mona Lisa is 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful, and 2% angry. This was determined with a help of face-recognition software used by the researchers of University of Amsterdam and University of Illinois.

Fact 13: Ironic as it might seem but Leonardo was the first to explain why the sky is blue. (It’s because of the way air scatters light.)

Fact 14: Leonardo was an ambidextrous, paranoid dyslexic. He could draw forward with one hand while writing backward with the other, thus producing a mirror-image script that others found difficult to read.

 Fact15: Leonardo built up plans for floating snowshoes, a breathing device for underwater exploration, a life preserver, and a diving bell that could attack ships from below. This all showed that Leonardo had a great affinity for water.