He imagined vertical flight long before the necessary technology to make it work saw the light of day.

It is not too fanciful to say that the world owes a huge debt of gratitude to Francis I, King of France for Leonardo's Notebooks, or at least some of them.

Francesco Melzi was an Italian aristocrat. His family took the name from their home town, Melzo near Milan (Francesco has a street named after him).

In 1494 Leonardo da Vinci started working for Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan.

Dendrologists, who study the growth patterns and structures of trees, say that Leonardo's Rule of Trees is spot on.

After more than five hundred years, thousands of books and millions of words written about Leonardo da Vinci, there are not many mysteries left surrounding him.

Where are Holmes, Morse and Lewis when you need them? The magnificent bronze on the banks of the Loire in Amboise poses many riddles.

In 1961, when the newly elected American President John F. Kennedy made an official visit to Paris, he didn’t impress French President Charles de Gaulle but Jackie (née Bouvier) America’s First Lady certainly impressed André Malraux, French minister of cultural affairs.