We’ve seen time and time again how famous people are either related to or friends with other famous people. Even more interesting are the stories of how those people crossed paths before either found fame, such as Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve being college roommates. Here’s another of those stories, which is told in a fascinating way that blurs their true identities until later in the tale, although you might be able to guess along the way.
The two men in the coach were both 28 years old, born within a few months of each other in 1571. Frederik was Danish and Johannes was German, and for different reasons they now found themselves jostled together, in early June of 1600, traveling from Prague to Vienna.
Frederik had been deeply shaken by recent events that had sentenced him to exile and the mother of his child to be walled up for life in her father’s moated castle. Whirling through Johannes’s head were mathematical formulas he was convinced would prove God’s ultimate intention for a six-planet universe. Unknown to either of the travelers, a man in London was working on a text that would make one of them famous. The other’s hopes would be dashed, though he would also become famous—more so, indeed, than his traveling companion—but for reasons that would surprise him.
The travelers did not know each other before that trip, nor did they ever meet again. But they were both immortalized, in very different ways. Read that story at Nautilus. -via Damn Interesting
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Source: neatorama