10 Inventions from Arab Inventors We Were Never Taught About

We all know of how Columbus explored the Americas (killing thousands of natives in the process, but that’s another story), of how Newton discovered gravity as an apple fell off a tree, of how Galileo improved the telescope (yes, improved not invented) and discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter.

But how many of us have heard of the legendary inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas who invented the first flying machine? Or of Fatima al-Fihri, who founded the world’s first university? Or of the greatest medical doctor of the Middle Ages, Al-Razi, whose 23-volume encyclopedias of medicine played a monumental role in the medical practices of later Europe?

Here is a list of 10 inventions (out of countless others) that we simply ought to know.