Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in Italy. He is best known as an artist today. One of his famous paintings is called Mona Lisa. However, Leonardo had many other natural abilities. He was also a great inventor.    .

 Although Leonardo hated war, he invented many different machines used for war. His most special invention was the machine gun,   .

        , Leonardo tried to find out the secret of flying. Among his sketch  we can see several objects. We consider them as modern flying machines.

Leonardo spent many hours thinking about how to make good use of time. He developed ideas for labor-saving machines like cutting machines.

Leonardo was a strange man. He didn't eat any meat, which was very  unusual in those times. He never published  his ideas and scientific discoveries. He usually used mirror writing, which looks like writing in a mirror,     .

   . Leonardo finished only a few of his paintings. He left many unfinished because he thought they were not perfect. No one in his life time knew how great Leonardo was. We now believe, however, that he was one of the cleverest men the world has ever known.