War of the Caos and the fall of a dynasty

Many people are familiar with the story of how Greek inventor Archimedes (287-212 BC) discovered buoyancy. He did this by helping King Hiero of Syracuse find out if all the gold he had made available to the goldsmith for a crown had been used. He figured out that any object immersed in fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by it.

Some 400 years later, it was water again that helped a 5-year-old boy determine the weight of an elephant.

The boy led the elephant onto a boat, marked the level of water on the rim, then replaced the elephant with boulders until the water reached the marked line. The total weight of the boulders was the same as that of the elephant.