How New York City Got Its Juicy Nickname “The Big Apple” — And What It Means To The World

1.    By Emma Lota

Somewhere between dusk and dawn, where silence sharpens the senses and shadows stretched long, there lived a man who dared to believe that everything beyond and underneath the earth yes, everything was connected. 

That art could explain the skies. That veins flowed like rivers. He studied everything he that caught his fancy. That wings, if studied hard enough, could whisper secrets to the ground-bound human heart.

Now imagine that.

Imagine being born in a small, quiet village and somehow carrying the universe in your skull. Imagine looking at a bird and not just seeing it fly, but understanding the mathematics of its motion, the anatomy beneath its feathers, and the poetry in its freedom. That’s Leonardo da Vinci was not just a genius, neither just a painter, but a storm of thought in human form.

He was born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, a small Italian town that now seems too modest a cradle for a soul so vast. Illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant girl, Leonardo came into the world without wealth, title, or expectation. No one looked at the infant and thought, he’ll change everything. But he did.

And not just once.

A Mind That Refused to Stay in Its Lane

Da Vinci’s curiosity was bottomless. His notebooks, a staggering 7,200 pages that survived are filled with loops of mirrored handwriting, diagrams of helicopters, dissection sketches, and questions upon questions. He’d start with a study of a woodpecker’s tongue and somehow land in the cosmos, asking, why is the sky blue?

He dissected more than thirty human corpses, he didn't do it of morbid fascination, rather because he needed to know how blood moves, how lungs breathe, how eyelids close. He wanted to understand life from the inside out, quite literally. His anatomical sketches were centuries ahead of their time; so precise that modern doctors still study them today.

Da Vinci wasn’t just a scientist wearing a painter’s coat. He felt the beauty in form and could see the grace in how a tendon tugs at a bone, the divine rhythm of muscles in motion. He merged logic with lyricism.

And that fusion? That’s where his genius bloomed.

The Mona Lisa Was Never Just a Smile

Let’s talk about her. Her smile, mysterious, haunting, gentle, evasive. You’ve seen it. Everyone has. But here’s the thing: You’ve never really seen it. Not the way Leonardo meant you to.

The Mona Lisa isn’t just a portrait. It’s a visual symphony of layered glazes, subtle shadows, and the impossible depth of human expression. Her eyes follow you, yes. But more than that, they seem to know you. They pull you in, like a tide of secrets you’ll never fully grasp.

Leonardo used a technique called sfumato, a smoky blending of tones that softens transitions and creates an ethereal realism. The painting took him nearly four years, and even then, he never considered it finished. He carried it with him everywhere until he died.

And here’s the kicker: He painted her with no eyebrows. Was it a mistake? A lost detail? Or part of his intention? No one knows. That’s the magic of da Vinci. He left behind puzzles, not just answers.

Machines Before Their Time

Now shift from canvas to concept. Centuries before the Wright brothers took to the skies, da Vinci had sketched out a flying machine that mimicked the flapping of bird wings. He built designs for armored tanks, hydraulic pumps, even a mechanical knight that could sit, wave, and move its jaw.

These weren’t wild dreams. They were blueprints, rooted in careful observation and engineering. He’d spend hours watching birds, water flow, people walk—because he believed nature was the ultimate engineer. If you could understand how nature worked, you could replicate it. Improve it. Evolve it.

In his lifetime, many of his machines remained on parchment. But in spirit, they became the DNA of future revolutions.

The Phantom of Completion

Here’s a deeply human flaw: Leonardo finished astonishingly few of his projects.

He was a perfectionist to the point of paralysis. If a work didn’t meet his impossibly high standards, he abandoned it. His patrons grew impatient. Deadlines were a joke. Even the mighty Adoration of the Magi and Saint Jerome in the Wilderness remain unfinished, but still breathtaking.

But can you blame him?

He was constantly pulled in all directions, by his own mind. He once wrote, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” He wasn’t lazy. He was overwhelmed by immensity. Every line he drew seemed to crack open another universe of questions.

And this, perhaps, is his most relatable trait. Genius or not, haven’t we all been caught in the loop of our own ambitions?

The Anatomy of Wonder

There’s a page in one of Leonardo’s notebooks that shows the Vitruvian Man, a man inscribed within a circle and square, arms and legs extended like compass needles. It’s become a symbol of proportion, balance, symmetry. But look closer.

It’s not just about the body.

It’s about humanity as the center of creation. About how the divine can be found in human design. About how we, flawed and finite as we are, might still reflect the architecture of the universe.

Leonardo wasn’t religious in the traditional sense. He rarely wrote of God. But his work suggests a reverence deeper than dogma, an awe for life’s interwoven elegance. Whether studying the spiral of a seashell or the way hair curls in water, he treated every form as sacred.

A Heart Full of Contradictions

He was handsome, by many accounts. Charismatic, fashionably dressed, physically strong. He played the lyre. He loved animals, famously buying caged birds just to set them free. He was left-handed. Possibly gay. Often distracted. Fiercely private. Occasionally broke. Always searching.

He was, in short, beautifully human.

In 1519, Leonardo died in France, in the arms of King Francis I, who had once called him “a man who will never be born again.” He left behind unfinished paintings, scattered notes, half-built ideas, and a world forever altered.

The Emotional Weight of Genius

Here’s something most textbooks skip: Being Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t easy.

Imagine knowing too much, feeling too deeply, seeing patterns everywhere but having no one to truly share them with. Imagine the loneliness of vision, the ache of explaining colors to the blind, music to the deaf, the future to the world still stuck in the past.

Sometimes, Leonardo would write backward in his journals, not to hide secrets, but to organize his mind. He wasn’t hoarding knowledge. He was drowning in it.

And that’s a quiet heartbreak, isn’t it?

The world adores his works now. But in his time? Many saw only a distracted, eccentric artist with unfinished promises. What they missed was the volcano beneath.

What Does He Leave Us With?

Not just paintings.

Not just machines or notes or the blueprint of modern anatomy.

Leonardo da Vinci’s true legacy is possibility.

He teaches us that curiosity is sacred. That it’s okay to explore everything and master nothing. That wonder is a muscle, and the more you use it, the more alive you feel.

He whispers to every restless heart: “It’s okay to not fit in. To ask questions that scare people. To chase ten dreams at once.”

He reminds us that beauty and intellect are not opposites, they are twins. That art doesn’t live on gallery walls. It lives in how you observe. How you care. How you dare.