Does the direction water drains away down a plughole really change according to which side of the equator you are on? Fiona Foster put the Coriolis effect to the test. Read more
Title: The Coriolis Effect Apparently Described in Giovanni Battista Riccioli's Arguments Against the Motion of the Earth: An English Rendition of Almagestum Novum Part II, Book 9, Section 4, Chapter 21, Pages 425, 426-7 Authors: Christopher M. Graney
In his encyclopaedic work on astronomy, the 1651 Almagestum Novum, the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598-1671) argued against the movement of the Earth on the grounds that (among other things), if the Earth rotated, that rotation should produce a deflection in the trajectories of projectiles. This argument appears to be an early description of the Coriolis effect.