Minutes of the Royal Society, recorded by Robert Hooke, have been found in a cupboard:

Filled with crabby italics and acerbic asides, the 520 or so yellowing and stained pages are the handwritten minutes of the Royal Society as recorded by the brilliant scientist Robert Hooke, one of the society's original fellows and curator of experiments.

The notes describe in detail some of the most astounding and outlandish scientific thinking from meetings of the society between 1661 to 1682. There is the very earliest work with microscopes, confirming the first sightings of sperm and micro-organisms. There is correspondence with Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Christopher Wren over the nature of gravity, with the latter's proposal to fire bullets into the air to see where they might drop. And there is a page that lays to rest the bitter controversy over who designed the watch that would eventually lead to the first measurements of longitude...

Minutes from December 1679 describe correspondence between Hooke and Newton proposing an experiment to confirm the rotation of the Earth. The notes include a suggestion from Sir Christopher Wren, Hooke's closest friend, to test the hypothesis by "shooting of a bullet upwards at a certaine angle from the perpendicular round every way - thereby to see whether the bullets soe shot would all fall in a perfect circle".

May we please have the complete text online? (Thank you Rachel.)