I was just about to post this, but 'A short history of nearly everything' by Bill Bryson has a LOT of these stories. It explains how we determined the circumfer

I was just about to post this, but 'A short history of nearly everything' by Bill Bryson has a LOT of these stories. It explains how we determined the circumference and the weight of the earth, the distance to the moon and the sun, etc. In fact the whole book is about this, it explains all the important scientific breakthroughs from the past and how we've gotten to them.