Good
Morning,
Here
is a question for you. We have seen a lot of Prince Harry in the
British Military. Every member of the British military must have
his/her last name on a name tag attached to their uniform. What
is/was on Prince Harry's name tag? Answer at the end of this
edition.
The
format for today will be a little different. The first segment is
about one of the greatest scientific minds that world has ever known
but the dispersion of his enlightenment was suppressed by the
Catholic Church because what truths he had undeniably discovered was
not what the Pope believed. Galileo was not the only one that was
suppressed in this fashion, in fact there were hundreds if not
thousands that were tortured and killed because their beliefs were
opposed to the Vatican tenets. I did have one subscriber that tried
to tell me that the Catholic Church is not a subject to be discussed
in an unflattering manner because she was very sensitive to criticism
of her church. How can this person ignore the thousands of human
being that were slaughtered in the most unspeakable manner in the
name of the Catholic Church? Anyway, a blog is not a news report; it
is an expression of one person’s opinion and is not, under any
circumstance, subject to censorship.
The
regular history lesson will follow the biography.
Galileo
Galilei
The Father of
Modern Science
Galileo
was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564. He was the son of
Vincenzo Galilei who was a mathematician and musician. His mother
was Guilia Ammannati. Galileo was the youngest of seven children.
From a very early age he was tutored and attended the University of
Pisa but was forced to cease his study there for financial reasons.
But his brilliance was recognized and he was offered a mathematic
teaching position on the faculty in 1589. A little later he took a
position on the faculty of the University of Padua teaching geometry,
mechanics, and astronomy. He held this position until 1610. It was
during this time that he explored science and made his most important
discoveries.
Even
though Galileo was a devout Catholic he fathered three children out
of wedlock, two daughters and one son. All were the children of
Galileo and Marina Gamba. By the law in those days, the daughters
had to go to a convent because of their illegitimacy and attended the
Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri.
In
1612 he went to Rome and joined the Accademia dei Lincei. Opposition
to the Copernican theory which Galileo supported arose primarily from
the Catholic Church. The Copernican theory suggested that the sun,
not the earth, was the center of the “universe”. In 1614 a
Catholic priest from the pulpit denounced Galileo’s opinions about
the motions of the planets as being on the cusp of heresy. Galileo
went to Rome to defend himself from these accusations. But in 1616
Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino personally handed Galileo an admonition
enjoining him from advocating or teaching the Copernican theory as
religious doctrine. Galileo did not back off totally from his
beliefs and published two different books that danced around the
Copernican theory without really advocating it. In 1632 he was
called to appear before the Holy Office in Rome. The court condemned
his teachings and was held in prison until December 1633 when he was
allowed to retire to his villa in Arcetri under house arrest. This
outrage with the church sticking their bloody nose into academia just
confirms my belief that the church should stick to saving my soul and
let academia do its thing unmolested. Anyway, this great mind left
this earth on January 8, 1642 at the age of 78. Galileo was totally
blind for the last year of his life and was escorted by one of his
students, Vincenzo Viviani, who was with him when he died.
Galileo’s
contributions to the scientific world are almost too many to count.
The biggest problem that he had was before he could teach a theory to
his students he had to pass it before the hierarchy of the church
first. He was staunchly opposed to the blind obedience to an
authority (like the church) or other thinkers (like Aristotle) in
matters of science so as to keep a separation between philosophy and
religion. These thoughts are why Galileo is known as “the father
of science”. He pioneered the use of quantitative experiments and
analyzing the results mathematically. There had never been such a
procedure used in the history of science but it is well used to this
day. Galileo said “The language of God is mathematics.” Up
until this point the scientists followed Aristotle’s logic
unquestioned, not mathematics. Then came Galileo explaining that all
falling bodies fall at the same rate regardless of their weight, air
resistance not withstanding. This is the exact opposite of what was
taught by Aristotle. Galileo did an experiment off the leaning tower
of Pisa whereby he dropped two different sized balls simultaneously
and they hit the ground at the same time. Later scientists used his
information in computing terminal velocity. Galileo did not invent
the telescope but improved it enough to where he could discern the
four moons of Jupiter and determined that they were in orbit around
Jupiter and was able to plot sun spots. He published his first
treatise on what he had observed in the sky with a small pamphlet
named “Sidereal Messenger”. When Galileo stated that the four
moons of Jupiter were in orbit around Jupiter, the other scientists
and the ever loving church about peed their pants because it was the
church’s theory that everything orbited the Earth. Another thing
that went a long way toward the Earth not being the center of the
universe was that Galileo saw that Venus went through phases like the
moon meaning it was orbiting the sun, not the Earth. He also
observed that the Moon had a rough and irregular surface and he made
rough estimates as to their height by observing the shadows.
Aristotle had said that the Moon was a perfect sphere. All of the
brilliant scientific minds of the time could not describe what caused
the tides, including Galileo. He said it was centrifugal force, he
was wrong. It took Isaac Newton and his laws of gravity to settle
this issue. Galileo understood the mathematics required to dissect
and measure the area of a parabola. There is almost no limit to
where Galileo’s star would have risen had it not been for the
interference of the church. Speaking of Isaac Newton, he was born
one year, almost to the day, after Galileo died. And that ain’t
all. The famous present day astrophysicist Stephen Hawking was born
to the day 300 years after the death of Isaac Newton. Both Hawking
and Newton were Englishmen, both attended Cambridge University and
both were/are presidents of the Lucasian and Royal Societies. I ask
this question: Are Galileo, Newton and Hawking the same person? In
my mind, there are too many coincidences to ignore.
By
the way, It took the Catholic Church until the 19th
century to admit they were wrong about fostering the earth as being
the center of the Universe. Religious beliefs taught in schools? I
don’t think so.
This
Date in History July 23
1967
There was an area in inner city Detroit called Virginia Park on
12th
street. At this point in time there were about 80,000 blacks crammed
into about 460 acres living in rat infested absolute squalor. The
only white faces seen were shop owners that commuted in to run their
businesses. A black man named William Scott ran an illegal
after-hours club in the “community center”. At 3:30am on this
date, the Detroit police raided Scott’s club. The people that were
in there (about 80) were reluctant to leave and the police called in
some paddy-wagons and began arrested the patrons. A crowd began to
gather on the sidewalk outside the club and some harsh words were
thrown at the cops. Then there was a bottle broken on the sidewalk,
and then another and soon the cops were under an all out attack and a
riot was under way. The cops beat a hasty retreat and thousands of
others spilled out into the streets and wholesale looting began.
About 6:00am a fire was detected in one of the buildings and soon the
whole block was aflame. The riot spread like wildfire and there was
nothing the Detroit police could do to stop it. When firemen showed
up to fight the fire, they were shot at by snipers and had their fire
hoses cut. Finally the mayor of Detroit called Governor George
Romney and asked for help and he sent in the National Guard. Even
these troops were over their head and Governor Romney asked for
federal help from the President, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson sent in the
long suffering 82nd
Airborne who began patrolling the streets in armored vehicles but
that did not stop it, the riot had spread to a very large area.
Finally after 4 days of unabated riots, things began to calm down.
The tally was 46 killed, 324 wounded, 7,000 arrested and 5,000
homeless. It was the worst riot in the United States in 100 years.
I don’t really get it. Why burn down your own town? But I have
never had to live in rat infested absolute squalor.
1878
On this date a highway bandit known as “Black Bart” stopped
and robbed a stage coach in California. It was Bart’s style to
wear a flour sack with eye holes cut in it on his head and did not
speak in a threatening manner. He took the strong box containing
$400 and a diamond watch and ring from one of the passengers. The
strong box with a note inside was recovered by law enforcement. The
note read:
“Here I lay me down to sleep
To await the coming morrow,
Perhaps success, perhaps defeat
And everlasting sorrow,
Yet come what will, I’ll try it once
My condition can’t be worse,
And if there is money in that box,
‘Tis money in my purse.”
This
was not the first time that Bart had robbed a stage of the strong box
and left a poem but it was the last time that he got away with it.
On his next heist he retrieved over $4,000 from the strong box but he
mistakenly dropped a handkerchief. The cops found a laundry mark on
it and traced it to an elderly man named Charles Bolton living in San
Francisco. He was arrested but bristled when the police called him a
“ruthless robber”. Bolton emphatically insisted that he was a
gentleman that had gotten used to living the high life. He did a
short stretch in the slammer and was paroled because of his age. He
spent the rest of his days relaxing in Nevada.
1917
On this date Della Sorenson killed her first of seven victims when
she poisoned her sister-in-law’s infant daughter. Over the next
seven years friends, relatives and acquaintances died under
mysterious circumstances. Her next victim was her mother-in-law who
was also poisoned as they all were. She did not stop there; she
poisoned her own daughter and then her husband. Waiting only 4
months, Della re-married and moved to Dannebrog, Nebraska. Shortly
after this she was visited by a former sister-in-law and her infant
child. You guessed it; Della fed that baby poisoned candy and he
died. The same sister-in-law came back a year later with another
baby. She was obviously oblivious to what Della was up to. Della
fed this baby poison but it just got sick and recovered. The same
thing happened to her second husband; he was poisoned and was
sickened but recovered. She delivered a daughter of her own and when
the child was one year old, Della poisoned and killed her. The
police finally figured out that all these deaths were not a
coincidence and arrested Della. She confessed and said “I really
like going to funerals, I like to see people die.” The police and
the justice system in their wisdom figured that Della was a fruit
cake and she spent the rest of her days in an asylum. While there
she tried to get the prison officials to get her some rat poison.
Born today:
1888
US writer Raymond Chandler. He was the author of only seven
novels but was enormously popular. He invented a hard nosed private
detective named Phillip Marlowe and most of his novels included the
Marlowe character. One Marlowe’s famous lines was “She gave me a
smile I could feel in my hip pocket.” I think I know this woman.
1912
British actor Michael Wilding. He said “You can always tell an
actor by the glazed look in their eyes when the conversation wanders
away from them.” Then that must mean that most of the people I
have seen in “Richard’s”, a biker bar near Mount Pleasant, SC,
are actors because they have a glazed look in their eyes but I think
it ain’t because of their egos.
1973
Cigar model and all around good egg, Monica Lewinsky. When
speaking of alleged friend Linda Tripp she said “She can
reconstruct her face, hair and body but she is still revolting to
me.” Monica left the Clinton White House as a living legacy.
2001
Award winning author, photographer and died in the wool
Mississippian Eudora Welty died. She said “Never think you have
seen the last of anything.” Say it isn’t so, Eudora. Think of
when Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Diane
Feinstein and Lindsay Graham, et al are gone, for crying out loud.
Thanks for listening I can hardly wait
until tomorrow
The answer to the trivia question: Since Prince
Harry is titled the Prince
of Wales, “Wales”
was on his military name tag.
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