Interesting Facts

22nd June 1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forced Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe. 1907 – The London Underground's Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opened. 1922 – 19 strikebreakers and 2 union miners were murdered in Herrin, Illinois . 1941 - Hitler's German troops invaded the Soviet Union. 1969 – The Cuyahoga River, in Northeast Ohio in the United States, caught fire, which triggered a crack-down on pollution in the river. Time magazine described the Cuyahoga as the river that "oozes rather than flows" and in which a person "does not drown but decays." 1969 – Judy Garland died. 1978 – Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, was discovered. 1981 - Mark Chapman changed his plea to guilty and admitted he murdered John Lennon in December 1980. 1984 – Virgin Atlantic Airways launched. Its first flight was from London Heathrow Airport. 1987 – Fred Astaire died. ...

The Roman Catholic Church did not officially acknowledge that the earth revolves around the sun until the mid 1990s. (In 1992, the Roman Catholic Church finally repealed their edict against Galileo. The Church pardoned him and admitted that the heliocentric theory was correct. This pardon came 350 years after Galileo's death. Ah well, better late than never.)