odditudes-and-weirdities

Bobblehead dolls, tempura, flatulence, the Harlem Globetrotters, fighting injustices inflicted upon you, walking in a silly manner, the largest moons of Jupiter, computer programmers, and old rocks and fossils draw celebratory attention today: Galilean Moons Day Harlem Globetrotters Day I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore Day International Programmers' Day International Silly Walks Day National Bobblehead Day National Pass Gas Day National Tempura Day Old Rock Day If you overdid eating beans during yesterday's Bean Day, you might find yourself celebrating National Pass Gas Day more than you wanted. Old Rock Day celebrates fossils in addition to rocks, which makes a certain amount of sense since fossils are rocks formed from bones and (sometimes) soft tissue. The Harlem Globetrotters, clown princes of basketball, played their first game on this date in 1927. Silly walking, popularized by Monty Python, is a recommended activity today. Finally, let's celebrate my former profe...

On this date in 1610 Galileo Galilei began to tell people about a discovery he made with his latest refracting telescope : celestial bodies around the planet Jupiter that turned out to be the Galilean moons . These are the 4 largest moons of Jupiter,  Io ,  Europa ,  Ganymede , and  Callisto , and are the largest objects in our solar system outside of the Sun and the 8 planets. It sounds like he wasn't certain what to make out of them at first, originally naming them the Medicean stars. When he realized that they were actually moons of Jupiter, the ramifications were enormous. Despite Copernicus proposing a heliocentric solar system, at the time of this discovery the prevailing theory was that everything in the sky orbited the Earth. Finding moons that orbited Jupiter was the first evidence that a geocentric understanding of the universe was flawed. Today we celebrate this astronomic discovery. (Composite photo below.) NASA/JPL/DLR, Public domain, via Wikimedia C...