It was Galileo who made the first
telescope following a rumour that
a Dutch optician had built such an
instrument. In his hands, the telescope changed the world. The date
was January 1610. It was already
known that the Earth was a sphere
since Magellan had sailed around
the world and returned in 1522 to be
followed by the Englishman Drake
in 1580. There was also the terrible idea published by Copernicus
in 1543 that the Earth along with
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all the other then known planets
(Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and
Saturn) all circled the Sun just like
the Earth, and like the earth by
implication, they could easily have
rivers,
mountains, animals and
people. The idea was terrible and
clearly wrong for the guardians of
thought since the Bible was quite
clear. God only tried his hand at creation once, and it was here on this
special place Earth – but the proof
that the Earth was a sphere, both