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Notes
1“Celeste” to honor her father's astronomical research.
2It was not uncommon in those days for eldest sons to receive a first name derived from the family name; “Galileo,” incidentally, derives from “Galilee.”
3The first opera, Dafne (lost) was written by Jacopo Peri sometime before 1600. Baroque music differs from the polyphonic Renaissance style (as in the music of Palestrina, for example) in that it involves a dominant, monodic, musical line accompanied by a bass part (usually realized on a keyboard and/or low stringed instrument). This (presumably) made it possible for the listener to understand the words. Modern opera companies, appreciating the word “presumably,” now make a practice of displaying supertitles even for operas performed in the vernacular. Although polyphonic music was still written during the Baroque era and even after (for example, the fugues of J.S. Bach) vocal music was almost always monodic.
4Thus Galileo became, up until the time of Bill Gates, history's most distinguished dropout.
5Perhaps he objected to the fact that she has sex with a man to whom she wasn't married!
6After all, the bible in numerous citations tells the faithful that the earth is stationary. For example, Psalm 96, verse 10: Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth: the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved… (KJV).
7That the Pope of all people had to make such a statement really says a lot about the politics of the time.
8The Catholic Church's position on evolution has actually been irreproachable to a scientist. It is the fundamentalist denominations that object to it.
9When I was in high school I knew a woman, born in 1860, who had seen Sherman burn Columbia, SC, in 1865. By the same token, it is quite within the realm of possibility that Ben Franklin (b. 1706) had met someone who had known Galileo.