The First Moon Map, and Not By Galileo

sergio80 writes in with a timely piece of history in this the International Year of Astronomy, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope. "Galileo Galilei is often credited with being the first person to look through a telescope and make drawings of the celestial objects he observed. While the Italian indeed was a pioneer in this realm, he was not the first..." That honor belongs to Thomas Harriot, an Englishman, who bought his first "Dutch trunke" (i.e. telescope) shortly after its invention in the Netherlands and made a sketch of the moon as seen through it in July of 1609.

Comments

Christ I'm sick of this shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Drooling Nationalists hoping to feel better about themselves by convincing the rest of the world that some guy who once lived in the same area of the Earth's surface that they do was "first".