Eppur si muove..

...is Italian for "And yet it moves". That was meant to have been muttered by Galileo Galilei shortly after the Church forced him to recant his belief that the earth moved round the sun. That was in 1632. I don't think it is likely that he did anything of the kind (at least not there and then) because it would have been an extremely hazardous thing to do.

On this day in 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo Galilei.

Galileo was, of course, a genius. According to Stephen Hawking, Galileo probably bears more of the responsibility for the birth of modern science than anybody else.

Just a reminder of how wrong it is possible to get things! Just heard the Dean of St Paul's has resigned too!