1. 1564 Galileo is born in Pisa, February 15. 1581 Galileo enrolls at University of Pisa (dops out). 1610 Galileo discovers the moons of Jupiter. The Starry Messenger is published. Galileo is appointed chief mathematician and philosopher to the grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II.

2. 1632 Galileo publishes Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican. 1633 Galileo stands trial for heresy by the Holy Office of the Inquisition; Dialogue is prohibited. 1641 Vincenzio Galilei draws his father’s design for a pendulum clock.

3. 1642 Galileo dies in Arcetri, January 8. Isaac Newton is born in England, December 25. (final burial 1737) 1728 English astronomer James Bradley (1693– 1762) provides first evidence for the Earth’s motion through space based on the aberration of starlight. 1835 Galileo’s Dialogue is dropped from Index of Prohibited Books. 1892 University of Pisa awards Galileo an honorary degree—250 years after his death.

4. 1971 Apollo 15 commander David R. Scott drops a falcon feather and a hammer on the lunar surface; when they fall together he says, “This proves that Mr. Galileo was correct.”proves that Mr. Galileo was correct 1982 Pope John Paul II establishes Galileo Commission with four formal study groups to reinvestigate the Galileo affair. 1989 NASA launches Galileo spacecraft to study the moons of Jupiter at close range.

5. 1995 Galileo reaches Jupiter. 1992 Pope John Paul II publicly endorses Galileo’s philosophy, noting how “intelligibility, attested to by the marvelous discoveries of science and technology, leads us, in the last analysis, to that transcendent and primordial thought imprinted on all things.” 1995-2003 Galileo’s successful reconnaissance of the Medicean stars,