Stars in Their Eyes

I didnt blog yesterday, which was remiss of me because yesterday was good. Yesterday was Very Interesting. We went to a lecture at Sussex Downs Planetarium in Chichester entitled

"Thomas Harriot - Elizabethan Genius Moon Observer."

We sat on the front row in the lecture and I, in the interest of blogging, made notes. This is definitely the geekiest thing I've ever done, but Ray can probably top it. I once got thrown out of a lecture for eating a lime. I am not good in such situations. Today when I signed in to write this blog, I was told that I have a follower. A follower, ladies and gentlemen. I think you can imagine that this is very exciting indeed. It is for the follower, and the readers, and the 5-times-that-I-know-of favouritees, that I made these notes.

Thomas Harriot was a hero.

Thomas Harriot was hot, for one thing. He had a sexy pointy beard and looked a bit like an Elizabethan Bruce Willis. He wasnt as hot as Walter Raleigh, but he didnt get executed either so that evens it out. In 1580, Thomas Harriot graduated Oxford with a first class degree in Mathmatics. This is incredibly impressive, especially to those of us who scraped a C at GCSE. Even more impressive, check this out, he was regarded as the best mathematician in Europe. He became great pals with Walter Raleigh. I imagine that they called each other Tom and Walt, and they lived together at Durham House, on the Strand. Walt, as we know, was an explorer. He was mates with the Queen, and she liked to send him on little missions to the New World to look about. An excellent job, explorer. It is a shame that there arent any left, I would be a good explorer, except that I have really bad hay fever and also I am allergic to peaches.

Anyway, Walt noticed that sadly the British were not very good navigators, so on one of his trips he took his good friend Tom along to help out. By this time, Tom had basically figured out atomic stacking, so he was clearly a force to be reckoned with when it came to science. This trip was a Journey Of Discovery. They left Plymouth on April 9th 1585 in a convoy of ships lead by the HMS Tiger, with Tom at the helm. The Atlantic Ocean proved no problem at all for Tom, and soon enough the whole team arrived in the New World.

They landed on Roanoke Island, in Virginia. While he was there, Tom learned the language of the local Algonquian Tribe, and taught them English. He became great friends with the chief of the tribe, and would often hang around smoking with him. Tom made many notes about Virginia, and drew a very detailed map of the area (the original of which the Americans have just purchased for something like $3,000,000) and when he returned home he wrote the book 'A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia'. Many of his notes were thrown overboard on the voyage home, so he wrote the entire thing from memory. Impressive.

Sadly for Tom, Walt got put in the Tower of London soon after that, so he had to leave Durham House and move into Syon House with the 9th Earl of Northumberland. The 9th Earl of Northumberland was known as the Wizard Earl, which I rather enjoy. Tom started to look at the moon, and the sun, and to record the things he saw. A man called Chris Tooke also helped with this, which must have been nice. At this point in my notes, I have written 'scientific orgies'. Heaven help us.

It was a shame for the 9th Earl of Northumberland that his cousin was a man called Tom Percy. Tom Percy was very involved in the Gunpowder Plot, and as a result of the investigation following the Plot, our friend the Wizard got taken to the Tower of London. He left Thomas Harriot in charge of his estate, and continued to fund his research into the moon and things. Tom visited both Walt and the Wizard while they were imprisoned. Incidentally, I think Walt and the Wizard could certainly have a hit single, so if anyone is looking for a band name...

In 1607, Tom saw a comet. This was definitely exciting for him. Two years later, on June 26th 1609, at 21:00 GMT, Tom drew the first ever drawing of the moon through a telescope. This was 4 months earlier than Galileo drew his moon, so in your face Italy.

Although Tom was asked many times to publish his findings, he never did. And so in 1621, when Thomas Harriot died of cancer of the nose, he left all his papers to the Wizard, who was released from the Tower two weeks later and moved to Petworth House, West Sussex.

Mega.