Assasination of Indira Gandhi and The Vatican admitting Galileo was right.

Assassination of Indira Gandhi

Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru was one of the leading figures in India’s struggle to achieve independence. She was a strong leader of the Indian National Congress which paved the way to their achievement. Indira Gandhi was the first and to date, the only female Prime Minister of India. Her educations include degrees from Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan and University of Oxford in England.

Indira Gandhi was appointed as the Prime Minister of India on the 24th of January 1966. She was the prime minister of India for a total of 11 years and 59 days.

During the time of June 1984, a military action called ‘Operation Blue Star’ was carried out with the decision to launch the attack being approved by Indira Gandhi. This operation was done to flush out armed militants who were holed up in the Golden Temple in the state of Punjab and to take back control of the Golden temple from the militants. This operation angered a lot of Sikhs as there was a lot of causalities and damage to the temple premises.

At 9:29 a.m. on the 31st of October 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards who were motivated by the anger of the damage caused by Operation Blue Star. After the bloodshed, the two assassins dropped their weapons and surrendered. They were later sentenced to death.

In the aftermath of the assassination, her body was cremated and the parade ground in India was converted to the Indira Gandhi National Park and her son, Rajiv Gandhi took the office and served as the sixth Prime Minister of India.

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Vatican Admits Galileo was right

Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei was an Italian Astronomer, Physicist and Engineer. He has been called by many names, some of which include, “father of modern physics”, “father of modern science” and “father of the scientific method”.

In 1610, Galileo published his treatise Sidereus Nuncius, describing the observations he made with his new telescope. He had presented supporting evidence to the model of Heliocentrism, the model in which Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun, which is at the center. In 1632, he also published his book ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems’ which also defended Heliocentrism and was immensely popular.

This view of the world directly opposed the Geocentric view that the Earth was the center and that all heavenly bodies revolved around it. The Geocentric view was widely agreed on with a literal interpretation of scripture in several places.

In 1633, Galileo was ordered to stand trial for his beliefs and was interrogated while threatened with physical torture. He was found guilty and was sentenced to house arrest, where he spent the rest of his life until he died.

On October 31st, 1992, 359 years later, at a ceremony in Rome, Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right. The church had admitted that they have made an error in condemning Galileo for asserting that the Earth revolved around the sun.

In light of this event, The Vatican newspaper ran an article titled “Thank you Galileo” on its front page and The United Nations proclaimed in the year 2009 the International year of Astronomy to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of a telescope to observe the cosmos.