Trivia Time

Did you know that the moon has a bishop?

Well, it does. According to Catholic law, newly discovered territory falls under the jurisdiction of the bishop from whence the expedition left. Since the Kennedy Space Center is in the Orlando bishopric, the bishop of Orlando is also the moon bishop.

This makes the Orlando bishopric the biggest one in the Catholic Church, by quite a margin. The moon's surface is after all about 38 million square kilometers (14.6 square miles).

Speaking of space stuff, did you know that the reason why we count down on New Years Eve has it's roots in the space race?

It turns out that before the U.S. put its first man in space, countdowns weren't very common. But with Alan Shepard going to space on May 5^th 1961, America got space fever and since the launch and indeed all launches have a countdown, people started to countdown lots of things.

But why do the space launches have countdowns? They are practical, sure, but it turns out there is a specific reason. You see, the man who headed up the U.S. space program was a man called Wernher von Braun who was a rocket expert. He got his expertise from designing and building V2 rockets for Hitler. Then after the Americans grabbed him under Operation Paperclip he went to work for NASA. Well, von Braun's favorite movie was Girl in the Moon (1929) by Fritz Lang.

Lang is of course better known for his Metropolis (1927) and M (1931), but interestingly his Girl in the Moon, although science fiction, got a surprising amount of the science part correct. So correct that the Nazis tried to suppress it for security reasons. One of the less relevant parts were countdowns before launches, which von Braun liked so much that he wanted them at his real life launches and then their popularity soared.

Another interesting part around the New Years Eve countdown is the dropping ball. You have probably seen footage of Times Square in NYC, right? Ball drops, people count down and then sing Auld Lang Syne.

The ball has nothing to do with space though. It has to do with maritime navigation. Observatories like Greenwich had them to show mariners when it was exactly midday so that they could set their watches and not sail off course. Since observatories usually aren't directly on the coast, but always up high on hills, the ball was easily visible from far away. Today, it's not a common practice, but a dropping sphere was a common symbol for an exact moment back in the day, and this way it's still relevant, if only a little.

Well that's it for me. A small bit of trivia to start the week with, and until next time, have yourself a great week!