My dear Galileo,
Each evening for weeks now I have carried my telescope to the top of a nearby hill and pointed its 70mm objective lens toward the clearly visible bright dot in the sky that I have learned to identify as Jupiter. Bringing it into focus, its 17.5x magnification – more than your early 8x model but less than your eventual 20x one – shows me clearly that what I am seeing is not a star but a planet; a planet with tiny illuminated dots seemingly nearby it.
“Who was the first person to eat an avocado – and why?” It’s a fair question; after all, even if you like avocados (and I do) you have to admit that were they an unknown plant pod, their lumpy greenish-black exterior concealing their mushy, slippery, lighter green pulp doesn’t exactly give them them an appearance that most would consider appetizing. The same question could similarly be asked, “what went through the mind of the first explorer to see a penguin, or a pineapple, or for that matter a pangolin?”
You’ve likely heard many times that Benjamin Franklin would have preferred the Wild Turkey as the official bird of the United States rather than the American Bald Eagle. Unfortunately, the manner in which the story is now generally told somewhat misrepresents the purpose of the letter from which quotes used to support it are commonly taken.