Blue Marble

Thirty eight years ago today, at 5:39 EST on December 7th 1972, astronauts aboard the Apollo 17 mission would take the famous “Blue Marble” (NASA AS17-148-22727) picture of the earth. Because they were headed towards the sun the entire earth was illuminated at once.

They had blasted off from the earth 5 hours and thirty-six minutes earlier, and had left their parking orbit around the planet they photographed one hour and fifty-four minutes before the picture was taken.

In 2005 NASA would release a composite series of satellite pictures of the earth. These provided much greater detail than the single 70-millimetre Hasselblad camera with an 80-millimetre lens did in 1972. They called the new set “Blue Marble: The Next Generation”.

Apollo 17 was the last manned spaceflight that traveled beyond earth’s orbit. On December 19th 1972 the astronauts of Apollo 17 would set foot on the earth after being the last humans (so far) to venture to the moon.

Lucky Thirteen

One hundred and forty five years ago today, on December 6th 1865, the first amendment to the constitution of the United States of America in over sixty years was adopted into law. The Thirteenth Amendment to the constitution reads as follows:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

The legislatures of twenty-seven of the union’s thirty-six states needed to ratify the amendment before it would become part of the constitution. Georgia, on December 6th 1865, was the state whose ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment completed the process.

Mississippi, on March 16th 1995, became the last state to ratify the amendment.

Witch's Hammer

Five hundred and twenty six years ago today, on December 5th 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes affectibus (English: Desiring with supreme ardor). The SDA gave Dominican Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger explicit authority to prosecute witchcraft in Germany.

The Papal Bull describes witchcraft thusly:

"Many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, have slain infants yet in the mother's womb, as also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of the trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, vineyards, orchards, meadows, pasture-land, corn, wheat, and all other cereals; these wretches furthermore afflict and torment men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, with terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases, both internal and external; they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving, whence husbands cannot know their wives nor wives receive their husbands; over and above this, they blasphemously renounce that Faith which is theirs by the Sacrament of Baptism, and at the instigation of the Enemy of Mankind they do not shrink from committing and perpetrating the foulest abominations and filthiest excesses to the deadly peril of their own souls, whereby they outrage the Divine Majesty and are a cause of scandal and danger to very many (...) the abominations and enormities in question remain unpunished not without open danger to the souls of many and peril of eternal damnation.”

Sprenger and Kramer would collaborate on The Malleus Maleficarum which would be THE book on witchcraft for much of the 16th century.

Sprenger died suddenly in 1494.