The after-dinner speaker just didn't have a Stop button. He burbled on and on and on, oblivious to his increasingly restless audience. Finally one of the more drunken diners hurled an empty wine bottle at him. It missed, and hit the Chairman instead.
As the Chairman slid slowly to the floor clutching his head, he was heard to murmur, "Hit me again, I can still hear him."
Sir William HerschelDied 25 Aug 1822 at age 83 (born 15 Nov 1738). German-born British astronomer, the founder of sidereal astronomy for the systematic observation of the heavens. In 1773, Herschel made and began using his first telescope. With it he began a project that would continue for the rest of his life: that of systematically studying the sky. Through this study he discovered the planet Uranus, many new nebulae, clusters of stars and binary stars. Herschel hypothesized that nebulae are composed of stars, developed a theory of stellar evolution and was the first person to correctly describe the form of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. He discovered the Saturnian satellites Mimas and Enceladus (1789) and the Uranian satellites Titania and Oberon (1787). He was probably the most famous astronomer of the 18th century. |
