Willie Soon and David R. Legates
Four centuries ago, “heretics” who disagreed with religious orthodoxy risked being burned at the stake. Many were the dissenting views that could send offenders to a fiery end.
In 1633, the astronomer Galileo Galilei may have come within a singed whisker of the same fate, for insisting that the sun (and not the Earth) was at the center of the solar system. In the end, he agreed to recant his “heresy” (at least publicly) and submit to living under house arrest until the end of his days.