Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist and astronomer.  He was born in  Pisa on February 15, 1564. Galileo's father, Vincenzo Galilei, was a  well-known musician. Vincenzo decided that his son should become a  doctor.

In 1581, Galileo was sent to the University of Pisa to study  medicine.  While a student at the university, Galileo discovered that he  had a talent for mathematics.  He was able to persuade his father to  allow him to leave the university to become a tutor in mathematics.  He later  became a professor of mathematics.

In 1609, Galileo heard about the invention of the spyglass, a device which made  distant objects appear closer. Galileo used his mathematics knowledge and  technical skills to improve upon the spyglass and build a telescope. Later  that same year, he became the first person to look at the Moon through a  telescope and make his first astronomy discovery. He found that the Moon was  not smooth, but mountainous and pitted - just like the Earth! He subsequently  used his newly invented telescope to discover four of the moons circling  Jupiter, to study Saturn, to observe the phases of Venus, and to study sunspots on the Sun.

Galileo's observations strengthened his belief in Copernicus' theory that Earth and all other planets revolve around the Sun. Most people in Galileo's time believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun and planets revolved around it.

The Catholic Church, which was very powerful and influential in Galileo's  day, strongly supported the theory of a geocentric, or Earth-centered,  universe. After Galileo began publishing papers about his astronomy  discoveries and his belief in a heliocentric, or Sun-centered, Universe, he  was called to Rome to answer charges brought against him by the Inquisition  (the legal body of the Catholic Church). Early in 1616, Galileo was accused  of being a heretic, a person who opposed Church teachings. Heresy was a crime  for which people were sometimes sentenced to death. Galileo was cleared of  charges of heresy, but was told that he should no longer publicly state his  belief that Earth moved around the Sun. Galileo continued his study of  astronomy and became more and more convinced that all planets revolved around  the Sun.  In 1632, he published a book that stated, among other things, that the  heliocentric theory of Copernicus was correct.  Galileo was once again  called before the Inquisition and this  time was found guilty of heresy.  Galileo was sentenced to life  imprisonment in 1633.  Because of his age and poor health, he was allowed to  serve his imprisonment under house arrest.  Galileo died on January 8, 1642.

Travel by road in India is dangerous.  A number of U.S. citizens have suffered fatal traffic accidents in recent years.  Travel at night is particularly hazardous.  Buses, patronized by hundreds of millions of Indians, are convenient in that they serve almost every city of any size.  However, they are usually driven fast, recklessly, and without consideration for the rules of the road.  Accidents are quite common.  Trains are safer than buses, but train accidents still occur more frequently than in developed countries.

In order to drive in India, one must have either a valid Indian driver’s license or a valid international driver’s license.  Because of difficult road and traffic conditions, many Americans who visit India wisely choose to hire a local driver.

On Indian roads, the safest driving policy is to always assume that other drivers will not respond to a traffic situation in the same way you would in the United States.  On Indian roads, might makes right, and buses and trucks epitomize this fact.  For instance, buses and trucks often run red lights and merge directly into traffic at yield points and traffic circles.  Cars, auto-rickshaws, bicycles and pedestrians behave only slightly more cautiously.  Frequent use of one's horn or flashing of headlights to announce one's presence is both customary and wise.

Outside major cities, main roads and other roads are poorly maintained and congested.  Even main roads often have only two lanes, with poor visibility and inadequate warning markers.  On the few divided highways one can expect to meet local transportation traveling in the wrong direction, often without lights.  Heavy traffic is the norm and includes (but is not limited to) overloaded trucks and buses, scooters, pedestrians, bullock and camel carts, horse or elephant riders en route to weddings, bicycles, and free-roaming livestock.  Traffic in India moves on the left.  It is important to be alert while crossing streets and intersections, especially after dark as traffic is coming in the "wrong" direction (i.e., from the left).  Travelers should remember to use seatbelts in both rear and front seats where available, and to ask their drivers to maintain a safe speed.

If a driver hits a pedestrian or a cow, the vehicle and its occupants are at risk of being attacked by passersby.  Such attacks pose significant risk of injury or death to the vehicle's occupants or at least of incineration of the vehicle.  It can thus be unsafe to remain at the scene of an accident of this nature, and drivers may instead wish to seek out the nearest police station.

Protestors often use road blockage as a means of publicizing their grievances, causing severe inconvenience to travelers.  Visitors should monitor local news reports for any reports of road disturbances.

Emergency Numbers: The following emergency numbers work in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata:
• Police 100
• Fire Brigade 101
• Ambulance 102

Chewing gum is available in a wide variety of flavors, including  mint, wintergreen, cinnamon and various types of fruits. Mintier  flavors are often chewed for fresher breath. There is no standard type  of gum, as it can be formed in many different shapes and sizes. Some  examples include:

 
• Ball gum - shaped like a ball and coated. These are most often sold in gum ball machines.  In the United Kingdom, these are often referred to as 'Screwballs', as  they are found at the bottom of a 'Screwball' ice cream treat. In the  US, they are known as "gum balls".
 
• Bubble gum - formulated with film-forming characteristics for blowing bubbles.
 
• Sugarfree gum - made with artificial sweeteners.
 
• Candy & Gum combinations - predominantly bubble gum found in the center of some types of lollipop, such as Charms Blow Pops.
 
• Center-filled gum - Pellet or ball gum formed around a soft or liquid centre.
 
• Slab gum Cut & Wrap gum - refers to the name of the machine that wraps this type of gum, usually in the form of a chunk, cube or cylindrical shape.
 
• Dragée gum or "pellet gum" - a pillow-shaped coated pellet, often packed in blister packs.
 
• Functional gum - a chewing gum with a practical function. Zoft Gum,  for example, specializes in herbal chewing gum products using gum as  the delivery system for vitamins and minerals among other substances.
 
• Medicated gum - a chewing gum acting as a delivery system to  introduce medicinal substances into the saliva and thus into the  bloodstream faster than pills.
 
• Powdered gum - free-flowing powder form or powders compressed into unique shapes.
 
• Stick gum - a rectangular, thin, flat, slab of gum.
 
• Ribbon gum - very similar to stick gum in shape, but much longer, coiled up in a cylindrical container often shaped like a hockey puck. The chewer tears off a piece of the desired size.
 
• Tube gum or Spaghetti gum - very soft bubble gum which can be squeezed from a tube or can be found in a pouch.

The earliest forms of cigarettes have been attested in Central  America around the 9th century in the form of reeds and smoking tubes.  The Maya, and later the Aztecs,  smoked tobacco and various psychoactive drugs in religious rituals and  frequently depicted priests and deities smoking on pottery and temple  engravings. The cigarette, and the cigar, were the most common method  of smoking in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central and South America until  recent times.

The South and Central American cigarette used various plant  wrappers; when it was brought back to Spain, maize wrappers were  introduced, and by the seventeenth century, fine paper. The resulting  product was called papelate and is documented Goya's paintings La Cometa, La Merienda en el Manzanares, and El juego de la pelota a pala (18th century).

By 1830, the cigarette had crossed into France, where it received the name cigarette; and in 1845, the French state tobacco monopoly began manufacturing them.

In the George Bizet opera Carmen, which was set in Spain in the 1830s, the title character Carmen was at first a worker in a cigarette factory.

In the English-speaking world, the use of tobacco in cigarette form became increasingly popular during and after the Crimean War, when British soldiers began emulating their Ottoman Turkish and Russian comrades. This was helped by the development of tobaccos that are suitable for cigarette use, and by the development of the Egyptian cigarette export industry.

During World War I and World War II, cigarettes were rationed to soldiers. During the second half of the 20th century, the adverse health effects of cigarettes started to become widely known and text-only  health warnings became commonplace on cigarette packets. The United  States has not yet implemented graphical cigarette warning labels,  which are considered a more effective method to communicate to the  public the dangers of cigarette smoking. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, however, have both textual warnings  and graphic visual images displaying, among other things, the damaging  effects tobacco use has on the human body.

The cigarette has evolved much since its conception; for example,  the thin bands that travel transverse to the "axis of smoking" (thus  forming circles along the length of the cigarette) are alternate  sections of thin and thick paper to facilitate effective burning when  being drawn, and retard burning when at rest. Synthetic particulate  filters remove some of the tar before it reaches the smoker.