The echo of the Big Bang was first blamed on pigeon droppings.
In 1964 Penzias and Wilson could not get rid of noise in their antenna, cleaned out the droppings and evicted the pigeons; the noise was the cosmic background, and won them a Nobel Prize.
More amazing facts
- 1962 · 1963 Decca Records turned the Beatles down.
- 1963 Valentina Tereshkova is the only woman ever to fly in space alone.
- 1963 The Moscow–Washington hotline was once cut by a Finnish farmer's plough and another time by a Danish bulldozer.
- 1963 The first woman flew into space when the Beatles had released just one album.
- 1964 The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were the first broadcast overseas without flying tapes across.
- 1965 · 1975 The first man to walk in space was, ten years later, the first to shake an American's hand in orbit.