Paris newspapers once carried an ad offering a cheap and pleasant way of travelling for the price of 25 centimes. Several simpletons mailed this sum. Each received a letter of the following content:

‘Sir, rest at peace in bed and remember that the earth turns. At the 49th parallel — that of Paris — you travel more than 25,000 km a day. Should you want a nice view, draw your curtain aside and admire the starry sky.’

The man who sent these letters was found and tried for fraud. The story goes that after quietly listening to the verdict and paying the fine demanded, the culprit struck a theatrical pose and solemnly declared, repeating Galileo’s famous words: ‘It turns.’

— Yakov Perelman, Physics for Entertainment, 1913