posted 02-05-2005 01:02 AM            

I’d like to tell you about just one of these events. It was a Kepler's Book Store in Menlo Park, California. It was at an odd time, 12 noon on a Wednesday and there was only a few days advanced notice in the local paper. All this contributed to a very small turn out. There was only about ten of us there to hear Buzz speak, eight house wives, a homeless guy and me. Buzz looked at the “crowd” and gives me his ‘you again?’ look and started to speak. He said, “What a thrill it is to speak to you today at Kepler's Book Store. How wonderful that they named this book store after the great German astronomer Johannes Kepler. If not for his three laws of planetary motion we never would have reached the moon. We wouldn’t have even made it to Earth orbit.”

Now I knew who the book store was named for and it wasn’t an astronomer. Its first owner Mr. Kepler named it for himself. But I was too polite to raze a hand and set Buzz straight by saying, “Excuse me sir, but this place isn’t named for Johannes Kepler.” We were all too polite. We just sat there and let Buzz dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole.

posted 02-05-2005 06:20 PM               

To be very technically correct, you better make certain that the Keplers of the bookstore aren't related to Johannes Kepler (I was just reading the thread about waht the first words from the moon really were, some around these forums want the technically correct details!).

posted 02-15-2005 10:57 AM               

It is NOT named after King Charles. There's a plaque set into a bridge in Watertown Sq. (in Watertwon, of all places) that states it was named after a Pilgrim named John Charles.