Today, 4 July is a remarkable day in history. Not only did the Congress of the United States of America ratify the Declaration of independence on this day in 1776 but also, on this day in 1946 the United States of America gave the Philippine Islands their independence after 381 years of colonial rule under, initially, the Spanish and later (for 87 years) the Americans - which was frightfully good of them. But there is more: today in 1807 was the birthday of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi was an Italian patriot and soldier of the Risorgimento. He personally led many of the military campaigns that brought about the formation of a unified Italy - having first lost twice as many battles as he eventually won. Garibaldi was an influential and colourful character who, rightly deserves to have the Garibaldi biscuit named after him - he was, apparently, prone to handing raisin biscuits out to his men. His men were no doubt thankful to receive these as a welcome change from sun-dried tomatoes, pasta, artichokes, olives and salami pizza. An orange North American fish is also named after him. If that wasn’t enough drama and history to be going on with, at 0550 GMT this morning in 2005, someone crashed a washing machine-sized "impactor" into Comet Tempel 1 at a relative speed of 37,000km/h, throwing up a huge plume of icy debris - most careless, although probably fairly exciting for anyone loafing about in space close enough to have seen it happen.
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