Copernicus supposedly never saw it

A couple of days ago I briefly saw the planet Mercury with my own eyes for the first time ever. I confirmed it with another observation today. Mercury is a naked-eye planet but is typically hard to see, since its closeness to the Sun means it can only be seen just after sunset or just before sunrise, and its small size and dark coloration makes it relatively dim, unlike Venus, which is impossible to miss.

Though I am fond of astronomical things, I was never a serious enough amateur to look carefully for Mercury when I had the opportunity. But over the past few days it's appeared just to the right of Venus (at my latitude) just after sunset, and is therefore easy to find once the sky gets just dark enough that the stars are about to emerge. I missed its period of greatest brightness a few days ago because of clouds.

I showed it to Jorie, too, but I don't think she was interested enough in dim dots in the sky to see what I was pointing at. For a while she could recognize the planet from MESSENGER photos.