Indeed! .Edu and .Gov are highly respected in the eyes of the search engines, mostly because they are restricted to educational institutes, and government authorities, respectively. That is, private entities are not allowed to register these domains. Even if their content is uninteresting, backlinks coming from these sites are very powerful...personal experience btw!
Yeah I got several good links for one of my clients. I have a tool that I've been using called "Game Changer" that lets you add footprints and I added the one that you shared to that. Works great, much appreciated!