Events
1977 - Rings of Uranus: Astronomers discover rings around Uranus.
1982 - Syzygy: all nine planets align on the same side of the Sun.
2006 - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.
Births
1628 - Marcello Malpighi, Italian physician
1709 - Georg Steller, German naturalist
Deaths
1585 - Rembert Dodoens, Flemish physician and botanist
1670 - Johann Rudolf Glauber, German chemist
1942 - William Henry Bragg, English physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1966 - Frits Zernike, Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
More like this
And such closeness has not been achieved before or since. Voyager 2 passed very close to the funny-named planet 25 years ago today (plus or minus) and that is the only close fly by to date.
"The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be viewed, not only with the usual attention to facts as they occur, but with the eye of reason and experience." -William Herschel
"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune." -Noam Chomsky
"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune."
-Noam Chomsky