History of Science and Discovery: Breakthroughs That Changed the World
Medicine, biology, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and practical discovery
The history of science is not a smooth, linear march forward — it is a story of radical breaks, fierce resistance, and the occasional lonely genius who turns out to be right. The scientific revolution required overturning two thousand years of Aristotelian certainty. The germ theory of disease was mocked before it was accepted. Continental drift was derided for decades. Understanding how science actually advances — through the messy collision of evidence, ego, politics, and insight — makes the results no less remarkable.
History: January 1 (#3)
January 1, 1773 The hymn that becomes known as "Amazing Grace", previously titled "1 Chronicles 17:16–17, Faith's Review and Expectation", is first used to accompany a sermon led by John Newton in the town of Olney, Buckinghamshire, England.
Read commentary →History: January 3 (#1)
January 3, 1957 The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.
Read commentary →History: January 4 (#2)
January 4, 1903 Topsy, an elephant, is electrocuted by the owners of Luna Park, Coney Island. The Edison film company records the film Electrocuting an Elephant of Topsy's death.
Read commentary →History: January 7 (#2)
January 7, 1954 Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York at the head office of IBM.
Read commentary →History: January 7 (#3)
January 7, 1610 Galileo Galilei makes his first observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although he is not able to distinguish the last two until the following night.
Read commentary →History: January 11 (#2)
January 11, 1961 Throgs Neck Bridge over the East River, linking New York City's boroughs of The Bronx and Queens, opens to road traffic.
Read commentary →History: January 11 (#5)
January 11, 1943 Italian-American anarchist Carlo Tresca is assassinated in New York City.
Read commentary →History: January 12 (#1)
January 12, 1997 Space Shuttle program: Atlantis launches from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-81 to the Russian space station Mir, carrying astronaut Jerry M. Linenger for a four-month stay on board the station, replacing astronaut John E. Blaha.
Read commentary →History: January 15 (#1)
January 15, 1962 The Derveni papyrus, Europe's oldest surviving manuscript dating to 340 BC, is found in northern Greece.
Read commentary →History: January 15 (#4)
January 15, 1818 A paper by David Brewster is read to the Royal Society, belatedly announcing his discovery of what we now call the biaxial class of doubly-refracting crystals. On the same day, Augustin-Jean Fresnel signs a "supplement" (submitted four days later) on reflection of polarized light.
Read commentary →History: January 16 (#1)
January 16, 1913 Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan writes his first letter to G. H. Hardy at Cambridge, stating without proof various formulae involving integrals, infinite series, and continued fractions, beginning a long correspondence between the two as well as widespread recognition of Ramanujan's results.
Read commentary →History: January 17 (#2)
January 17, 1904 Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard receives its premiere performance at the Moscow Art Theatre.
Read commentary →History: January 18 (#1)
January 18, 1778 James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands".
Read commentary →History: January 22 (#2)
January 22, 1998 Space Shuttle program: space shuttle Endeavour launches on STS-89 to dock with the Russian space station Mir.
Read commentary →History: January 25 (#1)
January 25, 1964 Blue Ribbon Sports, which would later become Nike, is founded by University of Oregon track and field athletes.
Read commentary →History: January 25 (#2)
January 25, 1961 Walt Disney Productions released the animated feature One Hundred and One Dalmatians, based on Dodie Smith's 1956 children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Read commentary →History: January 25 (#4)
January 25, 1650 As part of the purges following the Great Potosí Mint Fraud of 1649 Francisco Gómez de la Rocha, a rich former corregidor of Potosí, is executed.
Read commentary →History: January 26 (#1)
January 26, 1949 The Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory sees first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming the largest aperture optical telescope (until BTA-6 is built in 1976).
Read commentary →History: January 27 (#1)
January 27, 1820 A Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discovers the Antarctic continent, approaching the Antarctic coast.
Read commentary →History: January 27 (#3)
January 27, 1880 Thomas Edison receives a patent for his incandescent lamp.
Read commentary →History: January 31 (#2)
January 31, 1901 Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters premieres at Moscow Art Theatre in Russia.
Read commentary →History: February 4 (#2)
February 4, 1859 The Codex Sinaiticus is discovered in Egypt.
Read commentary →History: February 5 (#1)
February 5, 1924 The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal.
Read commentary →History: February 6 (#1)
February 6, 1820 The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society depart New York to start a settlement in present-day Liberia.
Read commentary →History: February 11 (#5)
February 11, 1997 Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
Read commentary →History: February 13 (#2)
February 13, 1633 Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
Read commentary →History: February 15 (#3)
February 15, 1493 While on board the Niña, Christopher Columbus writes an open letter (widely distributed upon his return to Portugal) describing his discoveries and the unexpected items he came across in the New World.
Read commentary →History: February 17 (#3)
February 17, 1600 On his way to be burned at the stake for heresy, at Campo de' Fiori in Rome, the philosopher Giordano Bruno has a wooden vise put on his tongue to prevent him continuing to speak.
Read commentary →History: February 20 (#3)
February 20, 1872 The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.
Read commentary →History: February 21 (#2)
February 21, 1828 Initial issue of the Cherokee Phoenix is the first periodical to use the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoyah.
Read commentary →History: February 28 (#1)
February 28, 1835 Elias Lönnrot signs and dates the foreword to the first version of the Kalevala, the so-called Old Kalevala.
Read commentary →History: March 5 (#1)
March 5, 1981 The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 11⁄2 million units around the world.
Read commentary →History: March 14 (#1)
March 14, 1942 Anne Miller becomes the first American patient to be treated with penicillin, under the care of Orvan Hess and John Bumstead.
Read commentary →History: March 21 (#1)
March 21, 1925 The Butler Act prohibits the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee.
Read commentary →History: March 23 (#2)
March 23, 2001 The Russian Mir space station is disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.
Read commentary →History: March 25 (#4)
March 25, 1911 Andrey Yushchinsky is murdered in Kiev, leading to the Beilis affair.
Read commentary →History: March 25 (#5)
March 25, 1655 Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.
Read commentary →History: March 26 (#1)
March 26, 1958 The African Regroupment Party is launched at a meeting in Paris.
Read commentary →History: March 31 (#2)
March 31, 1717 A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, preached in the presence of King George I of Great Britain, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.
Read commentary →History: April 3 (#2)
April 3, 686 Maya king Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' assumes the crown of Calakmul.
Read commentary →History: April 4 (#1)
April 4, 1996 Comet Hyakutake is imaged by the USA Asteroid Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous.
Read commentary →History: April 4 (#3)
April 4, 1796 Georges Cuvier delivers the first paleontological lecture.
Read commentary →History: April 9 (#2)
April 9, 1860 On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the first known recording of an audible human voice.
Read commentary →History: April 14 (#2)
April 14, 1894 The first ever commercial motion picture house opens in New York City, United States. It uses ten Kinetoscopes, devices for peep-show viewing of films.
Read commentary →History: April 24 (#2)
April 24, 1990 STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Read commentary →History: April 25 (#2)
April 25, 1954 The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Read commentary →History: April 30 (#1)
April 30, 1492 Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration. He is named admiral of the ocean sea, viceroy and governor of any territory he discovers.
Read commentary →History: May 1 (#1)
May 1, 1915 RMS Lusitania departs from New York City on her 202nd, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives.
Read commentary →History: May 1 (#3)
May 1, 1486 Christopher Columbus presents his plans for discovering a western route to the Indies to the Spanish Queen Isabella I of Castile.
Read commentary →History: May 2 (#1)
May 2, 1952 A De Havilland Comet makes the first jetliner flight with fare-paying passengers, from London to Johannesburg.
Read commentary →History: May 2 (#2)
May 2, 1867 Albert Günther publishes the first study to recognise that the New Zealand tuatara is not a lizard.
Read commentary →History: May 5 (#3)
May 5, 1494 On his second voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus sights Jamaica, landing at Discovery Bay and declares Jamaica the property of the Spanish crown.
Read commentary →History: May 7 (#2)
May 7, 1931 The stand-off between criminal Francis Crowley and 300 members of the New York Police Department takes place in his fifth-floor apartment on West 91st Street, New York City.
Read commentary →History: May 8 (#1)
May 8, 1886 Pharmacist John Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named "Coca-Cola" as a patent medicine.
Read commentary →History: May 9 (#1)
May 9, 1960 The Food and Drug Administration announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making Enovid the world's first approved oral contraceptive pill.
Read commentary →History: May 10 (#2)
May 10, 1503 Christopher Columbus visits the Cayman Islands and names them Las Tortugas after the numerous turtles there.
Read commentary →History: May 11 (#2)
May 11, 2009 Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on the final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
Read commentary →History: May 14 (#2)
May 14, 1879 The first group of 463 Indian indentured laborers arrives in Fiji aboard the Leonidas.
Read commentary →History: May 15 (#1)
May 15, 1997 The Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on STS-84 to dock with the Russian space station Mir.
Read commentary →History: May 15 (#3)
May 15, 1618 Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion (he first discovered it on March 8 but soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made).
Read commentary →History: May 19 (#1)
May 19, 1535 French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail on his second voyage to North America with three ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona's two sons (whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage).
Read commentary →History: May 19 (#2)
May 19, 1743 Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade temperature scale.
Read commentary →History: May 20 (#1)
May 20, 1891 History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope.
Read commentary →History: May 20 (#3)
May 20, 1570 Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas.
Read commentary →History: May 24 (#2)
May 24, 1883 The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.
Read commentary →History: May 27 (#2)
May 27, 1930 The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public.
Read commentary →History: June 8 (#2)
June 8, 1772 Alexander Fordyce flees to France to avoid debt repayment, triggering the credit crisis of 1772 in the British Empire and the Dutch Republic.
Read commentary →History: June 11 (#1)
June 11, 1968 Lloyd J. Old identified the first cell surface antigens that could differentiate among different cell types.
Read commentary →History: June 11 (#5)
June 11, 2008 The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is launched into orbit.
Read commentary →History: June 12 (#1)
June 12, 1982 A nuclear disarmament rally and concert is held in New York City.
Read commentary →History: June 14 (#1)
June 14, 1822 Charles Babbage proposes a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society.
Read commentary →History: June 17 (#1)
June 17, 1901 The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT.
Read commentary →History: June 17 (#3)
June 17, 1242 Following the Disputation of Paris, twenty-four carriage loads of Jewish religious manuscripts were burnt in Paris.
Read commentary →History: June 23 (#1)
June 23, 1926 The College Board administers the first SAT exam.
Read commentary →History: June 25 (#1)
June 25, 1900 The Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu discovers the Dunhuang manuscripts, a cache of ancient texts that are of great historical and religious significance, in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China.
Read commentary →History: June 27 (#1)
June 27, 1995 Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on STS-71, the first space shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir.
Read commentary →History: June 29 (#1)
June 29, 1995 Space Shuttle program: STS-71 Mission (Atlantis) docks with the Russian space station Mir for the first time.
Read commentary →History: July 3 (#3)
July 3, 1767 Pitcairn Island is discovered by Midshipman Robert Pitcairn on an expeditionary voyage commanded by Philip Carteret.
Read commentary →History: July 4 (#2)
July 4, 1862 Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.
Read commentary →History: July 7 (#1)
July 7, 1959 Venus occults the star Regulus. This rare event is used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of the Venusian atmosphere.
Read commentary →History: July 10 (#1)
July 10, 1997 In London, scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
Read commentary →History: July 11 (#2)
July 11, 1893 The first cultured pearl is obtained by Kōkichi Mikimoto.
Read commentary →History: July 14 (#1)
July 14, 1790 Inaugural Fête de la Fédération is held to celebrate the unity of the French people and the national reconciliation.
Read commentary →History: July 25 (#2)
July 25, 1908 Ajinomoto is founded. Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University discovers that a key ingredient in kombu soup stock is monosodium glutamate (MSG), and patents a process for manufacturing it.
Read commentary →History: July 25 (#4)
July 25, 1538 The city of Guayaquil is founded by the Spanish Conquistador Francisco de Orellana and given the name Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Guayaquil.
Read commentary →History: July 26 (#2)
July 26, 1882 Premiere of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal at Bayreuth.
Read commentary →History: July 31 (#1)
July 31, 1498 On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.
Read commentary →History: August 3 (#2)
August 3, 1977 Tandy Corporation announces the TRS-80, one of the world's first mass-produced personal computers.
Read commentary →History: August 5 (#5)
August 5, 1860 Charles XV of Sweden–Norway is crowned king of Norway in Trondheim.
Read commentary →History: August 8 (#3)
August 8, 1576 The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory is laid on the island of Hven.
Read commentary →History: August 8 (#4)
August 8, 1876 Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
Read commentary →History: August 9 (#1)
August 9, 1897 The first International Congress of Mathematicians is held in Zürich, Switzerland.
Read commentary →History: August 14 (#3)
August 14, 1901 The first claimed powered flight, by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21.
Read commentary →History: August 16 (#1)
August 16, 1876 Richard Wagner's Siegfried, the penultimate opera in his Ring cycle, is premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
Read commentary →History: August 16 (#2)
August 16, 1989 A solar particle event affects computers at the Toronto Stock Exchange, forcing a halt to trading.
Read commentary →History: August 17 (#2)
August 17, 1876 Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung, the last opera in his Ring cycle, premieres at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
Read commentary →History: August 18 (#3)
August 18, 1868 French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium.
Read commentary →History: August 19 (#1)
August 19, 1960 Sputnik program: Korabl-Sputnik 2: The Soviet Union launches the satellite with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, two rats and a variety of plants.
Read commentary →History: August 23 (#3)
August 23, 2007 The skeletal remains of Russia's last royal family members Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, and his sister Grand Duchess Anastasia are discovered near Yekaterinburg, Russia.
Read commentary →History: August 25 (#2)
August 25, 1609 Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
Read commentary →History: August 26 (#2)
August 26, 1768 Captain James Cook sets sail from England on board HMS Endeavour.
Read commentary →History: August 30 (#2)
August 30, 1574 Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master.
Read commentary →History: September 7 (#1)
September 7, 1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont flies his 14-bis aircraft at Bagatelle, France successfully for the first time.
Read commentary →History: September 8 (#3)
September 8, 1522 Magellan–Elcano circumnavigation: Victoria arrives at Seville, completing the first circumnavigation.
Read commentary →History: September 9 (#2)
September 9, 1839 John Herschel takes the first glass plate photograph.
Read commentary →History: September 12 (#5)
September 12, 1993 NASA launches Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-51.
Read commentary →History: September 16 (#3)
September 16, 1822 French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a "note" read to the Academy of Sciences, reports a direct refraction experiment verifying David Brewster's hypothesis that photoelasticity (as it is now known) is stress-induced birefringence.
Read commentary →History: September 16 (#4)
September 16, 1996 Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on STS-79 to dock with the Russian space station Mir.
Read commentary →History: September 18 (#2)
September 18, 1950 TV Tupi Difusora, the first television station to broadcast in Brazil, begins transmissions on Channel 3 in São Paulo.
Read commentary →History: September 18 (#3)
September 18, 1932 The body of actress Peg Entwistle is discovered by police, two days after her suicide by jumping off of the Hollywoodland sign.
Read commentary →History: September 22 (#1)
September 22, 1976 Red Dye No. 4 is banned by the US Food and Drug Administration after it is discovered that it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs.
Read commentary →History: September 25 (#2)
September 25, 1804 The Teton Sioux (a subdivision of the Lakota) demand one of the boats from the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a toll for allowing the expedition to move further upriver.
Read commentary →History: September 25 (#3)
September 25, 1997 NASA launches Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-86 to the Mir space station.
Read commentary →History: September 30 (#2)
September 30, 1882 Thomas Edison's first commercial hydroelectric power plant, the Vulcan Street Plant, begins operation.
Read commentary →History: October 1 (#3)
October 1, 1890 Yosemite National Park is established by the U.S. Congress.
Read commentary →History: October 14 (#1)
October 14, 1956 Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, leader of India's Untouchable caste, converts to Buddhism along with 385,000 of his followers (see Neo-Buddhism).
Read commentary →History: October 18 (#1)
October 18, 320 Pappus of Alexandria, Greek philosopher, observes an eclipse of the Sun and writes a commentary on The Great Astronomer (Almagest).
Read commentary →History: October 21 (#1)
October 21, 1879 Thomas Edison applies for a patent for his design for an incandescent light bulb.
Read commentary →History: October 24 (#1)
October 24, 1851 William Lassell discovers the moons Umbriel and Ariel orbiting Uranus.
Read commentary →History: October 27 (#2)
October 27, 1553 Condemned as a heretic, Michael Servetus is burned at the stake just outside Geneva.
Read commentary →History: October 29 (#1)
October 29, 1964 Biggest jewel heist in American history when Murph the Surf and gang burgle the American Museum of Natural History stealing the Star of India and other gems.
Read commentary →History: October 29 (#2)
October 29, 1675 Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
Read commentary →History: November 1 (#2)
November 1, 1963 The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, with the largest radio telescope ever constructed, officially opens.
Read commentary →History: November 4 (#1)
November 4, 1890 City and South London Railway: London's first deep-level tube railway opens between King William Street and Stockwell.
Read commentary →History: November 7 (#1)
November 7, 1940 In Tacoma, Washington, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses in a windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge's completion.
Read commentary →History: November 11 (#1)
November 11, 1675 Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).
Read commentary →History: November 12 (#1)
November 12, 1995 Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on STS-74 to deliver the Mir Docking Module to the Russian space station Mir.
Read commentary →History: November 18 (#2)
November 18, 1883 In the "day of two noons", American and Canadian railroad companies institute four standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
Read commentary →History: November 21 (#2)
November 21, 1676 The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.
Read commentary →History: November 24 (#1)
November 24, 1974 Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.
Read commentary →History: November 24 (#3)
November 24, 1642 Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).
Read commentary →History: November 27 (#1)
November 27, 2001 A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.
Read commentary →History: November 30 (#1)
November 30, 1803 The Balmis Expedition starts in Spain with the aim of vaccinating millions against smallpox in Spanish America and Philippines.
Read commentary →History: November 30 (#4)
November 30, 1936 In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire.
Read commentary →History: December 3 (#2)
December 3, 1904 The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California's Lick Observatory.
Read commentary →History: December 5 (#1)
December 5, 1578 Sir Francis Drake, after sailing through Strait of Magellan, raids Valparaiso.
Read commentary →History: December 9 (#2)
December 9, 1822 French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a memoir read to the Academy of Sciences, coins the terms linear polarization, circular polarization, and elliptical polarization, and reports a direct refraction experiment verifying his theory that optical rotation is a form of birefringence.
Read commentary →History: December 10 (#1)
December 10, 1684 Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.
Read commentary →History: December 14 (#1)
December 14, 1900 Quantum mechanics: Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law (quantum theory) at the Physic Society in Berlin.
Read commentary →History: December 14 (#2)
December 14, 1918 Giacomo Puccini's comic opera Gianni Schicchi premieres at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Read commentary →History: December 17 (#1)
December 17, 1790 The Aztec calendar stone is discovered at El Zócalo, Mexico City.
Read commentary →History: December 19 (#1)
December 19, 1999 Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-103, the third Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.
Read commentary →History: December 22 (#1)
December 22, 1968 Cultural Revolution: People's Daily posted the instructions of Mao Zedong that "The intellectual youth must go to the country, and will be educated from living in rural poverty."
Read commentary →History: December 24 (#1)
December 24, 1777 Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is discovered by James Cook.
Read commentary →History: December 25 (#5)
December 25, 2003 The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, released from the Mars Express spacecraft on December 19, stops transmitting shortly before its scheduled landing.
Read commentary →History: December 31 (#1)
December 31, 1879 Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
Read commentary →History: December 31 (#3)
December 31, 1831 Gramercy Park is deeded to New York City.
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What are the most important scientific discoveries in history?
Among the most cited: Newton's laws of motion and gravitation (foundation of classical mechanics and space exploration), germ theory (transformed medicine, eliminated most infectious disease deaths), evolution by natural selection (unified biology), special and general relativity (GPS, cosmology, nuclear energy), quantum mechanics (electronics, computing, laser technology), and the discovery of DNA structure (genetics, medicine, forensics). Each was initially controversial and is now fundamental.