Events in History Relating to Science
April 30, 1006
Supernova SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, appears in the constellation Lupus.
January 7, 1610
Galileo Galilei observes the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time. He named them and in turn the four are called the Galilean moons.
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).
March 25, 1655
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christian Huygens.
June 15, 1667
The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.
March 4, 1675
John Flamsteed is appointed the first Astronomer Royal of England.
October 29, 1675
Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
November 11, 1675
Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).
September 17, 1683
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek writes a letter to the Royal Society describing "animalcules": the first known description of protozoa.
November 5, 1743
Coordinated scientific observations of the transit of Mercury are organized by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle.
June 15, 1752
Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity.
June 4, 1769
A transit of Venus is followed five hours later by a total solar eclipse, the shortest such interval in history.
March 2, 1791
Long-distance communication speeds up with the unveiling of a semaphore machine in Paris.
May 14, 1796
Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination.
March 28, 1802
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid known to man.
September 3, 1803
English scientist John Dalton started using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.
June 14, 1822
Charles Babbage proposes a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables".
April 7, 1827
John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.
December 27, 1831
Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate the theory of evolution.
May 15, 1836
Francis Baily observes "Baily's beads" during an annular eclipse.
January 6, 1838
Samuel Morse first successfully tests the electrical telegraph.
January 9, 1839
The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.
August 19, 1839
Presentation of Jacque Daguerre's new photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences.
November 27, 1839
In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.
November 13, 1841
James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism.
October 16, 1843
Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.
October 2, 1851
The pasilalinic-sympathetic compass is demonstrated but proves to be a fake.
September 24, 1852
The first airship powered by (a steam) engine, created by Henri Giffard, travels 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to Trappes.
June 18, 1858
Charles Darwin receives a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that includes nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin's own. This prompts Darwin to publish his theory.
August 20, 1858
Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.
August 28, 1859
A geomagnetic storm causes the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly that it is seen clearly over parts of USA, Europe, and even as far afield as Japan.
November 22, 1859
Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species is first offered for sale, in London, England.
January 2, 1860
The discovery of the planet Vulcan is announced at a meeting of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.
May 14, 1861
The Canellas meteorite, an 859-gram chondrite-type meteorite, strikes the earth near Barcelona, Spain.
April 20, 1862
Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the first pasteurization tests.
June 23, 1868
Christopher Latham Sholes receives a patent for Type-Writer.
December 10, 1868
The first traffic lights are installed outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
February 11, 1869
Frederick Banting announces the discovery of insulin, used to treat diabetes, at the University of Toronto.
March 6, 1869
Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.
November 1, 1870
In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast.
February 14, 1876
Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.
March 7, 1876
Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone beating Antonio Meucci by just 4 hours.
March 10, 1876
Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."
December 31, 1879
Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time.
February 2, 1880
The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana.
March 24, 1882
Robert Koch announces the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis (mycobacterium tuberculosis).
April 29, 1882
The "Elektromote" – forerunner of the trolleybus – is tested by Ernst Werner von Siemens in Berlin.
January 19, 1883
The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.
September 15, 1883
The Bombay Natural History Society is founded in Bombay (now Mumbai), India.
January 28, 1887
In a snowstorm at Fort Keogh, Montana, the world's largest snowflakes are reported, being 15 inches (38 cm) wide and 8 inches (20 cm) thick.
January 3, 1888
The refracting telescope at the Lick Observatory, measuring 91 cm in diameter, is used for the first time. It was the largest telescope in the world at the time.
October 17, 1888
Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie).
February 1, 1893
Thomas A. Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria in West Orange, New Jersey.
April 14, 1894
Thomas Edison demonstrates the kinetoscope, a device for peep-show viewing using photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor to movies.
August 25, 1894
Shibasaburo Kitasato discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.
March 22, 1895
First display (a private screening) of motion pictures by Auguste and Louis Lumière.
November 8, 1895
While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers the X-ray.
December 14, 1900
Quantum Mechanics: Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law.
March 5, 1904
Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, describes the process of the ball lightning formation.
March 21, 1905
Albert Einstein publishes his theory on special relativity.
April 11, 1905
Albert Einstein reveals his Theory of Relativity (special relativity).
September 27, 1905
The physics journal Annalen der Physik published Albert Einstein's paper "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", introducing the equation E=mc².
November 21, 1905
Albert Einstein's paper, Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?, is published in the journal "Annalen der Physik". This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass. This leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc².
October 23, 1906
Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France.
May 18, 1910
The Earth passes through the tail of Comet Halley.
March 19, 1915
Pluto is photographed for the first time but is not recognized as a planet.
March 20, 1916
Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.
February 5, 1924
The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".
September 28, 1928
Sir Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as penicillin.
October 12, 1928
An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston
April 28, 1932
A vaccine for yellow fever is announced for use on humans.
September 12, 1933
Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.
February 4, 1936
Radium E becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.
February 21, 1937
Initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman's Arrowbile.
March 18, 1937
The human-powered aircraft, Pedaliante, flies 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) outside Milan.
April 12, 1937
Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft at Rugby, England.
November 16, 1938
LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.
May 14, 1939
Lina Medina becomes the world's youngest confirmed mother in medical history at the age of five.
November 1, 1939
The first rabbit born after artificial insemination is exhibited to the world.
March 16, 1942
The first V-2 rocket test launch. It explodes at lift-off.
December 2, 1942
Manhattan Project: A team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
April 16, 1943
Dr. Albert Hofmann discovers the psychedelic effects of LSD.
October 19, 1943
Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.
August 7, 1944
IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
May 10, 1946
First successful launch of a V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground.
May 21, 1946
Physicist Louis Slotin is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
September 24, 1947
Majestic 12 is allegedly established by secret executive order of President Harry Truman
October 14, 1947
Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight.
December 16, 1947
William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain build the first practical point-contact transistor.
March 17, 1950
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley announce the creation of element 98, which they name "Californium".
October 15, 1951
Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes conducted the very last step of the first synthesis of norethisterone, the progestin that would later be used in one of the first two oral contraceptives.
February 21, 1953
Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the structure of the DNA molecule.
February 28, 1953
James D. Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April Nature (pub. April 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.
February 23, 1954
The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh.
May 1, 1956
The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public.
July 16, 1957
United States Marine Major John Glenn flies a F8U Crusader supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds setting a new transcontinental speed record.
October 11, 1957
Space Race: M.I.T. scientists calculate Sputnik I's booster rocket's orbit.
December 6, 1957
Project Vanguard: A launchpad explosion of Vanguard TV3 thwarts the first United States attempt to launch a satellite into Earth orbit.
February 5, 1958
A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
January 2, 1959
Luna 1, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon and to orbit the Sun, is launched by the U.S.S.R.
January 21, 1960
Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia, aboard Little Joe 1B – an unmanned test of the Mercury spacecraft.
March 5, 1960
The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis originates when Alister Hardy publicly announces his idea that ape-human divergence may have been due to a coastal phase.
March 22, 1960
Arthur Leonard Schawlow & Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser.
January 31, 1961
Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2 – Ham the Chimp travels into outer space.
February 14, 1961
Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California.
April 12, 1961
Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).
May 5, 1961
The Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 3 – Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, making a sub-orbital flight of 15 minutes.
May 24, 1962
Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
June 14, 1962
The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris – later becoming the European Space Agency.
July 10, 1962
Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit.
May 15, 1963
Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper on board. He becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space.
June 16, 1963
Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission – Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.
March 20, 1964
The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.
July 31, 1964
Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.
February 17, 1965
Project Ranger: The Ranger 8 probe launches on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions. The Mare Tranquillitatis or "Sea of Tranquility" would become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.
March 18, 1965
Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.
April 6, 1965
Launch of Early Bird, the first communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.
February 3, 1966
The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.
March 16, 1966
Launch of Gemini 8, the 12th manned American space flight and first space docking with the Agena Target Vehicle.
January 12, 1967
Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.
April 24, 1967
Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when its parachute fails to open. He is the first human to die during a space mission.
December 21, 1967
Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, after living for 18 days.
January 7, 1968
Surveyor Program: Surveyor 7, the final spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral.
August 24, 1968
France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.
May 22, 1969
Apollo 10's lunar module flies within 8.4 nautical miles (16 km) of the moon's surface.
July 21, 1969
Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission.
April 13, 1970
An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.
April 24, 1970
The first Chinese satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, is launched.
November 26, 1970
In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) of rain fall in a minute, the heaviest rainfall ever recorded.
October 28, 1971
Britain launches its first (and as of 2007, only) satellite, Prospero, into low Earth orbit atop a Black Arrow carrier rocket.
November 13, 1971
The American space probe, Mariner 9, becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars.
November 27, 1971
The Soviet space program's Mars 2 orbiter releases a descent module. It malfunctions and crashes, but it is the first man-made object to reach the surface of Mars.
January 5, 1972
U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a space shuttle program.
December 7, 1972
Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as "The Blue Marble" as they leave the Earth.
June 4, 1973
A patent for the ATM is granted to Donald Wetzel, Tom Barnes and George Chastain.
February 8, 1974
After 84 days in space, the crew of the first American space station Skylab return to Earth.
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.
November 30, 1974
Lucy (Australopithecus) is discovered by Donald Johanson, Maurice Taieb, Yves Coppens and Tim White in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.
April 1, 1976
Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect is first reported by the astronomer Patrick Moore.
October 4, 1976
Official launch of the Intercity 125 High Speed Train (HST).
October 13, 1976
The first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle was obtained by Dr. F.A. Murphy, now at U.C. Davis, who was then working at the C.D.C..
January 18, 1977
Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease.
February 18, 1977
The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden "flight" sitting on top of a Boeing 747.
March 4, 1977
The first Cray-1 supercomputer is shipped to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.
March 10, 1977
Rings of Uranus: Astronomers discover rings around Uranus.
January 24, 1978
Soviet satellite Cosmos 954, with a nuclear reactor onboard, burns up in Earth's atmosphere, scattering radioactive debris over Canada's Northwest Territories. Only 1% is recovered.
March 5, 1978
The Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
February 18, 1979
Snow fell in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only recorded time in history.
March 5, 1979
Voyager 1's closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles.
March 18, 1980
At Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia, 50 people are killed by an explosion of a Vostok-2M rocket on its launch pad during a fueling operation.
April 14, 1981
STS-1 – The first operational space shuttle, Columbia (OV-102) completes its first test flight.
June 27, 1982
Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final research and development flight mission, STS-4.
January 1, 1983
The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.
January 19, 1983
The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, is announced.
April 7, 1983
During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first space shuttle spacewalk.
October 21, 1983
The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
January 22, 1984
The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, is introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with its famous "1984" television commercial.
April 2, 1984
Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma is launched aboard Soyuz T-11, and becomes the first Indian in space.
March 4, 1985
The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS, used since then for screening all blood donations in the United States.
October 30, 1985
Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.
March 4, 1986
The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Comet Halley and the first images ever of its nucleus.
December 18, 1987
Larry Wall releases the first version of the Perl programming language.
March 23, 1989
Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce cold fusion at the University of Utah.
August 25, 1989
Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the outermost planet in the Solar System.
January 22, 1990
Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. is convicted of releasing the 1988 Internet Computer worm.
December 25, 1990
The first successful trial run of the system which would become the World Wide Web.
October 29, 1991
The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.
March 6, 1992
Michelangelo computer virus begins to affect computers.
March 25, 1992
Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returns to Earth after a 10-month stay aboard the Mir space station.]
January 8, 1994
Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.
January 18, 1994
The Cando event, a possible bolide impact in Cando, Spain. Witnesses claim to have seen a fireball in the sky lasting for almost one minute.
March 4, 1994
Space shuttle STS-62 (Columbia 16) launches into orbit.
March 31, 1994
Human evolution: The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.
April 21, 1994
The first discoveries of extrasolar planets are announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan.
April 26, 1994
Physicists announce first evidence of the top quark subatomic particle.
July 16, 1994
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collides with Jupiter. Impacts continue until July 22nd.
January 30, 1995
Workers from the National Institutes of Health announce the success of clinical trials testing the first preventive treatment for sickle-cell disease.
February 9, 1995
Space Shuttle astronauts Bernard A. Harris, Jr. and Michael Foale become the first African American and first Briton, respectively, to perform spacewalks.
February 22, 1995
The Corona reconnaissance satellite program, in existence from 1959 to 1972, is declassified.
March 14, 1995
Space Exploration: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on-board a Russian launch vehicle.
March 22, 1995
Cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov returns after setting a record for 438 days in space.
March 25, 1995
The world's first wiki, a part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.
December 7, 1995
The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
February 8, 1996
The massive Internet collaboration "24 Hours in Cyberspace" takes place.
February 14, 1996
China launches a Long March 3 rocket, carrying the Intelsat 708 satellite. The rocket flies off course 3 seconds after liftoff and crashes into a rural village.
July 5, 1996
Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.
January 17, 1997
A Delta 2 carrying a GPS2R satellite explodes 13 seconds after launch, dropping 250 tons of burning rocket remains around the launch pad.
February 11, 1997
Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
March 9, 1997
Comet Hale-Bopp: Observers in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia are treated to a rare double feature as an eclipse permits Hale-Bopp to be seen during the day.
July 10, 1997
In London scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neandertal skeleton which support the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
January 14, 1998
Researchers in Dallas, Texas present findings about an enzyme that slows aging and cell death (apoptosis).
February 28, 1998
First flight of RQ-4 Global Hawk, the first unmanned aerial vehicle certified to file its own flight plans and fly regularly in U.S. civilian airspace.
March 2, 1998
Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
March 31, 1998
Netscape releases the code base of its browser under an open-source license agreement; the project is given the code name Mozilla and would eventually be spun off into the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.
November 20, 1998
The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, is launched.
March 26, 1999
The "Melissa worm" infects Microsoft word processing and e-mail systems around the world.
May 29, 1999
Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station.
February 14, 2000
The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.
October 31, 2000
Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station. The ISS has been continuously crewed since.
June 11, 2002
Antonio Meucci is acknowledged as the first inventor of the telephone by the United States Congress.
January 16, 2003
The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry.
February 1, 2003
Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
April 14, 2003
The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.
July 6, 2003
The 70-metre Eupatoria Planetary Radar sends a METI message Cosmic Call 2 to 5 stars: Hip 4872, HD 245409, 55 Cancri, HD 10307 and 47 Ursae Majoris that will arrive to these stars in 2036, 2040, 2044, 2044 and 2049 respectively.
December 25, 2003
The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, released from the Mars Express Spacecraft on December 19, disappears shortly before its scheduled landing.
January 2, 2004
Stardust successfully flies past Comet Wild 2, collecting samples that it will return to Earth two years later.
February 13, 2004
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
November 24, 2004
Male Poʻo-uli dies of Avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.
December 25, 2004
Cassini orbiter releases Huygens probe which successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005.
December 27, 2004
Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet.
November 9, 2005
The Venus Express mission of the European Space Agency is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
November 27, 2005
The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France.
March 4, 2006
Final contact attempt with Pioneer 10 by the Deep Space Network. No response is received.
June 21, 2006
Pluto's newly discovered moons are officially named Nix & Hydra.
August 24, 2006
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto is considered a Dwarf Planet.
July 24, 2007
Libya frees all six of the Medics in the HIV trial in Libya.
March 19, 2008
GRB 080319B: A cosmic burst that is the farthest object visible to the naked eye is briefly observed on this day.
April 30, 2008
Two skeletal remains found near Ekaterinburg, Russia are confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia and one of his sisters.
September 10, 2008
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in history is powered up in Geneva, Switzerland.
April 23, 2009
The gamma ray burst GRB 090423 it's observed for 10 seconds as the most distant object of any kind and also the oldest known object in the universe.
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