Pluto first appears on photographic plates at Yerkes Observatory (1909), and Estonia restores its independence on legal continuity grounds (1991). Born on this day: Benjamin Harrison, Andrew Garfield and Mohamed Morsi. Died: St. Pius X, Pius VII and Paul Ehrlich.
31 events, 64 births and 51 deaths on this date.
Pluto was captured on photographic plates at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, 21 years before Clyde Tombaugh formally discovered it. Tombaugh's search in 1930 is what finally brought the distant world to wider attention.
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI · Public domainEstonia declared that its statehood had never lapsed, so its independence was re-established rather than newly created. The claim rested on the pre-1940 state, which had been occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union but never legally dissolved.
Washington ordered Jacob Lomakin, the Soviet consul general in New York, out of the country over the Kasenkina case. The affair was a bitter dispute between Washington and Moscow early in the Cold War.
On this day the Linnean Society published Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection alongside a paper by Alfred Russel Wallace reaching the same conclusion. Their joint presentation is how the idea first reached the scientific world in print.
Strong gales fanned hundreds of small blazes into one enormous wildfire across Washington and Idaho. It scorched roughly 4,700 square miles, making it the biggest fire the United States has on record.
A small group of Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein's government occupied the embassy for about five hours. They freed their hostages and gave themselves up, ending the standoff peacefully.
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Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd US president, serving from 1889 to 1893, and the grandson of the ninth president, William Henry Harrison. He is remembered for signing the Sherman Antitrust Act and the McKinley Tariff, and for losing the 1892 election to Grover Cleveland, his predecessor.
Pach Brothers · Public domain
English and American actor known for playing Spider-Man in Marc Webb's films and for his Oscar-nominated turns in Hacksaw Ridge and Tick, Tick... Boom!. He broke through with The Social Network and Never Let Me Go.
Raph_PH · CC BY 4.0
Egypt's fifth president, he was removed from office after about a year in power, following mass protests against his rule. Trained as a metallurgical engineer, he had also taught at universities in California and Egypt before entering politics.
Wilson Dias/ABr · CC BY 3.0 br
Giuseppe Sarto, born poor in the Austrian Empire, became Pope Pius X and fought modernist readings of Catholic doctrine. He died in 1914 and was later declared a saint for lowering the age of First Communion and encouraging frequent communion.
Ernest Walter Histed · Public domain
Pius VII led the Catholic Church for over twenty-three years, through Napoleon's rise. He had been taken prisoner by Napoleon's forces and held in France, before returning to Rome in 1814 to a warm welcome.
Jacques-Louis David · Public domain
Paul Ehrlich was a German physician whose work on immunity earned him a Nobel Prize in 1908. He is remembered for Salvarsan, the first effective treatment for syphilis, and for coining the term chemotherapy.
Eduard Blum · CC BY 4.0
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