Chinese astronomers made the first recorded observation of Halley’s comet in 240 B.C.
In 1705, English astronomer Edmund Halley was the first to theorize that comets travel in regular orbits around the sun.
Proposing that “the great comet” observed in 1682 made periodic visits about every 76 years, he predicted that it would return in 1758.
The comet was named for him when his prediction came true, 16 years after his death.
A quasar is another name for a quasi-stellar object. It looks like a star but emits as much radiation as an entire galaxy, with a volume far smaller than that of our Milky Way galaxy. No one knows what a quasar is; recent evidence suggests it might be a galaxy with a big black hole…
Named for the patron saint of sailors, Saint Elmo’s fire is actually discharges of electricity that occur during storms. These discharges are seen as blue or bluish white lights at the tips of masts and bowsprits of ships at sea, as well as on church steeples and building spires on land.
At least two people have been hit by a meteorite. In September 1954, Mrs. Hewlett Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama, was hit by a meteorite as she napped in her living room. The rock from space weighed about 10 pounds. In the late 1930s, a Japanese girl was also hit by a small meteorite.
Avoirdupois weight is the system we use whenever we measure a grain, dram (27.3 grains), ounce (16 drams), or pound (16 ounces).
First used in 1940 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, the number googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. It was brought to public attention by Sirotta’s uncle, mathematician Edward Kasner, in his book Mathematics and the Imagination.
The Greek word heureka, meaning “I have found it,” was made famous by Archimedes, a Sicilian philosopher (c. 287-212 B.C.). Archimedes was given the task of finding out whether a crown presented to the ruler of Syracuse was really pure gold or alloyed with an inferior metal. The philosopher was baffled until he stepped into…