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What Happened Today in History?

Posted by Kronos Profile 04/07/25 at 12:12PM History See more by Kronos
1743 CE, July 26

The Battle of Dettingen takes place during the War of the Austrian Succession, marking the last time a reigning British monarch, King George II, personally leads his troops in battle.

1775 CE, July 26

The U.S. postal system is established by the Continental Congress and Benjamin Franklin is appointed first Postmaster General at the beginning of the American Revolution. More

1788 CE, July 26

The State of New York ratifies the Articles of Confederation becoming the 11th State of the Union.

A Comment by Loy

Your avatar
Loy • 04/08/2025 at 03:36PM • Like 1 Profile

Love the new UI - it is fun to be able to easily look up specific days, years and months throughout history. I must control me ADHD 😳🙂

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Globular star cluster Omega Centauri packs about 10 million stars much older than the Sun into a volume some 150 light-years in diameter. Also known as NGC 5139, at a distance of 15,000 light-years it's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. With a yellowish hue, Omega Centauri's red giant stars are easy to pick out in this sharp telescopic view. A two-decade-long exploration of the dense star cluster with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed evidence for a massive black hole near the center of Omega Centauri.

Photo by Leo Shatz

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Meteors from the Kappa Cygnid meteor shower are captured in this time-lapse composite skyscape. The minor meteor shower, with a radiant not far from its eponymous star Kappa Cygni, peaks in mid-August, almost at the same time as the much better-known and better-observed Perseid meteor shower. But, seen to have a peak rate of only about 3 meteors per hour, Kappa Cygnids are vastly outnumbered by the more popular, prolific Perseid shower's meteors that emanate from the heroic constellation Perseus. To capture dozens of Kappa Cygnids, this long term astro-imaging project compiled meteors in exposures selected from over 51 August nights during the years 2012 through 2024. Most of the exposures with identified Kappa Cygnid meteors were made in August 2021, a high point of the shower's known 7-year activity cycle. All twelve years worth of Kappa Cygnids are registered against a base sea and night skyscape of the Milky Way above Elafonisi Beach, Crete, Greece, also recorded in August of 2021.

Photo by Petr Horálek

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

very 15 years or so, Saturn's rings are tilted edge-on to our line of sight. As the bright, beautiful ring system grows narrower and fainter it becomes increasingly difficult to see for denizens of planet Earth. But it does provide the opportunity to watch transits of Saturn's moons and their dark shadows across the ringed gas giant's still bright disk. Of course Saturn's largest moon Titan is the easiest to spot in transit. In this telescopic snapshot from July 18, Titan itself is at the upper left, casting a round dark shadow on Saturn's banded cloudtops above the narrow rings. In fact Titan's transit season is in full swing now with shadow transits every 16 days corresponding to the moon's orbital period. Its final shadow transit will be on October 6, though Titan's pale disk will continue to cross in front of Saturn as seen from telescopes on planet Earth every 16 days through January 25, 2026.

Photo by Every 15 years or so

“The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surface of a deep river,” Virginia Woolf wrote some years before she filled her coat-pockets with stones, waded into the River Ouse near her house, and, unwilling to endure what she had barely survived in the past, slid beneath the smooth surface of life."  More at The Marginalian ➜

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Have you ever seen a fireball? In astronomy, a fireball is a very bright meteor -- one at least as bright as Venus and possibly brighter than even a full Moon. Fireballs are rare -- if you see one you are likely to remember it for your whole life. Physically, a fireball is a small rock that originated from an asteroid or comet that typically leaves a fading smoke trail of gas and dust as it shoots through the Earth's atmosphere. It is unlikely that any single large ground strike occurred -- much of the rock likely vaporized as it broke up into many small pieces. The featured picture was captured last week from a deadwood beach in Cape San Blas, Florida, USA. Piece it Back Together: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day

Photo by Jason Rice

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