1935: Astronomer Eugène Delporte discovers the asteroid (1926) Demiddelaer from the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Uccle.
1925: Georges Lecointe officially retires and steps down as Director of the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
1808: Founding of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) by Louis Bonaparte.
1961: Aboard the Freedom 7 capsule, Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into space.
1976: A magnitude 6.4 earthquake strikes the Friuli region of Italy.
1952: British engineer Geoffrey Dummer publishes the concept of the integrated circuit.
1962: The first test flight of NASA's new Centaur rocket stage ends in failure.
1860: Discovery of caesium by Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff using spectroscopy.
1871: Death of John Herschel (born 1792), a central figure in British astronomy and mathematics.
1941: German engineer Konrad Zuse presents the Z3 in Berlin, the world’s first functional, programmable, and fully automatic computer.
1844: Birth of Charles Fievez, a pioneer of spectroscopy at the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
1618: Johannes Kepler confirms his Third Law of Planetary Motion (the Harmonic Law).
1830: Death of Joseph Fourier (born 1768), French mathematician and physicist.
1968: Launch of ESRO 2B, a research satellite which made astronomical surveys primarily in x-ray and solar particles detectors.
1675: Death of Stanisław Lubieniecki (born 1623), Polish astronomer and historian.
1570: The Brabantian cartographer Abraham Ortelius publishes the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum ("Theatre of the Lands of the World") in Ant
1851: Birth in Schaerbeek of Charles-Émile Stuyvaert (died 1908), Assistant Astronomer at the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
1906: The Wright brothers obtain US patent no. 821,393 for their "Flying-Machine".
1958: The satellite Explorer 1, the first American spacecraft, ceases to emit signals after its batteries are exhausted.
986: Death of the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (known in the West as Azophi).
2018: A magnitude 3.1 earthquake on the Richter scale occurs in Kinrooi, in the province of Limburg.
585 BC: A total solar eclipse abruptly interrupts the Battle of the Halys (modern-day Kizilirmak River, Turkey) between the Lydians
1919: The British astronomer Arthur Eddington takes advantage of a total solar eclipse, observed from the island of Príncipe
1938: Retirement of Joseph Vanderlinden, a scientist at the Observatory.
1846: The French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier presents his definitive calculations to the Academy of Sciences, predicting the existence and positio
1966: The American lander Surveyor 1 achieves the first US soft landing on the Moon, in Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms).
1965: American astronaut Edward White performs the first United States extravehicular activity (EVA) during the Gemini 4 mission.
2010: The first successful launch of the Falcon 9 rocket by the private company SpaceX from Cape Canaveral.
1898: Death of the Belgian explorer and physicist Émile Danco aboard the Belgica, while the ship was trapped in the Antarctic ice.
1580: Birth of the Flemish astronomer Godefroy (Godefroid) Wendelin in Herck-la-Ville (Herk-de-Stad).
1826: Death of the German physicist and optician Joseph von Fraunhofer.
1826: Signing of the Royal Decree by King William I of the Netherlands ordering the construction of the Royal Observatory of Brussels (which would
Georges Van Biesbroeck, a scientist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, concluded his long career, having discovered numerous asteroids over the y