December 28th, 2009

Today in History

1989:
1989 -A magnitude 5.6 earthquake hits Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, killing 13 people.

1973:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn publishes Gulag Archipelago.

1945:
The U.S. Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance

1846:
Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state.

1612:
Galileo Galilei was the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune when it was in conjunction with Jupiter, yet he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star because of its extremely slow motion along the ecliptic at that time. Neptune was not truly discovered until 1846, about 234 years after Galileo first sighted it with his telescope.