Events
1900 - Max Planck discovers the law of black body emission.
1972 - Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew take the photograph known as "The Blue Marble" (above) as they leave the Earth.
1995 - The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
Births
903 - Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi, Persian astronomer
1810 - Theodor Schwann, German physiologist
1905 - Gerard Kuiper, Dutch-born American astronomer
Deaths
1978 - Alexander Wetmore, American ornithologist
1993 - Wolfgang Paul, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1998 - Martin Rodbell, American scientist and Nobel Prize laureate