Events
1896 - An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Roentgen has discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.
1972 - Richard Nixon orders the development of a space shuttle program.
2005 - Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered.
Births
1865 - Julio Garavito Armero, Colombian astronomer
1874 - Joseph Erlanger, American physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1879 - Hans Eppinger, Austrian physician
1906 - Kathleen Kenyon, English archaeologist
Deaths
1904 - Karl Alfred von Zittel, German palaeontologist
1922 - Ernest Shackleton, Irish explorer
1970 - Max Born, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1981 - Harold C. Urey, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate