/year

Earth

third planet from the Sun in the Solar System

39 dated entries naming Earth, drawn from 36 separate years between 350 BCE and 2025 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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4th century BC

  • 350 BCEAristotle argues for a spherical Earth using lunar eclipses and other observations. Also he discusses logical reasoning in Organon.source

2nd century BC

  • 200 BCEThe first good measurement of the distance between Earth and the Sun is made by Eratosthenes (approximate date). By studying lunar eclipses, his result is roughly 150 000 000 km. The currently accepted value is 149 597 870 691 ± 30 metres.source

1st century

  • 13Strabo publishes his book on the shape of the Earth.source
  • 44Pomponius Mela writes De situ orbis, a geography of the Earth.source

4th century

  • 391Flames destroy the great Library of Alexandria, established in the Mouseion in the fourth century BC. Among the items lost in the fire are works of science, including parchments by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos asserting that the Earth orbits the Sun, and dozens of dramatic works by Euripides and Sophocles.source

6th century

  • 511Aryabhata, Indian astronomer and mathematician, comes up with concepts of mathematical equations, one of which explains the rotation of the Earth on its axis. This concept is far ahead of its time and he is fairly accurate in his description of it. He also comes up with a lot of other ideas about the Solar System, but many of them are flawed because he considers the Earth to be the center of the universe. Aryabhata is often given credit for coming up with the number zero and using it as a placeholder.source
  • 600The population of the Earth rises to about 208 million people (approximate date).source

9th century

  • 827Khalid ibn Abd al-Malik al-Marwarrudhi and Ali ibn Isa al-Asturlabi travel to the Plain of Sinjar (modern Iraq), under orders of Caliph Al-Ma'mun, to measure the size of the Earth.source
  • 837April 10 – Halley's Comet passes approximately 5 million km from Earth, its closest ever approach.source

10th century

  • 993An increase in 14C concentration, recorded in tree rings, as well as 36Cl and 10Be isotopes, recorded in ice cores, suggests that a strong solar storm may have hit the Earth in either 993 or 994.source
  • 994An increase in carbon-14 concentration, recorded in tree rings, suggests that a strong solar storm may have hit the Earth in either 993 or 994.source

12th century

  • 1120Walcher of Malvern, an English astronomer and mathematician, creates a system of measurement for the Earth using degrees, minutes and seconds of latitude and longitude.source

17th century

  • 1669Jean Picard begins measurement of 1 degree of Earth's meridian arc in France.source

18th century

  • 176913 April – first voyage of James Cook: James Cook arrives in Tahiti on the ship HM Bark Endeavour, preparing to observe the transit of the planet Venus, which takes place on 3 June. After the voyage, the data is found to be inaccurate in determining the distance between the Sun and Earth.source
  • 1770July 1 – Lexell's Comet (D/1770 L1) passes the Earth at a distance of 2,184,129 km, the closest approach by a comet in recorded history.source

19th century

  • 1900January 5 – Dr. Henry A. Rowland of Johns Hopkins University discovers the cause of the Earth's magnetism.source

20th century

  • 1908June 30 (June 17 OS) – The Tunguska event near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, Russian Empire, is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment, at an altitude of 5 – 10 km above the Earth's surface.source
  • 1924August – Mars is closer to Earth than it has been for many years and mysterious wireless signals are picked up at a Vancouver wireless station. It is thought by some to be evidence of Martian contact.source
  • 1960August 16 – Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico at an altitude of about 102,800 ft. Kittinger sets world records for: high-altitude jump; free-fall by falling 16.0 miles (25.7 kilometers) before opening his parachute; first space dive, and fastest speed attained by a human being without mechanical or chemical assistance, about 982 k.p.h (614 m.p.h.). Kittinger survives more or less uninjured. He is also the first man to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a gas balloon, and the first man fully to witness the spherical curvature of the Earth. (Felix Baumgartner breaks his space diving record in 2012.)source
  • 1962October 3 – Project Mercury: Mercury-Atlas 8 – U.S. astronaut Walter Schirra orbits the Earth six times, in the Sigma 7 space capsule.source
  • 1968December 24 – Apollo program: The crewed U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole, as well as having traveled further away from Earth than any people in history. Anders photographs Earthrise. The crew also give a reading from the Book of Genesis.source
  • 1969May 26 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth, after a successful 8-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming first crewed Moon landing.source
  • 1971August 7 – Apollo 15 returns to Earth.source
  • 1972December 7 – Apollo 17 (Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans, Harrison Schmitt), the last crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit until the Artemis II lunar flyby in 2026, is launched to the Moon and The Blue Marble photograph of the Earth is taken. The mission also includes five mice.source
  • 1972December 19 – Apollo program: Apollo 17 returns to Earth, concluding the program of lunar exploration.source
  • 1979July 11 – NASA's first orbiting space station, Skylab, begins falling back Earth as its orbit decays after more than six years.source
  • 1980November 10 – November 12 – Voyager program: The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn, when it flies within 77,000 mi of the planet's cloud-tops and sends the first high resolution images of the world back to scientists on Earth.source
  • 1990February 14 – The Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth is sent back from the Voyager 1 probe after completing its primary mission, from around 5.6 billion kilometers (3.5 billion miles) away.source
  • 1994January 8 – Soyuz TM-18: Valeri Polyakov begins his 437.7-day orbit of the Earth, eventually setting the world record for days spent in orbit.source

21st century

  • 2003January 22 – The last signal from NASA's Pioneer 10 spacecraft is received, some 12.2 billion kilometers (7.6 billion mi) from Earth.source
  • 2012July 23 – The Solar storm of 2012 is an unusually large coronal mass ejection emitted by the Sun which barely misses the Earth by nine days. If it had hit, it would have caused up to US$2.6 trillion in damages to electrical equipment worldwide.source
  • 2013May 31 – The largest tornado ever recorded hits El Reno, United States. This rain-wrapped, multiple-vortex tornado was the widest tornado ever recorded, and results in eight deaths, including four storm-chasers. Measurements from mobile weather radars revealed extreme winds up to 296 mph (476 km/h) within the vortex, among the highest observed wind speeds on Earth. As it crosses U.S. 81, the tornado grows to a record-breaking width of 2.6 miles (4.2 km).source
  • 2016August 12: Scientists say Greenland sharks are now known to be the longest-living vertebrates on Earth, after researchers at the University of Copenhagen, using radiocarbon dating, determined the ages of 28 of the animals, and estimated that one female was about 400 years old. The former vertebrate record-holder was a Bowhead whale estimated to be 211 years old.source
  • 2018July 31 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth since 2003, four days after reaching opposition.source
  • 2020April 10 – The ESA/JAXA space probe BepiColombo makes its final gravity assist around Earth and begins to depart for Venus, where it will make several gravity assist maneuvers before finally arriving at Mercury in 2025.source
  • 2020April 29 – (52768) 1998 OR2, a near-Earth asteroid that is 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) wide, makes a close approach of 0.042 AU (6.3 million km; 16 LD) to Earth. It will not approach closer than this until 2079.source
  • 2021April 17 – The Soyuz MS-17 mission concludes, returning three crewmembers of Expedition 64 to Earth from the International Space Station.source
  • 2021May 2 – The SpaceX Crew-1 mission ends, returning four crew members of Expedition 64 and 65 to Earth from the International Space Station aboard Crew Dragon Resilience.source
  • 2025April 17 – The atmosphere of K2-18b, a candidate water world located 124 light-years away, is found to contain large quantities of dimethyl sulfide and/or dimethyl disulfide – two compounds that, on Earth, are only known to be produced by life.source

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