April 8th: Cosmonaut's Day /International Astronomy Day

To celebrate International Astronomy Day, here are 10 spacey things that happened on this date:

1. 1947 The largest recorded sunspot was observed.
2. 1960 Project Ozma (named after Princess Ozma, ruler of the land of Oz) began at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia, its purpose being to attempt to detect messages from alien civilizations with a radio telescope.
3. 1964 Gemini 1, the first of the unmanned test flights of Gemini rockets, was launched. It was observed over three orbits and then abandoned. It was designed to burn up during re-entry and never be recovered.
4. 1966 OAO 1, the first orbiting astronomical observatory, was launched. Its purpose was to measure ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma ray emissions in space, but the mission had to end after three days because of a power failure.
5. 1971 A Meteorite fell on a house in Wethersfield Connecticut. No-one was hurt. By coincidence, another house less than a mile away was similarly hit on November 8, 1982. No one was hurt on that occasion either.
6. 1980 Telesto, one of Saturn's moons, was discovered by Voyager I.
7. 1984 The first in-orbit satellite repair took place when the crew of the shuttle Challenger repaired the Solar Maximum Mission (SMM). First launched 1980, the purpose of the SMM was to study solar flares.
8. 1986 An asteroid named Nigel was discovered by Eleanor F. Helin. There is a long list of asteroids discovered on this date through the years but this one seemed to have the most unlikely name. Further investigation reveals it was named after the astronomer Nigel Henbest.
9. 1993 The space shuttle Discovery launched for mission STS-56. It was carrying equipment to collect data on how the sun's energy was affecting the ozone layer.
10. 1997 The space shuttle Columbia landed at the end of mission STS 83. The purpose of the mission was to carry out experiments on microgravity, but a fuel cell problem meant they had to come back early.