1961 Russia’s Venera 1 space probe made its fly-by of Venus. It was the first man-made object to fly-by another planet and was the first spacecraft designed to perform mid-course corrections. Unfortunately, it had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data.

1762 German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in Rammenau. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, and is thought of by some as the father of German nationalism. He also made important original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness, and the problem of subjectivity and consciousness motivated much of his philosophical meditation.

1593 Flemish Baroque painter Jacob Jordaens was born in Antwerp. He painted altarpieces, mythological, and allegorical scenes, and is best-known today for his numerous large genre scenes based on proverbs.

1958 A United States Air Force F-104A Starfighter set a world speed record of 2,259.82 km/h (1,404.19 mph).

1953 American aviation pioneer Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier. She flew a Canadair F-86 Sabre jet borrowed from the Royal Canadian Air Force at an average speed of 652.337 mph at Rogers Dry Lake in California.

1897 Irish author Bram Stoker first published Dracula. It was his fifth and by far his most famous novel.

1711 Croatian physicist, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher Roger Joseph Boscovich was born in Dubrovnik. He is famous for his atomic theory and made many important contributions to astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon.

1814 The Constitution of Norway was signed and dated by the Norwegian Constituent Assembly at Eidsvoll. It was considered one of the most radically democratic constitutions in the world at the time, and is today the oldest constitution in Europe still in force. May 17 is now the National Day of Norway.

1792 The Buttonwood Agreement was signed by 24 stock brokers outside of 68 Wall Street in New York under a buttonwood tree. This is considered the origin of the New York Stock Exchange.

1866 Philadelphia pharmacist Charles Elmer Hires invented root beer. He called his new formula “Hires Root Beer”, and soon became a millionaire from selling it.

1763 French pharmacist and chemist Louis Nicolas Vauquelin was born in Saint-André-d’Hébertot, Normandy. He discovered the elements beryllium in 1798 and chromium in 1797.

1718 Italian linguist, mathematician, and philosopher Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born in Milan. She is credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus in 1748, called Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana.

1960 Russia launched Sputnik 4. It was a test-flight of the Vostok spacecraft that would be used for the first human spaceflight.

1958 Russia launched Sputnik 3, carrying a large array of instruments for geophysical research.

1953 Italian-American heavyweight boxer Rocky Marciano knocked out “Jersey” Joe Walcott in Chicago.

1718 English inventor and lawyer James Puckle patented the world’s 1st machine gun. Puckle demonstrated two versions of the basic design: one, intended for use against Christian enemies, fired conventional round bullets, while the second variant, designed to be used against the Muslim Turks, fired square bullets, which were considered to be more damaging.

1602 English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold led the first recorded European expedition to visit Cape Cod. Throughout 1602 he explored the New England coast from Maine to Narragansett Bay, and gave Cape Cod its name. Gosnold was also second in command on the voyage that brought colonists to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, where they established the first permanent English settlement in America. He died of malaria later in the year.

1796 English scientist Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox vaccination to an 8-year-old boy named James Phipps.

1787 Delegates began to gather in Philadelphia at the “Philadelphia Convention”, which later became known as the “Constitutional Convention”, in which the new U.S. Constitution was written. Due to the difficulty of travel at the time, very few of the selected delegates were present on this day and it was not until May 25 that a quorum of seven states was secured.

1679 Danish astronomer Peder Horrebow was born in Løgstør, Jutland. He served as an assistant to astronomer Ole Rømer, and when their papers were destroyed in the great fire of Copenhagen in 1728, Horrebow wrote the Basis Astronomiae which described all of their achievements. He also invented a way to determine a place’s latitude from the stars by observing differences of zenith distances of stars culminating within a short time of each other, and at nearly the same altitude, on opposite sides of the zenith. The method is now called the Horrebow-Talcott Method (after American Andrew Talcott rediscovered it in 1833). The crater Horrebow on the Moon is named after him.

1607 Jamestown, located on Jamestown Island in the Virginia Colony, was founded by English settlers. It is commonly regarded as the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States of America, following several earlier failed attempts.

1913 Russian-American aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky flew the first four-engine aircraft, the S-21 Russky Vityaz, which he called Le Grand.

1909 The first Giro d’Italia (Tour of Italy) started at Milan, with eight stages totalling 2,448 kilometres (1,521 miles). Italian cyclist Luigi Ganna was the first winner.

1861 Australian astronomer John Tebbutt discovered the “Great Comet of 1861″. The comet was visible to the naked eye for approximately 3 months and was calculated to have an elliptical orbit with a period of about 400 years.

1767 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Apollo et Hyacinthus was first performed in the Great Hall at Salzburg University. Mozart had written the opera when he was only 11 years old.

1803 German chemist Justus von Liebig was born in Darmstadt. He is known as the “father of the fertilizer industry” for his discovery of nitrogen as an essential plant nutrient, and his formulation of the Law of the Minimum which described the effect of individual nutrients on crops. As a professor, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the greatest chemistry teachers of all time.

1364 Jagiellonian University, in Krakow, was founded by a Royal Charter issued by Poland’s King Casimir III. It is the oldest institution of higher education in Poland and the second oldest university in Central Europe.

1752 German physician and anthropoligist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was born in Gotha. He was one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history, and his teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to classification of what he called human races, of which he determined five.

1722 Dutch physician and anatomist Petrus Camper was born in Leiden. He was one of the first scholars to study comparative anatomy and paleontology, and he also invented the measure of the facial angle.

1502 Christopher Columbus left Cádiz, Spain on his fourth voyage of discovery with the ships Capitana, Gallega, Vizcaína and Santiago de Palos.

1869 The United States’ First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah. A ceremony was held to drive the Last Spike (also known as the Golden Spike) in which an estimated 3,000 people were in attendance.

1830 French chemist François-Marie Raoult was born in Fournes-en-Weppes. He formulated a law on solutions (called Raoult’s law) that made it possible to determine the molecular weights of dissolved substances.

1824 The National Gallery in London first opened to the public. The museum houses a rich collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900 in its home on Trafalgar Square.

1788 French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel was born in Broglie. He contributed significantly to the establishment of the theory of wave optics, having studied the behaviour of light both theoretically and experimentally. He was also the inventor of the Fresnel lens, first adopted in lighthouses while he was a French commissioner of lighthouses.