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Real astronomy and dated history, with sources. Documented traditions and folklore. Modern lunar astrology · symbolic, not predictive.

Under this moon

Things that happened under a moon like tonight's

192 dated events, 585 BC to 2024. None of them stores a phase: each one stores the date and the clock it was on, and the Moon is computed from that — which is why the illumination is given to the percent, and why a wrong date shows up as a wrong Moon.

Look up the Moon on any date from 1900, a birthday included, and see which of these fell on it.

192 events, oldest first

22 May 585 BCNew Moon, 0% litThe eclipse that stopped a warTwo armies had been fighting for five years when the day went dark on them, and they put down their weapons and…Herodotus, Histories I.74

22 August 413 BCFull Moon, 100% litAn eclipse loses Athens a warThe Athenian army at Syracuse was finally packed and ready to sail home when the full moon went dark, and the…Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War…

15 September 331 BCFull Moon, 100% litThe eclipse before GaugamelaEleven nights before Alexander met Darius at Gaugamela, the full moon was eclipsed over both armies, and a…Babylonian Astronomical Diary BM 36761; Sachs…

18 June 168 BCFull Moon, 100% litThe officer who spoiled the omenThe night before the battle of Pydna a Roman tribune gathered the legions and told them the Moon was about to be…Livy, Ab Urbe Condita XLIV.37

28 August 55 BCFull Moon, 100% litCaesar loses a fleet to a spring tideCaesar had been in Britain a few days when a gale and an unfamiliar tide got in among his beached ships and wrecked…Caesar, De Bello Gallico IV.29; Olson et al…

11 July 1054Waning Crescent, 9% litA crescent, a star, and a handprintOn a rock overhang in Chaco Canyon somebody painted a crescent moon with a large star beside it, and at dawn that…Brandt & Williamson, Archaeoastronomy 1…

20 October 1066Last Quarter, 49% litThe Battle of HastingsHarold's army fought at Hastings under a last quarter moon, and had marched 250 miles in under three weeks to get…Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Bayeux Tapestry

22 June 1215Waning Gibbous, 93% litA charter that failed in ten weeksKing John put his seal to Magna Carta in a meadow by the Thames, and the Pope annulled it before the summer was out.British Library, Magna Carta 1215, Cotton MS…

3 November 1415Last Quarter, 46% litSt Crispin's Day, in NovemberHenry V's army, outnumbered and dysentery-ridden, fought in a ploughed field between two woods that had been rained…Gesta Henrici Quinti, contemporary chaplain's…

31 May 1453Full Moon, 100% litAn eclipse over the walls of ConstantinopleA prophecy said the city would never fall while the Moon was waxing. Eight days before it fell, the Moon rose full…Contemporary accounts of the siege

2 September 1456Waning Crescent, 37% litThe only firm date on the first printed bookA priest in Mainz finished colouring in the capitals of his new Bible, bound it, and wrote the date at the back …Bibliotheque nationale de France, Res. Velins…

21 October 1492Waning Gibbous, 61% litLand, at two in the morningThe first sight of land in the Americas was made at about 2am by a lookout, with a waning gibbous moon roughly 60%…Columbus's journal, as abstracted by Las Casas

29 May 1498New Moon, 1% litEurope reaches India by seaVasco da Gama anchored off Calicut after ten months at sea and was asked, by a Tunisian merchant who spoke…Roteiro da primeira viagem de Vasco da Gama…

10 March 1504Full Moon, 100% litColumbus bullies an island with an almanacStranded in Jamaica and running out of food, Columbus opened his almanac, found a lunar eclipse due, and announced…Ferdinand Columbus, Historie (1571)

16 September 1522Full Moon, 100% litThe first circumnavigation comes home a day lateEighteen survivors reached Spain having sailed round the world, and found their meticulous ship's log was a full…Antonio Pigafetta's journal

21 November 1572Waxing Crescent, 37% litA new star, in a sky that could not changeTycho Brahe walked home to supper, looked up, and saw a star brighter than Venus in a place where there had never…Tycho Brahe, De nova stella (1573)

15 October 1582Waning Gibbous, 82% litTen days deleted from the calendarThursday 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday 15 October 1582 in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Poland, and the ten…Papal bull Inter gravissimas, 24 February 1582

9 February 1607Waxing Gibbous, 94% litThe Bristol Channel drownsThe sea came up the Bristol Channel on a bright winter morning, went twenty miles inland in places, and drowned…Contemporary pamphlets, 1607; Bryant &…

7 January 1610Waxing Gibbous, 96% litThree little stars beside JupiterGalileo noted three faint stars in a line beside Jupiter and thought nothing much of it. The following night they…Galileo's observing notes, January 1610…

13 March 1610Waning Gibbous, 86% litThe Moon stops being perfectGalileo published drawings of a Moon with mountains, valleys and a ragged, shadowed terminator, not the flawless…Galileo, Sidereus Nuncius (1610)

3 May 1616Waning Gibbous, 96% litShakespeare diesShakespeare, who mentions the Moon over four hundred times, died under a 95% waning gibbous.Stratford parish register

12 September 1666Waxing Gibbous, 98% litThe Great Fire of LondonLondon began to burn on a night with a virtually full moon overhead.Samuel Pepys, Diary

15 July 1687Waxing Crescent, 29% litThe book that explained the tidesNewton's Principia was published at Halley's expense, and Book III does something nobody had managed before: it…Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia…

7 December 1703New Moon, 1% litThe Great StormThe worst storm in English record came ashore in the dark of the moon and took the Eddystone lighthouse, its…Daniel Defoe, The Storm (1704)

14 September 1752First Quarter, 40% litThe day Britain skipped eleven daysWednesday 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday 14 September 1752, and the eleven days in between never…Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, 24 Geo. II c…

1 November 1755Waning Crescent, 11% litThe Lisbon earthquakeAn earthquake, then a tsunami, then a firestorm destroyed Lisbon on All Saints' Day, while the churches were full.Portuguese national archives; Kendrick, The…

9 February 1765Waning Gibbous, 86% litA watch beats the MoonThe Board of Longitude sat down to consider John Harrison's sea watch, which had crossed to Jamaica and back and…Board of Longitude confirmed minutes, 9…

6 January 1767First Quarter, 41% litThe book that turned the Moon into a clockThe first Nautical Almanac reached the printer's customers in January 1767, and it let a sailor find his longitude…HM Nautical Almanac Office, history of the…

3 June 1769New Moon, 0% litCook sails to Tahiti to watch a dotThe Endeavour's official mission was to time Venus crossing the face of the Sun, from an island on the other side…Royal Society transit expedition records

16 December 1773Waxing Crescent, 14% litThe Boston Tea Party342 chests of tea went into Boston Harbour under a 15% crescent, barely any light at all.Massachusetts Historical Society

18 April 1775Waning Gibbous, 88% litPaul Revere's midnight ridePaul Revere rowed past a British warship and rode out of Boston under a moon almost exactly like tonight's.Olson & Doescher, Sky & Telescope (1992)

4 July 1776Waning Gibbous, 85% litAmerican independence declaredThe Declaration of Independence was adopted under a waning gibbous moon, the same phase, almost to the day, as…U.S. National Archives

25 December 1776Waning Gibbous, 99% litWashington crosses in the darkTwo and a half thousand men, eighteen guns and the horses went over the ice-choked Delaware on Christmas night…Washington to Continental Congress, 27…

19 May 1780Waning Gibbous, 98% litNew England's Dark DayNoon went black across New England, candles were lit at midday, and that night the near-full moon rose the colour…Journal of Geophysical Research (2007)…

13 March 1781Waning Gibbous, 82% litThe first new planet in recorded historyWilliam Herschel found Uranus from his back garden in Bath and initially reported it as a comet.Herschel, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. (1781)

8 June 1783First Quarter, 52% litThe summer Europe could not see the SunA twenty-seven-kilometre crack opened in southern Iceland and poured out lava for eight months, and the haze…Gilbert White, The Natural History of…

14 July 1789Last Quarter, 58% litThe storming of the BastilleThe Bastille fell under a last quarter moon that would not rise until well after midnight.Bibliothèque nationale de France

14 May 1796First Quarter, 56% litThe first vaccinationEdward Jenner scratched cowpox from a milkmaid's hand into the arm of an eight-year-old boy, then deliberately…Jenner, An Inquiry into the Causes and…

1 August 1798Waning Gibbous, 78% litNelson attacks after darkFinding the French fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay in the late afternoon, Nelson went straight in rather than wait…Log of HMS Vanguard, 1 August 1798, The…

15 July 1799Waxing Gibbous, 97% litThe Rosetta Stone is foundFrench soldiers digging foundations for a fort near Rashid, which they called Rosetta, found a broken slab built…The British Museum, Everything you ever…

21 October 1805Waning Crescent, 1% litTrafalgarTrafalgar was fought at new moon, which mattered less for the battle than for the storm that followed it.National Maritime Museum

7 November 1805Full Moon, 99% lit"Ocian in view! O! the joy!"Clark wrote that in his journal under a near-full moon, having crossed a continent. He was looking at an estuary…Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

26 November 1812Last Quarter, 46% litNapoleon crosses the BerezinaThe retreat from Moscow reached the Berezina under a last quarter moon and roughly −20°C.Contemporary regimental accounts

8 January 1815Waning Crescent, 4% litA battle fought after the war endedThe Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after the treaty ending the war had been signed in Europe.U.S. National Park Service

10 April 1815New Moon, 1% litThe year without a summerTambora erupted under a 2% crescent and cooled the entire planet for a year.Geological Society of London

18 June 1815Waxing Gibbous, 89% litWaterlooThe armies at Waterloo spent the night before the battle soaked to the skin under a 91% moon they mostly could not…National Army Museum

13 November 1833Waxing Crescent, 3% litThe Leonid storm, the night the stars fellIn the small hours over North America the Leonids came down at perhaps 100,000 meteors an hour, and the thin…Linda Hall Library, Scientist of the Day…

25 August 1835Waxing Crescent, 2% litThe Great Moon HoaxThe New York Sun announced that a famous astronomer had seen bat-winged people living on the Moon. Circulation went…The Sun (New York), August 1835

15 September 1835Last Quarter, 44% litThe Beagle reaches the GalápagosDarwin arrived at the islands under a last quarter moon and spent five weeks collecting finches he did not bother…Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

2 October 1836Last Quarter, 53% litThe Beagle comes homeDarwin stepped ashore after four years and nine months, having been seasick for a great deal of it.Darwin Correspondence Project, Cambridge

26 March 1840Last Quarter, 42% litThe first photograph of the MoonJohn Draper pointed a camera at a half-lit moon from a New York rooftop and took the first astronomical photograph…Royal Astronomical Society

24 May 1844First Quarter, 44% lit"What hath God wrought"The first long-distance telegraph message travelled from Washington to Baltimore under a first quarter moon.U.S. Library of Congress

23 September 1846Waxing Crescent, 10% litA planet found with a pencilNeptune was located by mathematics first. An astronomer pointed a telescope where the arithmetic said to look and…Berlin Observatory records, 1846

1 September 1859Waxing Crescent, 23% litThe night the sky caught fireThe largest solar storm on record lit aurorae bright enough to read a newspaper by, as far south as Cuba.Carrington, Monthly Notices RAS (1859)

24 November 1859New Moon, 0% litOn the Origin of Species goes on saleDarwin's book was published at new moon and sold out its entire print run on the first day.John Murray publishing records

18 August 1868New Moon, 0% litAn element found on the Sun before EarthDuring a total eclipse, astronomers saw a yellow line in the Sun's spectrum that matched nothing known. They named…Janssen & Lockyer, 1868; Royal Society

10 May 1869New Moon, 1% litThe golden spikeThe transcontinental railroad was completed at new moon, and the hammer blow was wired live to the whole country.U.S. National Park Service

8 October 1871Waning Crescent, 28% litTwo fires, one nightThe night Chicago burned, a far deadlier fire was destroying Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and almost nobody has heard of it.National Weather Service historical summary

5 December 1872Waxing Crescent, 30% litThe Mary CelesteA ship was found sailing along under a thin crescent with her cargo intact, six months of food aboard, and nobody…Vice-Admiralty Court, Gibraltar (1873)

10 March 1876Full Moon, 100% litMr Watson, come hereThe first sentence sent down a telephone was Alexander Graham Bell asking his assistant to come into the next room…Bell's laboratory notebook, 10 March 1876…

22 January 1879New Moon, 0% litAn eclipse over IsandlwanaA British camp was overrun in Zululand while a partial eclipse was taking the top off the Sun.Ian Knight, "The Sun Turned Black", Journal…

22 January 1879New Moon, 0% litA night fought by firelightThe same day the camp fell, a hundred and fifty men held a mission station through the night, in the dark of the…Chard's official report, 25 January 1879, The…

27 August 1883Waning Crescent, 30% litKrakatoa eruptsKrakatoa's explosions were heard 3,080 miles away, and for weeks afterwards the Sun and Moon looked blue or green…Royal Society, The Eruption of Krakatoa, and…

12 March 1888New Moon, 0% litThe Great White HurricaneA blizzard buried the American northeast under 50 inches of snow at new moon, after a warm, rainy Sunday.National Weather Service

31 March 1889New Moon, 0% litThe Eiffel Tower opensParis got its tower at new moon, over the loud objections of most of its writers and artists.Société d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel

19 September 1893First Quarter, 58% litThe first country where women could voteNew Zealand's governor signed the Electoral Act and made it the first self-governing country in the world where…Archives New Zealand, Women's Suffrage…

8 September 1900Full Moon, 100% litThe deadliest day in American historyA hurricane crossed a Texas island whose highest point was under nine feet, and killed somewhere between six and…NOAA National Weather Service, Galveston 1900…

10 December 1901New Moon, 0% litThe first Nobel PrizesThe first Nobels were handed out at new moon, five years to the day after Alfred Nobel died.Nobel Foundation

17 December 1903Waning Crescent, 2% litThe Wright brothers flyThe first powered flight lasted twelve seconds, under a moon two days from new and effectively invisible.Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

18 April 1906Waning Crescent, 23% litThe San Francisco earthquakeThe quake struck at 5:12am with a waning crescent still up in the pre-dawn sky.U.S. Geological Survey

25 July 1909First Quarter, 47% litThe Channel crossed by airBleriot flew from Calais to Dover in thirty-seven minutes with no compass, lost sight of land in the middle, and…Royal Aero Club records; Daily Mail prize…

14 December 1911Waning Crescent, 31% litAmundsen gets there firstAmundsen reached the South Pole a month ahead of Scott, using dogs, skis and a great deal of unglamorous…Fram Museum, Oslo

17 January 1912Waning Crescent, 4% litScott reaches the South PoleScott's party arrived to find Amundsen's tent already there, a month old.Scott's journals, British Library

14 April 1912Waning Crescent, 6% litTitanic meets the icebergThere was no moon worth speaking of, no wind, and no swell, so no line of white surf around the iceberg to give it…British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry (1912)

21 November 1915Full Moon, 100% litShackleton's Endurance goes downThe Endurance finally sank beneath the Weddell Sea ice under a full moon.Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (2022)

24 April 1916Last Quarter, 53% litShackleton's 800-mile open boat voyageSix men set out across the Southern Ocean in a 22-foot lifeboat to fetch help for the 22 left behind.Shackleton, South (1919)

7 November 1917Last Quarter, 40% litThe October Revolution, in NovemberThe Bolsheviks took the Winter Palace on a date Russia called 25 October and the rest of Europe called 7 November…Decree of the Council of People's Commissars…

6 December 1917Last Quarter, 51% litThe largest bang before the bombA munitions ship burning in Halifax harbour blew up at four minutes past nine, killed about 1,800 people, and…Nova Scotia Archives, Halifax Explosion…

11 November 1918First Quarter, 45% litThe ArmisticeThe guns stopped at 11am on 11 November 1918, with a half-lit moon that had been up since before dawn.Imperial War Museum

15 January 1919Full Moon, 99% litA wave of molasses through BostonA steel tank burst in the North End and released about nine million litres of molasses as a wave some eight metres…Massachusetts Superior Court, Dorr v. United…

29 May 1919New Moon, 0% litEinstein is proved right during an eclipseTwo expeditions photographed stars near the eclipsed Sun and found their light bent by exactly the amount general…Dyson, Eddington & Davidson, Phil. Trans. R…

15 June 1919Waning Gibbous, 97% litThe Atlantic crossed non-stopAlcock and Brown flew a converted bomber from Newfoundland to Ireland in sixteen and a half hours and landed…Royal Aero Club; Alcock and Brown's own…

18 August 1920Waxing Crescent, 24% litA vote decided by a letter from a motherAmerican women got the vote when a 24-year-old Tennessee legislator changed his mind because his mother wrote and…Tennessee State Library and Archives, 1920…

2 November 1920Last Quarter, 53% litElection night on the radioA Pittsburgh station read out the Harding-Cox returns as they came in, and became the first scheduled broadcast to…KDKA station records; Westinghouse archives

26 November 1922First Quarter, 52% litTutankhamun's tomb openedHoward Carter widened the hole, held up a candle, and saw "wonderful things", under a half moon.Griffith Institute, University of Oxford

26 January 1926Waxing Gibbous, 95% litThe first television demonstrationJohn Logie Baird showed a moving image to the Royal Institution in a Soho attic, using a ventriloquist's dummy as…Royal Institution; The Times, 27 January 1926

28 September 1928Waxing Gibbous, 98% litA dirty petri dishAlexander Fleming came back from holiday, looked at a contaminated culture he had left out, and noticed the…Fleming, Br. J. Exp. Pathol. (1929)

1 May 1931Full Moon, 99% litThe Empire State Building opensIt went up in 410 days, about four and a half storeys a week, and opened under a full moon.New York City Landmarks Preservation…

2 November 1932Waxing Crescent, 18% litThe Emu WarAustralia deployed soldiers with machine guns against 20,000 emus, and the emus won.Australian House of Representatives Hansard…

21 April 1934First Quarter, 46% litThe Loch Ness 'surgeon's photograph'The most famous monster photograph ever taken was published under a first quarter moon, and was a toy submarine…Confession reported in The Sunday Telegraph…

2 July 1937Waning Crescent, 39% litAmelia Earhart disappearsShe vanished trying to find a two-mile island in the Pacific, flying through the night under a waning half-moon, a…U.S. Coast Guard Itasca radio log

30 October 1938First Quarter, 47% litThe War of the Worlds broadcastOrson Welles convinced part of America that Martians had landed, on a Halloween eve with a half moon overhead.CBS broadcast archive

4 June 1940Waning Crescent, 4% litThe last night off the beachesOperation Dynamo finished before dawn on 4 June with 338,226 men lifted off the Dunkirk beaches, nine days after…Admiralty report on Operation Dynamo, 18 June…

12 September 1940Waxing Gibbous, 85% litFour boys, a dog and a hole in the groundTeenagers chasing a dog down a hole near Montignac found a cave whose walls had been painted seventeen thousand…Centre des monuments nationaux, Lascaux

14 November 1940Full Moon, 100% litThe bomber's moonThe phrase "bomber's moon" comes from nights exactly like tonight, a full moon turning a blacked-out landscape back…Imperial War Museum

7 December 1941Waning Gibbous, 87% litPearl Harbor, on a clock nobody uses nowThe first bombs fell at 7:48 in the morning, on a Hawaii that was running half an hour off the rest of the world.U.S. Navy action reports, 7 December 1941…

16 May 1943Waxing Gibbous, 89% litThe Dambusters raid617 Squadron flew the dams raid at sixty feet in the dark, on a date chosen for moonlight and water level.Royal Air Force Museum

20 November 1943Last Quarter, 51% litThe tide that did not come inThe Marines at Tarawa were put ashore on a day when the tide over the reef stayed too low for their boats, and…U.S. Marine Corps historical monograph, The…

6 June 1944Full Moon, 99% litD-DayThe largest invasion in history was scheduled around the Moon. It had to be a full one.U.S. Army Center of Military History

8 May 1945Waning Crescent, 16% litVE DayEurope stopped fighting under a 13% waning crescent, and the blackout ended the same week.Imperial War Museum

16 July 1945First Quarter, 42% litThe Trinity testThe first nuclear device was detonated before dawn in the New Mexico desert, with a half moon in the sky.Los Alamos National Laboratory historical…

15 August 1945First Quarter, 42% litA country hears its emperor's voiceAt noon on 15 August 1945 Japan heard a recording of Hirohito announcing the surrender, in court language most…Jewel Voice Broadcast, NHK archive

28 April 1947First Quarter, 59% litKon-Tiki sets outSix men pushed a balsa-wood raft into the Pacific to prove it could have been done, and drifted 4,300 miles.Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo

15 August 1947Waning Crescent, 4% litA country timed to midnight by astrologersAstrologers declared 15 August 1947 inauspicious, so India's independence was fixed for the stroke of midnight…Constituent Assembly of India records

14 October 1947New Moon, 0% litThe sound barrier, with two broken ribsChuck Yeager was dropped from the belly of a B-29 over the Mojave and flew past the speed of sound, having broken…U.S. Air Force Flight Test Center, X-1 flight…

15 September 1950Waxing Crescent, 10% litA landing scheduled by the tideThe date of the Inchon landing was not chosen by generals. It was the first day the tide would come high enough to…U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command…

31 January 1953Waning Gibbous, 97% litThe night the North Sea came inA deep depression drove the sea south down the North Sea and it arrived at the coast on a spring tide, two days…Royal Meteorological Society…

25 April 1953Waxing Gibbous, 87% litThe double helixThe structure of DNA was published in a single page under a 89% moon.Watson & Crick, Nature (1953)

29 May 1953Full Moon, 100% litEverest climbedHillary and Tenzing reached the summit of Everest with a 99% moon in the sky behind them.Royal Geographical Society expedition record

1 December 1955Waning Gibbous, 92% litRosa Parks keeps her seatIn the evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused a bus driver's order to give up her seat and…National Archives, An Act of Courage: The…

4 October 1957Waxing Gibbous, 85% litSputnikThe night the Space Age began, there was already an 87% moon up, the object everyone had been looking at for the…NASA history

3 November 1957Waxing Gibbous, 82% litLaikaA stray dog picked up on the streets of Moscow became the first living creature to orbit the Earth.Russian Academy of Sciences, released 2002

6 December 1957Full Moon, 100% litKaputnikAmerica's answer to Sputnik rose about a metre off the pad, sank back, and exploded on live television.Naval Research Laboratory, Project Vanguard…

4 January 1959Waning Crescent, 32% litThe first missLuna 1 was meant to hit the Moon and went past it by about six thousand kilometres, which made it the first object…NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive…

13 September 1959Waxing Gibbous, 89% litThe first thing we ever touchedLuna 2 hit the Moon at 7,500 miles an hour, the first human object ever to reach another world.NASA NSSDC

7 October 1959Waxing Crescent, 29% litThe first look at the far sideLuna 3 photographed the side of the Moon nobody had ever seen, developed the film on board, and radioed the…NASA NSSDC

23 January 1960Waning Crescent, 33% litThe bottom of the sea, onceTwo men spent twenty minutes at the deepest point in the ocean, having heard a window crack on the way down, and…U.S. Navy Bathyscaphe Trieste dive report, 23…

12 April 1961Waning Crescent, 11% litOne orbit, 108 minutesYuri Gagarin went round the Earth once and came down in a field near Saratov, where a farmer and her daughter found…Vostok 1 flight documentation, released 2011…

23 July 1962Last Quarter, 55% litTelevision crosses the AtlanticFor about twenty minutes, while one small satellite was above the horizon at both ends at once, Europe and America…AT&T Bell Laboratories, Telstar project…

27 October 1962New Moon, 1% litBlack SaturdayOn the worst day of the Cuban missile crisis a Soviet submarine officer refused to agree to launch a nuclear…National Security Archive, Cuban Missile…

16 June 1963Waning Crescent, 33% litThe first woman in space, for three daysValentina Tereshkova orbited forty-eight times in three days, which was more time in space than every American…Vostok 6 mission documentation; NASA…

28 August 1963Waxing Gibbous, 64% lit"I have a dream"A quarter of a million people stood on the National Mall under a waxing gibbous moon, in daylight, and heard a…U.S. Library of Congress

31 July 1964Last Quarter, 57% litThe first close-up of the MoonRanger 7 sent back 4,316 photographs of the lunar surface and then, as designed, crashed into it.NASA NSSDC

18 March 1965Full Moon, 99% litThe first spacewalk nearly ends badlyAlexei Leonov floated outside for twelve minutes, then found his suit had ballooned too stiff to get back through…Leonov's own account; Russian State Archive

24 March 1965Last Quarter, 55% litLive from the MoonRanger 9 fell into the crater Alphonsus with its cameras running and the pictures going straight out on American…NASA Ranger 9 mission report, JPL TR 32-800

3 February 1966Waxing Gibbous, 94% litThe first soft landingLuna 9 came to rest in the Ocean of Storms and sent back the first photographs ever taken from the surface of…NASA NSSDCA; Jodrell Bank Observatory

17 November 1966Waxing Crescent, 26% litForty meteors a secondFor about fifteen minutes before dawn over the American west, the Leonids fell at up to forty a second, and…American Meteor Society, 1966 Leonid storm

28 November 1967Waning Crescent, 14% litA signal that kept perfect timeJocelyn Bell got a fast chart recording of the odd "scruff" she had been seeing for months, and it turned out to be…Hewish, Bell et al., Nature 217, 709 (1968)

30 January 1968New Moon, 0% litAn offensive timed to the dark of the moonThe Tet Offensive opened during the lunar new year, which means it opened at new moon: about 0.2% of the Moon was…U.S. Army Center of Military History

21 September 1968New Moon, 1% litTwo tortoises go round the MoonThe first living things to travel round the Moon and come home were a pair of Russian steppe tortoises, and they…NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive…

24 December 1968Waxing Crescent, 30% litEarthriseComing round the far side for the fourth time, Apollo 8's crew looked up and found the Earth climbing over the…Apollo 8 onboard voice transcription, NASA

22 May 1969Waxing Crescent, 34% litThe dress rehearsal that had to turn backTwo months before the landing, a crew flew a lunar module to within about 15 kilometres of the surface and then…Apollo 10 Mission Report, NASA MSC-00126

28 June 1969Waxing Gibbous, 96% litA raid that did not go as usualPolice raided a bar on Christopher Street at about half past one in the morning, as they often did, and this time…New York City LGBT Historic Sites Project…

20 July 1969Waxing Crescent, 33% litApollo 11 lands on the MoonWhen Eagle touched down in the Sea of Tranquility, the Moon seen from Earth was a waxing crescent about a third lit.NASA, July 20, 1969: One Giant Leap For…

15 August 1969Waxing Crescent, 7% litWoodstockWoodstock opened under a 7% crescent, less than a month after Apollo 11 left.Contemporary press accounts

19 November 1969Waxing Gibbous, 77% litApollo 12 is struck by lightning. Twice.The rocket triggered its own lightning strike 36 seconds after launch, and again at 52 seconds, knocking out the…NASA Apollo 12 mission report

13 April 1970First Quarter, 55% litApollo 13An oxygen tank exploded 200,000 miles out, and the safest way home turned out to be round the far side of the Moon.NASA Apollo 13 mission report

24 September 1970Waning Crescent, 33% litA hundred grams, brought back by a robotLuna 16 drilled thirty-five centimetres into the Sea of Fertility, sealed the core in a capsule, and flew it home …NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive…

12 November 1970Full Moon, 99% litThe deadliest storm on recordThe Bhola cyclone pushed a wall of water across the low islands of the Ganges delta at night, at high tide, on a…Bangladesh Meteorological Department; Frank &…

17 November 1970Waning Gibbous, 83% litThe first rover on another worldLunokhod 1 rolled off its lander and drove the Moon for ten months, steered live from Earth by a team of five.NASA NSSDC

5 February 1971Waxing Gibbous, 78% litFive hundred seeds go to the MoonApollo 14's command module pilot took about 500 tree seeds with him into lunar orbit, in a personal kit, as a…NASA Moon Tree records; USDA Forest Service

30 July 1971First Quarter, 55% litDriving on the MoonApollo 15 unfolded a battery-powered car and drove 17 miles across the lunar surface.NASA Apollo 15 mission report

2 August 1971Waxing Gibbous, 81% litA hammer and a feather, dropped togetherAt the end of the last moonwalk of Apollo 15, David Scott held out a geology hammer and a falcon feather and let go…Apollo 15 Preliminary Science Report, NASA…

24 November 1971First Quarter, 44% litD.B. Cooper jumpsA man in a business suit hijacked a plane, collected $200,000, and parachuted into the night over Washington State…FBI case file, NORJAK

21 April 1972First Quarter, 56% litApollo 16 landsYoung and Duke landed in the lunar highlands while, from Earth, the Moon was a first quarter, half of it in…NASA Apollo 16 mission report

3 December 1973First Quarter, 50% litThe first close look at JupiterPioneer 10 crossed the asteroid belt, which nobody was sure was survivable, and returned the first close pictures…NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive…

30 October 1974Full Moon, 99% litA world title fought at four in the morningAli and Foreman fought in Kinshasa at four o'clock in the morning, because that was ten at night in New York.Contemporary reports, 30 October 1974

16 November 1974Waxing Crescent, 9% litA message aimed at 25,000 starsArecibo beamed 1,679 bits at the globular cluster M13, and if anyone answers it will be some time after the year…Staff at the National Astronomy and…

10 November 1975First Quarter, 52% litA ship lost on a lake with no warningThe Edmund Fitzgerald went down in Lake Superior in a November gale with all twenty-nine hands, and never sent a…U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of…

15 August 1977Waxing Crescent, 2% litWow!A radio telescope in Ohio recorded 72 seconds of a strong narrow signal from Sagittarius, and the astronomer who…Ohio State University Radio Observatory…

5 September 1977Last Quarter, 51% litVoyager 1 leaves, secondVoyager 1 launched sixteen days after Voyager 2, on a faster path that would overtake it, which is why the numbers…NASA/JPL Voyager mission archive

8 May 1980Last Quarter, 44% litA disease declared extinctThe World Health Assembly certified that smallpox no longer existed anywhere, the only human disease ever driven…WHA Resolution 33.3, World Health…

18 May 1980Waxing Crescent, 20% litA mountain takes its own north face offAn earthquake shook loose the bulging north flank of Mount St Helens, and the largest landslide in recorded history…U.S. Geological Survey, Cascades Volcano…

18 June 1983First Quarter, 57% litThe first American woman in spaceSally Ride went up on Challenger twenty years after Tereshkova, having first had to answer press questions about…NASA STS-7 mission archive

24 January 1984Last Quarter, 55% litA computer that talked to the roomSteve Jobs pulled a small beige box out of a bag on stage, and it introduced itself to the audience in a…Apple shareholder meeting, Flint Center, 24…

28 January 1986Waning Gibbous, 92% litSeventy-three secondsChallenger broke apart on the coldest morning any shuttle had ever launched in, after a rubber seal that had never…Report of the Presidential Commission on the…

26 April 1986Waning Gibbous, 97% litA safety test at half past oneReactor 4 at Chernobyl was destroyed during a test of what would happen if the power failed, run at night by a…IAEA INSAG-7, The Chernobyl Accident…

4 June 1989New Moon, 0% litTiananmen Square cleared in the darkThe square was cleared in the small hours of a moonless night, and the last students walked out at dawn.UK diplomatic cable, 5 June 1989, released…

9 November 1989Waxing Gibbous, 83% litThe Berlin Wall opensThe crowds went through the checkpoints under an 86% waxing gibbous.Deutsches Historisches Museum

11 February 1990Waning Gibbous, 97% litMandela walks outNelson Mandela walked through the gates of Victor Verster prison after twenty-seven years, and almost nobody…Nelson Mandela Foundation archive

14 February 1990Waning Gibbous, 82% litThe Earth as 0.12 of a pixelVoyager 1 turned round from about six billion kilometres out and took a family portrait of the solar system, in…NASA/JPL, Voyager 1 solar system portrait…

24 April 1990New Moon, 1% litHubble launchesHubble went up at new moon, and spent its first three years famously short-sighted.NASA/STScI

19 September 1991Waxing Gibbous, 81% litA body in the ice, 5,300 years oldTwo hikers who thought they had found a dead climber had in fact found a man who died in the Alps around 3300 BC…South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, Bolzano

16 July 1994First Quarter, 59% litA comet hits Jupiter, on scheduleTwenty-one pieces of a comet torn apart by Jupiter's gravity flew back into the planet over six days, and every…Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collision, NASA/JPL

6 October 1995Waxing Gibbous, 94% litThe first planet around another sun51 Pegasi b was announced under a 96% moon, the first planet ever found orbiting a normal star other than ours.Mayor & Queloz, Nature (1995)

18 December 1995Waning Crescent, 22% litTen days pointed at nothingHubble spent ten days staring at a patch of empty sky near the Plough, about the size of a grain of sand held at…Williams et al., Astronomical Journal 112…

31 July 1999Waning Gibbous, 91% litA burial on the MoonLunar Prospector was crashed into a polar crater at the end of its mission carrying an ounce of Eugene Shoemaker's…NASA Ames Research Center, Lunar Prospector…

1 January 2000Waning Crescent, 32% litThe year 2000 arrives in KiribatiThe first place on Earth to reach the year 2000 was Caroline Island in Kiribati, which had moved itself across the…Republic of Kiribati proclamation, 1994; IERS…

26 December 2004Full Moon, 100% litThe wave that went round the worldA fault off Sumatra tore open for about ten minutes, the sea fell away from the beaches, and roughly 228,000 people…Lay et al., Science 308, 1127 (2005); NOAA…

9 October 2009Waning Gibbous, 71% litCrashing a rocket to look for waterNASA steered a spent Centaur stage into a crater at the Moon's south pole that has not seen sunlight for two…Colaprete et al., Science 330, 463 (2010)

11 March 2011Waxing Crescent, 33% litThe quake that shortened the dayThe Tohoku earthquake moved the main island of Japan about two and a half metres east and made the Earth spin very…NASA JPL, Earth's rotation and the 2011…

6 June 2012Waning Gibbous, 96% litThe last transit of Venus this centuryVenus crossed the face of the Sun for six hours and forty minutes, and will not do it again until December 2117.NASA transit of Venus catalogue

6 August 2012Waning Gibbous, 82% litSeven minutes of terrorCuriosity landed itself on Mars by parachute, then rocket crane, with nobody able to help, the signal takes 14…NASA JPL

29 October 2012Full Moon, 100% litA storm that arrived at the worst possible hourSandy came ashore in New Jersey within a couple of hours of high water, on the night of a full moon, and put the…NOAA National Hurricane Center, Tropical…

15 February 2013Waxing Crescent, 25% litA rock nobody saw comingA twenty-metre rock came in over the Urals at nineteen kilometres a second, exploded with the energy of about half…Popova et al., Science 342, 1069 (2013)

14 September 2015New Moon, 1% litThe day spacetime rangTwo black holes had been merging for a billion years, and at 09:50:45 UT the wave arrived and stretched every…LIGO/Virgo, GW150914 discovery paper, Phys…

27 September 2015Full Moon, 100% litThe end of the world, fourth instalmentThe closest full moon of the year went into total eclipse, and because it was the fourth total lunar eclipse in a…NASA eclipse catalogue

31 December 2016Waxing Crescent, 7% litThe last leap second, so farAt the end of 2016 the world's clocks were told to read 23:59:60 for one second, for the twenty-seventh and, so…IERS Bulletin C 52; CGPM Resolution 4 (2022)

21 August 2017New Moon, 0% litThe Great American EclipseThe Moon's shadow crossed the United States coast to coast, and an estimated 215 million adults watched it.NASA eclipse programme

19 October 2017New Moon, 0% litSomething from another star goes pastA telescope on Haleakala caught a small dark object moving far too fast to belong to the Sun, and it was gone…Meech et al., Nature 552, 378 (2017)

6 February 2018Last Quarter, 58% litA car in solar orbitThe first Falcon Heavy carried a cherry-red sports car with a dummy in a spacesuit, because the customer for a test…SpaceX Falcon Heavy demonstration mission…

3 January 2019Waning Crescent, 8% litThe first landing on the far sideChang'e 4 touched down on the side of the Moon that never faces us, 59 years after Luna 3 first photographed it.China National Space Administration

21 January 2019Full Moon, 100% litA super blood wolf moonA total lunar eclipse, at perigee, in January, so the press got to stack every name at once.NASA eclipse catalogue

10 April 2019Waxing Crescent, 26% litThe first photograph of a black holeEight radio telescopes on four continents were combined into one Earth-sized instrument to photograph a shadow 55…Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (2019)

1 December 2020Full Moon, 99% litArecibo comes downThe 900-tonne instrument platform slung above the Arecibo dish tore loose and fell into it, forty-six years after…US National Science Foundation, Arecibo…

18 February 2021First Quarter, 41% litThe first recording of another planetPerseverance came down in Jezero crater carrying microphones, and sent back the sound of wind on Mars.NASA Mars 2020 mission archive

19 April 2021First Quarter, 40% litThe first flight on another worldA four-pound helicopter rose three metres above Mars, hovered for thirty-nine seconds, and landed, carrying a…NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter mission log

16 November 2022Last Quarter, 53% litGoing back, with nobody aboardArtemis I launched at ten to two in the morning and sent an empty Orion capsule 432,000 kilometres from Earth…NASA Artemis I mission summary

23 August 2023First Quarter, 41% litThe first landing near the south poleIndia put Vikram down at 69° south, closer to the lunar pole than anything had landed before, four days after a…ISRO

20 January 2024Waxing Gibbous, 66% litA perfect landing, face downJapan's SLIM put itself down within about 55 metres of the spot it was aiming at, which nobody had ever managed…JAXA, SLIM mission results

22 February 2024Waxing Gibbous, 98% litThe first commercial Moon landingA privately built lander touched down near the lunar south pole, caught a foot, and tipped over onto its side — the…Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission summary; NASA…

8 April 2024New Moon, 0% litThe Great North American EclipseThe Moon's shadow came ashore in Mazatlan, crossed Mexico, the United States and Canada, and left the continent at…NASA eclipse bulletins

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