February 18, 2021 • 10 mins
On this day in 1930, junior astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered that Pluto was a planet. / On this day in 1934, writer, activist, and feminist Audre Lorde was born.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. Today's episode contains not just one,
but two nuggets of history. Consider it a double feature.
Enjoy the show. Hey guys, welcome to this day in
History class, where we bring you a new tidbit from
history every day. The day was February nineteen thirty. After
(00:27):
about a year of searching for an unknown planet beyond Neptune,
an amateur astronomer named Clyde W. Tom Ball found the
object that would become known as Pluto. Tom Baugh was
working at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, using a camera
equipped telescope to record images of the sky on photographic
(00:51):
plates at the same sidereal time on different nights. Sidereal time.
It's just time measured based on the position of distant
stars as opposed to solar time, which is measured based
on the position of the Sun. Tom Baugh would then
identified differences between plates using a blink comparator, which is
(01:13):
a viewing instrument that helps astronomers compare photographs of the
night sky. When you look at the sky. Using this method,
stars and galaxies appeared to remain in the same spot,
while the position of moving objects like planets would change
each night and On February eighth, nineteen thirty, Tom Ball
(01:34):
found what he had been searching for when a small
spot of light blinked on the plates for January and
twenty nine, Local Observatory confirmed the movement with more photographs,
and it announced the discovery of this planet X on
March thirteen, Tom Baugh became the first American to discover
(01:55):
a planet. That's pretty cool for a self taught astronomy
who was offered a job at the local observatory because
his astronomical drawings had impressed the director of the observatory.
But let's back up to why scientists were even looking
for another planet in our Solar System past Neptune. Anyway,
(02:17):
Discrepancies in Uranus's orbit led scientists to believe that another
planet was out there influencing Uranus's motion, and that helped
astronomer's discover that Neptune was a planet in eighteen forty six.
But by the late eighteen hundreds, scientists already had an
inkling that there was a planet beyond Neptune. Percival Lowell,
(02:40):
an American astronomer and founder of the local Observatory, observed
strange deviations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune in
the early twentieth century. So he theorized that another planetary
body's gravity had to be the thing that was causing
these deviations, and astronomers figured that, like with Neptune, the
(03:03):
undiscovered planet's location could be calculated using these irregularities. Well,
we now know that those deviations weren't accurate, and they
couldn't have been caused by a planet with the mass
as small as Pluto's anyway, But either way, Lowell's set
to work on searching for the mysterious planet X. In
(03:24):
nineteen o six at the observatory he had founded, he
astronomer William Henry Pickering and other scientists worked on finding
planet X where they thought it should be in the
sky for years. Lowell died in nineteen sixteen, and the
search for the so called trans Neptunean planet was put
(03:45):
on hold because of a lengthy battle over Lowell's estate,
but the search was not forgotten. In ninety seven, Percival's
brother provided the money to build a new telescope and
dome for the search, and two years later the telescope
was ready for its intended use. The very next year,
(04:05):
planet X was found only six degrees off of Lowell
and Pickering's mistaken calculations. There were a lot of suggestions
for the name of the new planet, but in the
end it was dubbed Pluto, thanks to an eleven year
old English girl named Venetia Bernie, who proposed the name.
(04:26):
The name was perfect for the cold, dark and distant planet.
Not only did Pluto refer to the Greek god of
the underworld, but its first two letters were also Perceival
Lowell's initials. After Tombo found Pluto, tom Ba searched the
entire ecliptic plane for other bodies in the Outer Solar System,
(04:46):
but he came up empty. Now Pluto is no longer
considered a planet. It was reclassified as a dwarf planet
in two thousand six after other bodies of similar size
were discuss heard in the Kuiper Belt, and the term
planet was redefined. Like planets, dwarf planets are celestial bodies
(05:08):
that are nearly round orbit the Sun and are not moons,
but they are not able to clear their orbital path
so that no similar objects are at the same distance
from the Sun. Pluto's downgrade from a planet to a
dwarf planet was a disappointment to many who grew up
thinking of Pluto as the tiny, icy ninth planet. However,
(05:31):
the discovery of Pluto was still an important milestone in
the history of astronomy and planetary science. I'm Eaves Deathcote
and hopefully you know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. And if you like to learn
even more about Pluto, listen to the episode of Stuff
you missed in History Class called Pluto the Demoted dwarf Planet.
(05:56):
You can subscribe to This Day in History Class on
Apple Podcasts, the iHeart Radio app, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Keep up with us on Twitter, Instagram, and
Facebook at t d I h C podcast. Come back
tomorrow for another tibet from history. Hello history lovers, I'm
(06:22):
Eves and you're listening to This Day in History Class,
a show that uncovers history one day at a time.
The day was February ninety four. Writer and activists Audrey
Lord was born. Lord was born and raised in Harlem.
(06:46):
Her father was from Barbados and her mother was Grenadian.
Her father was a real estate broker and was able
to put Audrey and her sisters in Catholic school. She
loved to read from an early age, and she was
particularly connect due to poetry. She began writing her own
poetry during her childhood, and she published her first poem
in seventeen Magazine while she was in high school. Lord
(07:10):
graduated from Hunter High School in nineteen fifty one. After
working and traveling around North America for a while, she
went back to New York to get her bachelor's degree
from Hunter College. In nineteen sixty one, she got a
master's degree in library science from Columbia University. At that point,
Lord began working as a librarian. She married an attorney
(07:32):
in nineteen sixty two and had two children with him.
Though the couple later got divorced, Lord was still passionate
about poetry, and she gave readings and published more of
her verse. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities,
was published in nineteen sixty eight. That same year, she
left her job as a librarian at Town School Library
(07:54):
and taught a poetry workshop at Tugaloo College in Mississippi.
In her poetry, Lord touched on social issues like race, class,
and gender. She related her personal experiences to broader societal concerns,
and she also spoke out on matters like sexuality. Some
of her early collections of poetry include Cables to Rage,
(08:16):
published in nineteen seventy and From a Land Where Other
People Live published in nineteen seventy two. The latter explored
themes of identity and global issues, and it was nominated
for a National Book Award. By the mid nineteen seventies,
Lord was a critical voice in the realms of poetry, activism, feminism,
(08:36):
and black arts. Her writing became more political, and in
nineteen seventy six Cole, her first collection released by a
major publisher, came out. Two years later, her collection The
Black Unicorn was released. Lord also wrote pros. One of
her most notable nonfiction works is The Cancer Journals, published
(08:58):
in nineteen eighty. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in
the late nineteen seventies. In the book, Lord documented how
it felt to deal with the illness. She went on
to help launch the publishing house Kitchen Table Women of
Color Press with writer and activists Barbara Smith, and she
helped establish a political committee called Sisterhood and Supportive Sisters
(09:21):
in South Africa, which she remained active with until the
end of her life. She wrote essays for left wing
and black publications, and she wrote the acclaimed novel Zami,
a new spelling of my name. Lord continued to struggle
with cancer for the rest of her life. Her essay
collection A Burst of Light addresses cancer, race, parenthood, and
(09:43):
other topics related to her personal life and the world
at large. She went through experimental treatments in Europe, and
in her later years she lived in the US Virgin Islands.
She continued to teach, rite, and lecture on social and
political issues until she died of liver cancer in November
of nine. I'm each Jeff Coote and hopefully you know
(10:06):
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
If you have any burning questions or comments, you can
leave us a note at t d i h C
Podcast on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. If emails your thing,
send us a note at this day at i heeart
media dot com. Thanks again for listening, and have a
(10:29):
fantastic twenty four hours until we see you again. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. Today's episode contains not just one,
but two nuggets of history. Consider it a double feature.
Enjoy the show. Hey guys, welcome to this day in
History class, where we bring you a new tidbit from
history every day. The day was February nineteen thirty. After
(00:27):
about a year of searching for an unknown planet beyond Neptune,
an amateur astronomer named Clyde W. Tom Ball found the
object that would become known as Pluto. Tom Baugh was
working at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, using a camera
equipped telescope to record images of the sky on photographic
(00:51):
plates at the same sidereal time on different nights. Sidereal time.
It's just time measured based on the position of distant
stars as opposed to solar time, which is measured based
on the position of the Sun. Tom Baugh would then
identified differences between plates using a blink comparator, which is
(01:13):
a viewing instrument that helps astronomers compare photographs of the
night sky. When you look at the sky. Using this method,
stars and galaxies appeared to remain in the same spot,
while the position of moving objects like planets would change
each night and On February eighth, nineteen thirty, Tom Ball
(01:34):
found what he had been searching for when a small
spot of light blinked on the plates for January and
twenty nine, Local Observatory confirmed the movement with more photographs,
and it announced the discovery of this planet X on
March thirteen, Tom Baugh became the first American to discover
(01:55):
a planet. That's pretty cool for a self taught astronomy
who was offered a job at the local observatory because
his astronomical drawings had impressed the director of the observatory.
But let's back up to why scientists were even looking
for another planet in our Solar System past Neptune. Anyway,
(02:17):
Discrepancies in Uranus's orbit led scientists to believe that another
planet was out there influencing Uranus's motion, and that helped
astronomer's discover that Neptune was a planet in eighteen forty six.
But by the late eighteen hundreds, scientists already had an
inkling that there was a planet beyond Neptune. Percival Lowell,
(02:40):
an American astronomer and founder of the local Observatory, observed
strange deviations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune in
the early twentieth century. So he theorized that another planetary
body's gravity had to be the thing that was causing
these deviations, and astronomers figured that, like with Neptune, the
(03:03):
undiscovered planet's location could be calculated using these irregularities. Well,
we now know that those deviations weren't accurate, and they
couldn't have been caused by a planet with the mass
as small as Pluto's anyway, But either way, Lowell's set
to work on searching for the mysterious planet X. In
(03:24):
nineteen o six at the observatory he had founded, he
astronomer William Henry Pickering and other scientists worked on finding
planet X where they thought it should be in the
sky for years. Lowell died in nineteen sixteen, and the
search for the so called trans Neptunean planet was put
(03:45):
on hold because of a lengthy battle over Lowell's estate,
but the search was not forgotten. In ninety seven, Percival's
brother provided the money to build a new telescope and
dome for the search, and two years later the telescope
was ready for its intended use. The very next year,
(04:05):
planet X was found only six degrees off of Lowell
and Pickering's mistaken calculations. There were a lot of suggestions
for the name of the new planet, but in the
end it was dubbed Pluto, thanks to an eleven year
old English girl named Venetia Bernie, who proposed the name.
(04:26):
The name was perfect for the cold, dark and distant planet.
Not only did Pluto refer to the Greek god of
the underworld, but its first two letters were also Perceival
Lowell's initials. After Tombo found Pluto, tom Ba searched the
entire ecliptic plane for other bodies in the Outer Solar System,
(04:46):
but he came up empty. Now Pluto is no longer
considered a planet. It was reclassified as a dwarf planet
in two thousand six after other bodies of similar size
were discuss heard in the Kuiper Belt, and the term
planet was redefined. Like planets, dwarf planets are celestial bodies
(05:08):
that are nearly round orbit the Sun and are not moons,
but they are not able to clear their orbital path
so that no similar objects are at the same distance
from the Sun. Pluto's downgrade from a planet to a
dwarf planet was a disappointment to many who grew up
thinking of Pluto as the tiny, icy ninth planet. However,
(05:31):
the discovery of Pluto was still an important milestone in
the history of astronomy and planetary science. I'm Eaves Deathcote
and hopefully you know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. And if you like to learn
even more about Pluto, listen to the episode of Stuff
you missed in History Class called Pluto the Demoted dwarf Planet.
(05:56):
You can subscribe to This Day in History Class on
Apple Podcasts, the iHeart Radio app, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Keep up with us on Twitter, Instagram, and
Facebook at t d I h C podcast. Come back
tomorrow for another tibet from history. Hello history lovers, I'm
(06:22):
Eves and you're listening to This Day in History Class,
a show that uncovers history one day at a time.
The day was February ninety four. Writer and activists Audrey
Lord was born. Lord was born and raised in Harlem.
(06:46):
Her father was from Barbados and her mother was Grenadian.
Her father was a real estate broker and was able
to put Audrey and her sisters in Catholic school. She
loved to read from an early age, and she was
particularly connect due to poetry. She began writing her own
poetry during her childhood, and she published her first poem
in seventeen Magazine while she was in high school. Lord
(07:10):
graduated from Hunter High School in nineteen fifty one. After
working and traveling around North America for a while, she
went back to New York to get her bachelor's degree
from Hunter College. In nineteen sixty one, she got a
master's degree in library science from Columbia University. At that point,
Lord began working as a librarian. She married an attorney
(07:32):
in nineteen sixty two and had two children with him.
Though the couple later got divorced, Lord was still passionate
about poetry, and she gave readings and published more of
her verse. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities,
was published in nineteen sixty eight. That same year, she
left her job as a librarian at Town School Library
(07:54):
and taught a poetry workshop at Tugaloo College in Mississippi.
In her poetry, Lord touched on social issues like race, class,
and gender. She related her personal experiences to broader societal concerns,
and she also spoke out on matters like sexuality. Some
of her early collections of poetry include Cables to Rage,
(08:16):
published in nineteen seventy and From a Land Where Other
People Live published in nineteen seventy two. The latter explored
themes of identity and global issues, and it was nominated
for a National Book Award. By the mid nineteen seventies,
Lord was a critical voice in the realms of poetry, activism, feminism,
(08:36):
and black arts. Her writing became more political, and in
nineteen seventy six Cole, her first collection released by a
major publisher, came out. Two years later, her collection The
Black Unicorn was released. Lord also wrote pros. One of
her most notable nonfiction works is The Cancer Journals, published
(08:58):
in nineteen eighty. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in
the late nineteen seventies. In the book, Lord documented how
it felt to deal with the illness. She went on
to help launch the publishing house Kitchen Table Women of
Color Press with writer and activists Barbara Smith, and she
helped establish a political committee called Sisterhood and Supportive Sisters
(09:21):
in South Africa, which she remained active with until the
end of her life. She wrote essays for left wing
and black publications, and she wrote the acclaimed novel Zami,
a new spelling of my name. Lord continued to struggle
with cancer for the rest of her life. Her essay
collection A Burst of Light addresses cancer, race, parenthood, and
(09:43):
other topics related to her personal life and the world
at large. She went through experimental treatments in Europe, and
in her later years she lived in the US Virgin Islands.
She continued to teach, rite, and lecture on social and
political issues until she died of liver cancer in November
of nine. I'm each Jeff Coote and hopefully you know
(10:06):
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
If you have any burning questions or comments, you can
leave us a note at t d i h C
Podcast on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. If emails your thing,
send us a note at this day at i heeart
media dot com. Thanks again for listening, and have a
(10:29):
fantastic twenty four hours until we see you again. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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