Lomonosov discovered the atmosphere of Venus.
Watching its 1761 transit across the Sun, he saw a glowing rim and correctly blamed refraction in an atmosphere. In 2012 the observation was repeated with antique telescopes.
The event
More amazing facts
- 1755 In January 1755 Moscow University was founded; that November an earthquake destroyed Lisbon and shook all of Europe.
- 1756 · 1785 A former prisoner of war made potatoes popular in France.
- 1756 · 1763 Winston Churchill called the Seven Years' War the first world war. Between 1756 and 1763 it was fought in Europe, North America, India, Africa and at sea.
- 1762 The sandwich is named after an earl.
- 1765 · 1782 · 1789 Marie Antoinette almost certainly never said 'Let them eat cake'. Rousseau attributed the line to 'a great princess' around 1765, when the future queen was nine and living in Vienna.
- 1766 Catherine II bought the hard-up Diderot's library, let him keep the books, made him their salaried librarian — and paid his salary 50 years in advance.