Uranus was almost named after an English king.
William Herschel, who discovered it in 1781, proposed 'George's Star' after George III, and the name hung on in Britain for nearly 70 years.
More amazing facts
- 1776 The Bolshoi Theatre and the United States are the same age: the theatre dates from March 1776, the Declaration of Independence from July of that year.
- 1776 · 1782 Bangkok is a younger capital than the United States is a country: King Rama I moved Siam's capital to the east bank of the Chao Phraya in 1782, six years after the Declaration of Independence.
- 1778 · 1779 Hawaii was first called the Sandwich Islands — after the same earl as the sandwich.
- 1781 The man who discovered Uranus was a professional musician.
- 1783 The first aeronauts were a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
- 1783 'What use is a newborn baby?' That, the story goes, was Benjamin Franklin's reply in Paris in 1783 when someone asked him what good a balloon could possibly be.