July 13, 2015: The New Horizons probe sends the 1st close-up pictures of the planet Pluto back to Earth.
Yes, I know: Pluto is officially no longer a planet. I'm still calling it a planet.
The 9th "planet" from the Sun is so far out, it takes 248 years to make a single revolution around the Sun. In other words, the last time that Pluto was in the position from the Sun that it is in 2022 was in 1774 -- before the independence of the United States of America. Andrew Jackson was 7 years old, Napoleon Bonaparte was 5, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 4. Its elliptical orbit means that, for 20 of those 248 years -- including, recently, from 1979 to 1999 -- it was closer to the Sun than the 8th planet, Neptune.
Pluto is so far out, it took New Horizons 9 years to get there from Earth. It was launched by NASA from Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 19, 2006. New Horizons then went on to study the Kuiper Belt, something of a 2nd asteroid belt, beyond Pluto.
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July 13, 2015 was a Monday. There were no scores on this historic day: The only major league sport in season was baseball, and this was during their All-Star Break.
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