April 14 anniversaries include dates in the history of science that altered our understanding of our place in the cosmos forever, and laid the groundwork for science fiction stories to come.
First, let's take a look at one of the strangest events in history, a battle between UFOs that raged over the German city of Nuremberg 459 years ago today.
A contemporary broadsheet account described "a dreadful apparition" obscuring the sun on the morning of April 14, 1561. Soon, the sky was full of "ferrous color" balls, "blood-red" crosses, flying globes and formations of colored rods, which "all started to fight among themselves" for more than an hour, before crashing to Earth in plumes of "immense smoke." At the time, it was taken as a sign from god, while modern attempts at explanation have varied from psychiatrist Carl Jung's speculation that it was a mating cloud of insects to optical phenomenon known as "sundogs."
At a banquet held on April 14, 1611, Galileo Galilei was inducted into the Italian science society Accademia dei Lincei. At the same meeting, the membership coined a name for the spyglass that revolutionized astronomy, dubbing it the telescopium or telescopio (combining Greek words for "far" and "I see").
STS-1, the first orbital space flight by NASA's Space Shuttle program, landed today, in 1981, after the shuttle Columbia and a crew of two orbited the Earth 36 times.
On this date in 2003, the Human Genome Project announced that the human genetic code was fully sequenced. The international project to record every base pair making up human DNA was launched in 1990. Human genomes can now be sequenced in less than a day.
New Science Fiction
The following titles were all published today:
Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang (translated by Ken Liu)
"A century after the Martian war of independence, a group of kids are sent to Earth as delegates from Mars, but when they return home, they are caught between the two worlds, unable to reconcile the beauty and culture of Mars with their experiences on Earth in this spellbinding novel from Hugo Award–winning author Hao Jingfang."
Gallery/Saga Press
The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey
"Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable landscape. A place where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will."
Orbit
The Last Emperox (The Interdependency #3) by John Scalzi
Emperox Grayland III has regained control of her empire, but can she hold together her civilization as the collapse of the interstellar pathways known as The Flow accelerates, leaving billions cut off from the rest of her empire?
Tor Books
April 14 Science-Fiction Birthdays
Boris Strugatsky, who wrote science-fiction novels with his brother Arkady, was born this day in 1933. The Strugatsky brothers were most famous as the authors of Roadside Picnic, the basis for Andrei Tarkovsky's landmark 1979 science fiction movie Stalker, about a guide (or stalker) leading an expedition into the Zone, where extraterrestrial visitors left behind powerful artifacts and inexplicable dangers. The Strugatsky brothers also wrote the film's screenplay.
Erich von Däniken was also born today, in 1935. The Swiss author theorized that extraterrestrials shaped early human cultures in books like 1968's bestselling Chariots of the Gods?, inspiring science-fiction writers for decades after.
Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons celebrates his 71st birthday today.
Manga artist and anime director Otomo Katsuhiro is 66 today. Otomo created the iconic manga Akira and also wrote and directed its 1988 movie adaptation.
The 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi, is 62 today.
Science-fiction author and cyberpunk pioneer Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix, Heavy Weather) was born this day in 1954.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
