380: Theodosius I makes his adventus, or first formal entry, into Constantinople

1639: English astronomers Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree make the first recorded observations of a transit of Venus by accurately predicting its path using Johannes Kepler’s methods [1]

1642: Dutch explorer Abel Tasman is the first European to discover Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)

1859: English naturalist Charles Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species,” radically changing the view of evolution and laying the foundation for evolutionary biology

1950: UN troops begin an assault intending to end the Korean War by Christmas

1954: France sends 20,000 soldiers to Algeria

1974: The most complete early human skeleton (Lucy, Australopithecus) is discovered by Donald Johanson, Maurice Taieb, Yves Coppens, and Tim White in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression

Source: Onthisday.com