On this day · archive
Pluto enters the close-up
July 14 carries tragedy, civic firsts, games, and spaceflight. New Horizons’ first flyby of Pluto gives the date its long view: a small world brought near enough for the Solar System’s first survey to feel complete.
8
events in todayish file
2015
NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, completing the initial survey of the Solar System.
A distant dot became a place with edges, color, and weathered mystery, after years of travel and hours of transmission.
New Horizons reached Pluto after a voyage measured in years and billions of miles, and the encounter changed the scale of the familiar solar-system map. A distant point became a world with edges, color, surface, and weathered mystery.
The flyby matters because it completed an old ambition while opening a new one. The initial survey of the Solar System ended not with finality, but with fresh detail from a place that had mostly lived in diagrams.
July 14 also carries revolution, disaster, violence, and institutional change. The Pluto flyby gives the archive its outward motion: a reminder that the calendar can hold both earthly rupture and distant discovery.
The full record
8 entries from the day’s archive, filed year by year with a note on what each one leaves behind.
A GippsAero GA8 Airvan crashes in Umeå, Sweden, killing all nine aboard.
The crash at Umeå killed all nine people aboard the Airvan.
Disaster
A man ploughs a truck into a Bastille Day celebration in Nice, France, killing 86 people and injuring another 434 before being shot by police.
The Nice attack turned a Bastille Day gathering into mass violence, killing 86 people and injuring 434.
Violence
NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, and thus completes the initial survey of the Solar System.
New Horizons’ Pluto flyby completed humanity’s initial survey of the Solar System.
Space
French president Jacques Chirac escapes an assassination attempt from Maxime Brunerie during a Bastille Day parade at Champs-Élysées.
Chirac escaped the assassination attempt during the Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Élysées.
Violence
Mario Bros. is released in Japan, beginning the popular Super Mario Bros franchise.
The Japanese release of Mario Bros. began the popular Super Mario Bros. franchise.
Culture
Rawya Ateya takes her seat in the National Assembly of Egypt, thereby becoming the first female parliamentarian in the Arab world.
Ateya’s seat in Egypt’s National Assembly made her the first female parliamentarian in the Arab world.
Civic
Peruvian explorer and farmer Agustín Lizárraga discovers Machu Picchu, the "Lost City of the Incas".
The entry places Lizárraga at Machu Picchu years before the site’s later international fame.
Exploration
The Sedition Act of 1798 becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government.
The act made criticism of government a federal crime and fixed a civil-liberties dispute in early U.S. law.
Law