French amateur astronomer observes a new planet in our solar system

On this date, in his amateur observatory seventy miles from Paris, Edmund Lescarbault, a French doctor, observed a small dark body transit the Sun.  Leading French astronomer Urbain Le Ferrier checked Lescarbault's calculations and on January 2, 1860 announced the discovery of the planet Vulcan, a body between Mercury and the Sun, that had been hypothesized for decades.  Later science proved  Vulcan did not exist but it remained in literature as a handy fictional planet, including its role as the home planet of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek character Spock. (By John Osborne)