On this day in science history

Astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell detected a strange signal from outer space that would lead to the discovery of the radio pulsar. The signal, once described as coming from "little green men," would earn her adviser the Nobel Prize in physics in 1974.

On an expedition in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia, two anthropologists uncovered the bones of a 3.2 million-year-old human ancestor. The iconic "Lucy" fossil would reveal much about our species' tangled family tree.

Two bacteriologists showed that mutations arise spontaneously in bacterial cultures, thereby disproving Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory of evolution.

A person came down with an atypical form of pneumonia in November 2002, but it would be two months before anyone realized it was the start of a pandemic.

Over a feverish 10-day period, scientists synthesized and described a new class of carbon molecules, called buckminster fullerenes, after the iconic 20th-century inventor.

Mathematician Grigori Perelman solved the Poincaré conjecture, and then rejected the $1 million prize that came with it.

One morning, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge began bouncing up and down and twisting to and fro before ultimately collapsing into the Puget Sound.

While excavating in the Valley of the Kings, an Egyptian worker on an archaeological dig discovered a partially obscured step. It would lead into the unlooted tomb of King Tut.

About 50 light-years from Earth, a gas giant about half the mass of Jupiter orbits a sunlike star. The discovery of Pegasi 51 b ushered in a new era of exoplanet research.

Messages transmitted between two computers located about 380 miles apart would form the basis of what would become the internet.