Auroras are visible beyond the polar regions during major geomagnetic storms. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration posts aurora forecasts.
Before he became an author, Herman Melville was an enthusiast for “tenpins” bowling and worked in Honolulu as a pinsetter in 1843.
In 2009, the oldest evidence of leprosy was discovered in Rajasthan, India, in skeletal remains that date to about 4000BC. Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy, was discovered in Norway in 1873.
Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa came up with a sequence of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. The sequence begins 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc. In the 19th century, a historian gave the mathematician a new name: Fibonacci.
Before he became a bank robber, John Dillinger played shortstop for the Martinsville, Ind., Athletics.
This article appears in May 1 • 2020.