1930: Pluto discovered

Clyde Tombaugh, 24, discovered a new planet today, eventually named Pluto after the
Greek god of the underworld. Tombaugh located the planet while in the dome of the
observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he worked as a ‘sky watcher’ and made
photographic plates. He discovered Pluto by looking at the plates through the Blink
microscope comparator, which was used to compare the plates in search of moving
objects. Tombaugh, who, at the time had not yet graduated from college, was the first
(and only) United States citizen to discover a planet.
“He accomplished what other astronomers had been trying for since 1905, when the late
Percival Lowell proposed that irregularities in the orbit of Uranus indicated the presence
of another planet in the sky,” reported the Northwest Arkansas Times on September 23,
1964.
NOTE: Pluto remained a designated planet for 76 years until August of 2006 when the
International Astronomical Union defined the word ‘planet’ for the first time. This
definition excluded Pluto and reclassified it as a dwarf planet.