There are a number of dates that are significant to the history of meteorites, dinosaurs, evolution and space exploration. It is surprising how recent many of the discoveries were made; in fact most date to periods after Captain Cook discovered Australia.
1609, December: Galileo first turns his telescope at the Moon and forever changes our view of the world and the universe. He discovers the Moon's surface is far from perfect and is covered in craters and mountains.
1610: Galileo discovers the phases of the planet Venus.
1744, 1st August: the birth of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, one of the first scientists to theorise the gradual evolution of species. Whilst his mechanism of “soft evolution”, whereby changes acquired by organisms during their life are passed to their progeny, was largely dismissed, he was the first to realise some sort of evolutionary process could explain the slow changes of species and the possible creation of new ones.
1772: Peter Pallas is the first to offer a scientific explanation of the origins of a meteorite found in Siberia.
1794: Ernst Chladni’s 63-page book describing the nature of meteorites is published. This is the first scientific publication detailing the origins of meteorites.
1801, 1st January: Giuseppe Piazzi discovers the first member of the asteroid belt, the Dwarf planet Ceres. Initially it is categorised as a planet, but after the discovery of hundreds of similar bodies, it is demoted to the status of asteroid. The number of asteroids known now numbers in the tens of thousands.
1803, 26th April: a large meteorite fall over the French town of L’Aigle confirms beyond doubt the true origins of meteorites as theorized in Ernst Chladni’s book.
1809, 12th February: the birth of Charles Darwin who is best known for his book “On the Origin of Species” and is the foundation of modern day theories of evolution.
1822: the first dinosaur fossils are found in an area of modern day Sussex, England. Although no specific date is noted, remains of an Iguanodon were found but it was three years later that they were described as being a type of dinosaur. The first to be scientifically described were from the Megalosaurus by William Buckland in 1824.
1831, 27th December - 1836, 2nd October: the voyage of the Beagle, during which Charles Darwin collected evidence for his theories of evolution.
1859, 24th November: publication of the first edition of “On the Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin. Set the foundation for the modern day theory of evolution.
1861: Fossil remains of Archaeopteryx are found in a quarry in southern Germany. The fossil was found to contain detailed impressions of feathers, like modern day birds, yet retained teeth and other characteristics in common with dinosaurs of the same era (150 million years ago). It is regarded by many as the best example of a “missing link” between birds and dinosaurs.
1908, 30th June: a meteorite or comet explodes over the Siberian wasteland of Tunguska.
1957: Daniel Barringer scientifically confirms the first meteorite impact crater, Meteor Crater in Arizona.
1969, 20th July: the first landing on the Moon. This was the very first time that a human being walking on a body other than the Earth and heralded in the peak of The Space Age. The spacecraft stayed on the surface of the Moon for 21 hours and 31 minutes, with the astronauts spending just 2 hours and 31 minutes on the surface. The final Apollo 17 mission spent 3 days, 2 hours and 59 minutes, with 22 hours and 4 minutes of exploration on the surface. Rock samples returned from these missions confirmed that several meteorites thought to have come from the Moon actually did.
1969, 28th September: a meteorite fall is witnessed in Murchison, Victoria. This meteorite was found to contain more than 100 amino acids, the building blocks of life, some of which do not occur naturally on Earth.
1972, 2nd March: Pioneer 10 is launched. This would be the first spacecraft ever to pass through the asteroid belt and return close photographs of Jupiter and Saturn. It is currently headed for the star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus and will take approximately 2 million years to get there.
1974: the remains of a 3 million year old Hominid species are found in Ethiopia. It is later to become better known as “Lucy” or Australopithecus Afarensis and is theorised to be one of the earliest human ancestors.
1976, 20th July: Viking 1 lands on the surface of Mars. Just 7 years to the day after Man first landed on the Moon. This was to operate for more than 6 years and provided data that allowed the confirmation of several types of meteorite to be of Martian origin.
1980: Scientists gather evidence to theorise that a giant meteorite impact in Mexico wiped out the dinosaurs.
1982, January: An unusual meteorite is found in the Allen Hills area of the Antarctic and is later found to have come from the Moon.
1983: Scientists theorise that meteorites categorised as belonging to the SNC group originate from Mars. This is later confirmed in 2000 when a detailed comparison of the meteorite compositions and details from the 1975 Mars Viking Landers are compared.
1986, 4th March: The first ever photos of a comet, Halley, are returned by the Vega 1 spacecraft. Ten days later, the Giotto spacecraft flew just 600km from the comet’s nucleus.
1991, 29th October: The Galileo spacecraft takes the first photographs ever of an asteroid, 951 Gaspra, on its way to Jupiter. Subsequently, several asteroids have now been photographed.
1993: Fossil remains of the oldest dinosaur, Eoraptor, are found in southern Argentina. Whilst only 30cm tall and 220 million years old, dinosaurs evolved to be some of the largest animals ever to walk the planet and would dominate the world for the next 150 million years.
1995: The first planet orbiting another star, 51 Pegasi, is detected. With a mass approximately half that of Jupiter, it was the first of more than 300 exoplanets orbiting various stars currently detected.
2005, 14th January: The Huygens probe lands of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan revealing for the first time ever a close up of the surface of the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere. | 
