August 20 is World Mosquito Day — an odd anniversary to mark, but a consequential one: it commemorates the day a doctor in India confirmed how the deadliest animal on the planet actually kills.
On this day
1977NASA launched Voyager 2 from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket, beginning a journey that would make it the only spacecraft to fly by all four outer planets.NASA Kennedy Space Center / NASA via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain- 1988A UN-brokered ceasefire took effect between Iran and Iraq at 7 a.m. local time, ending nearly eight years of war that had killed more than a million people on both sides.
1897IndiaIn Secunderabad, British doctor Ronald Ross dissected an Anopheles mosquito and found malaria parasites in its gut, proving mosquitoes transmit the disease — a discovery that later won him the Nobel Prize.Unknown authorUnknown author via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Did you know
Voyager 2 launched 16 days before Voyager 1 despite the numbering — its slower trajectory just meant it reached Jupiter four months after its sibling.