This Day, That Year – January 31

Ham the chimpanzee flew a suborbital flight on the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission, becoming the first primate to be sent to space on this day in 1961.

Did you know that:

• Gail Borden announced his invention of evaporated milk on this day in 1851
• Astronomer Alvan Graham Clark made the first observation of Sirius B (first known white dwarf star) in Cambridgeport while testing his new telescope on this day in 1862
• Theodore William Richards, the first American scientist to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was born on this day in 1868