Royal Observatory at Greenwich Founded
August 10, 1675
Charles II, advised that better astronomical tables would help the navy navigate, founded an observatory at Greenwich and appointed John Flamsteed the first Astronomer Royal at one hundred pounds a year. Flamsteed began a forty-year catalog of stars that would, in time, give the world its prime meridian and establish Greenwich as the zero point of global longitude.
In context
Also in 1675 (3 other events on record)
- Leibniz Invents Calculus · Europe · Science
- King Philip's War Begins · North America · War
- Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur Executed in Delhi · South Asia · Religion
Before and after in Europe
Before and after in Science
Era
Enlightenment (1651–1800), one of 696 events from that era on Saeculum.