It was on this day in 1781 that William Herschel observed Uranus (the planet, you immature nerds) and initially recorded it as a comet. However, he compared it to a planet and other astronomers at the time were suspicious of the comet classification due to its orbit around the sun appearing to be nearly circular. It eventually became accepted as the seventh planet.

Uranus was also instrumental in discovering Neptune due to perturbations in its (Uranus’) orbit that could only be explained by the existence of another planet out there somewhere.

So that’s pretty cool.