That mathematician was Elizabeth Williams, who worked for astronomer Percival Lowell, who first theorized the existence of a ninth planet. Lowell died before his successor, Tombaugh, finally spotted the elusive Pluto, but both men relied on calculations that Williams made. But the math got lost in the discovery it enabled, and so did Williams.

IT WAS IN the 1970s that American politics began to polarise around voters’ levels of educational attainment. The Republican Party, until then a party of tweedy north-easterners, began recruiting less-educated southern whites, alienated by the civil-rights movement. Over time, the partisan gap between college-educated voters and less-educated ones widened. In 2016 it exploded. The Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, found that overall, college graduates favoured Hillary Clinton by 21 percentage points, while those without a degree backed Donald Trump by a seven-point margin. Among whites, the difference is greater: those without a college degree backed Mr Trump over Mrs Clinton by a margin of more than two to one.

For the first time, scientists recorded a cardiogram from the largest animal that has ever lived.

GDELT is the largest, most comprehensive, and highest resolution open database of human society ever created. Creating a platform that monitors the world's news media from nearly every corner of every country in print, broadcast, and web formats, in over 100 languages, every moment of every day and that stretches back to January 1, 1979 through present day, with daily updates, required an unprecedented array of technical and methodological innovations, partnerships, and whole new mindsets to bring this all together and make it a reality.

Charging the Secret Service for golf carts, threatening the National Weather Service, and every other way the 45th president has turned the highest office in the land into one crooked cesspool.

Poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality: The world faces many great and terrifying problems at the same time. It is these large problems that our work at Our World in Data focuses on.

The day length and axial tilt of the 8 largest planets of our solar system.

The U.S. media gives climate change deniers too much prominence by placing people with little understanding of the complexities involved in the same league as top scientists, a study has found. This imbalance has created an unrealistic picture of climate change, hindering efforts to raise awareness of the problems the planet faces.

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution doesn’t just say Congress shall not infringe the right to “keep and bear arms.” It specifically says that right exists in order to maintain “a well-regulated militia.” Even the late conservative Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia admitted those words weren’t in there by accident. Oh, and the Constitution doesn’t just say a “militia.” It says a “well-regulated” militia

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts” is a quote often attributed to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, though when, where, and to whom he addressed the comment is disputed. In fact, there is little evidence that he actually said it at all. Instead, the quote has been credited, if that is the word, to several others, including James P. Schlesinger (during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to the record), and to Bernard Baruch in an edition of the Deming Highlight, a New Mexico newspaper (January 6, 1950). The point remains though, facts are inflexible. Opinions are less so.

A map of America prior to the Mexican American War.

One of the biggest challenges facing those who seek to understand U.S. elections is establishing an accurate portrait of the American electorate and the choices made by different kinds of voters. Obtaining accurate data on how people voted is difficult for a number of reasons.

Research suggests states with more gun owners have higher numbers of partners and family members killing each other in the home, with women in particular danger of being victims of violence.

The story of the Apollo decade and how humankind went to the moon and back is memorable for more than just the bold leadership of presidents and the small steps of astronauts. One of my favorite Apollo stories is that of Dr. John Houbolt, whose courage and persistence is the reason why the Apollo 11 mission happened the way that it did — with Armstrong and Aldrin flying the Lunar Module Eagle down to the lunar surface while Collins waited for them in orbit aboard the Command Module, Columbia.

The titanic duo can help astronomers predict when the historic first detection of the background 'hum' of gravitational waves from supermassive black holes will be made and whether there truly is a 'final parsec problem'

Recumbent Cyclist News was published from 1990-2007 by us, Bob and Marilyn Bryant. In 1990, commercially built recumbents were new and there was really no dedicated information source. As a new enthusiast searching for a comfortable bike, I was pulled into this completely by accident. My first recumbent test ride came upon the suggestion of Kelvin Clark at Angletech. I had been riding a modified mountain bike with fat slicks and I was there to test ride an Alex Moulton bicycle. That first recumbent ride changed my life. I quickly became obsessed and started collecting all of the information I could find on recumbents.

The David Rumsey Map Collection was started over 30 years ago and contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children's, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from about 1550 to the present.

For much of human history, education has served an important purpose, ensuring we have the tools to survive. People need jobs to eat and to have jobs, they need to learn how to work.

American homes are a lot bigger than they used to be. In 1973, when the Census Bureau started tracking home sizes, the median size of a newly built house was just over 1,500 square feet; that figure reached nearly 2,500 square feet in 2015.

Pulling carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and using it to make synthetic fuel seems like the ultimate solution to climate change: Instead of adding ever more CO2 to the air from fossil fuels, we can simply recycle the same CO2 molecules over and over. But such technology is expensive—about $600 per ton of CO2, by one recent estimate. Now, in a new study, scientists say future chemical plants could drop that cost below $100 per ton—which could make synthetic fuels a reality in places such as California that incentivize low-carbon fuels.