January 8

Keshab Chandra Sen, a Brahmo Samaj reformer who sought harmony among religious traditions, died in Calcutta in 1884.

Galileo Galilei, the astronomer and physicist whose telescopic observations and studies of motion reshaped science, died at Arcetri near Florence at the age of 77.

Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently conceived evolution by natural selection and co-published it with Charles Darwin in 1858, was born in Monmouthshire, Wales.