19 January
1747: On 19 January 1747, Johann Elert Bode was born in Hamburg, Germany.
In 1768, Bode published his popular book, Anleitung zur Kenntnis des gestirnten Himmels. In this book, he explained a law on planetary distances, originally found by J.D. Titius (1729-96), now called 'Bode's Law' or 'Titius-Bode Law'. The law states that there is a nearly geometric progression of the distances of the planets from the Sun.
