1964 - Voskhod 1 launched.

The Soviet Union launched their Voskhod 1 rocket carrying three cosmonauts into orbit. This was the first time more than one person went into space at a time and the first mission to carry a scientist. The mission was designed to beat the United States' Gemini program to the multi-person crew milestone. In their hurry to accomplish this, the crew flew without spacesuits, ejection seats or escape plan. The capsule returned to Earth after 16 orbits the next day.

1865 - Arthur Harden was born.

Harden was an English biochemist who shares the 1929 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Hans Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin for their investigations into the process of fermentation and the actions of enzymes during fermentation. His research was on the chemical actions of yeast cells on glucose.

1862 - Theodor Heinrich Boveri was born.

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Boveri was a German cytologist who showed chromosomes are separate, continuous entities within the nucleus of a cell and one chromosome is responsible for certain hereditary traits and the importance of cytoplasm. He also theorized, with Edouard van Beneden, that the egg and sperm cells contribute an equal number of chromosomes to the new cell created during fertilization. Bovari introduced the term centrosome to describe the division center for a cell during cell division.

1812 - Ascanio Sobrero was born.

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Sobrero was an Italian chemist who discovered nitroglycerin when he added glycerin to a mixture of nitric acid. He was shocked by the explosive and unstable nature of the compound and routinely warned against its use.

One of his students, Alfred Nobel, went on to add diatomaceous earth to the mixture and invented gelignite to make it safer to handle.