29 June

1995: On 29 June 1995, the US Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian space station Mir for a mission which lasted until 4 July 1995.

The docking tested a special module similar to one that was to be used to link shuttles with the International Space Station (ISS) when it was completed. For these five days, the space vehicles formed the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth.

During the mission, astronauts and cosmonauts performed life-science experiments aboard the shuttle's Spacelab laboratory. The Spacelab experiments were designed to understand how the Russian space programme combats the effects on the human body of the long-durations in space.

1818: On 29 June 1818, Pietro Angelo Secchi was born.

Secchi, an Italian Jesuit priest and astrophysicist made the first survey of the spectra of over 4000 stars and suggested that stars be classified according to their spectral type.

He studied the planets, especially Jupiter, which he discovered was composed of gasses. Secchi also studied the dark lines which join the two hemispheres of Mars and he called them canali. These studies were later continued by Schiaparelli. The mistranslation in English-speaking countries of canali into 'canal,' instead of the correct 'channel,' brought a misleading connotation of artificial construction by Martians that had not been intended by Schiaparelli and Secchi.