Thursday 17 May 2012, 07:15:22
17 May
1510: Sandro Botticelli, Italian Renaissance architect, dies in Florence at age 64 or 65.
17 May
1727: Mathematics genius Euler arrives in St. Petersburg to take up a post at the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences.
17 May
1749: Edward Jenner, English doctor, pioneer of the smallpox vaccine, is born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire.
17 May
1836: Norman Lockyer, English scientist and astronomer, is born in Rugby, Warwickshire.
17 May
1902: In an ancient shipwreck Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais finds an astronomical calculator dating from the 2nd century BC, now famously known as the Antikythera mechanism.