On November 13, 1833, the annual Leonids meteor shower generated tens of thousands of meteors per hour.

Denison Olmsted, an astronomer, realized for the first time in astronomy that all the shooting stars came out of one point. He called it the radiant, which is still used today by astronomers.

Olmsted sent a report to the newspaper and asked for observations from people, starting citizen science. These reports led Olmsted to a series of discoveries ending Aristotle’s 2,200 year reign of on the explanation of meteors.