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On This Day

  • 5-5-1580

    Johann Faulhaber born in Ulm, Germany. Over a period of 17 years, this early algebraist published formulas for sums of 1st through 17th powers of the first n positive integers.

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    Johann Faulhaber

  • 5-5-1859

    Dirichlet died in Gottingen, Germany. The number theorist is most famous for proving that certain arithmetic progressions contain infinitely many primes.

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    Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet

  • 5-5-1961

    Alan B. Shepard flew into space, becoming the first U.S. astronaut to make a space flight. His fifteen-minute flight in Freedom 7 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, reached an altitude of about 115 miles and ended 302 miles down the Atlantic missile range.

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    Alan Shepard