By: History.com Editors

1990

“Pale Blue Dot” photo of Earth is taken

History.com Editors

Published: March 10, 2020

Last Updated: January 30, 2025

On Valentine's Day, 1990, 3.7 billion miles away from the sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft takes a photograph of Earth. The picture, known as Pale Blue Dot, depicts our planet as a nearly indiscernible speck roughly the size of a pixel.

Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2 were charged with exploring the outer reaches of our solar system. It passed by Jupiter in March of 1979 and Saturn the following year. The gaps between the outer planets are so vast that it was another decade before it passed by Neptune and arrived at the spot where it was to take a series of images of the planets, known as the "Family Portrait" of our solar system.

NASA's Early Years

In 1958, NASA was founded and quickly took up the goal of sending a man into Earth's orbit -- and safely returning him home. Seven men were chosen for Project Mercury, embarking on years of training to prepare for a journey no one had made before.

Of the Family Portrait series, Pale Blue Dot was certainly the most memorable. The furthest image ever taken of Earth, it lent its name to popular astronomer Carl Sagan's 1994 book. Sagan, who advised the Voyager mission and had suggested the photo, wrote the following: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

Voyager 1's journey continues. In 1998, it became the most distant human-made object in space, and on August 25, 2012, it left the furthest reaches of the sun's magnetic field and solar winds, becoming the first man-made object in interstellar space.

What Is Earth Really Made Of?

New research suggests that a layer of molten rock or magma may lie some 1,800 miles beneath our feet, sandwiched in between the Earth's core and its lower mantle.

By: History.com Staff

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on February 14th

270

St. Valentine beheaded

On February 14, around the year A.D. 270, Valentine, a holy priest in Rome in the days of Emperor Claudius II, is said to have been executed.

FEBRUARY 14 - SAINT VALENTINE

1779

Patriots defeat Loyalists at Kettle Creek

On this day in 1779 at Kettle Creek, Georgia, a Patriot militia force of 340 led by Colonel Andrew Pickens of South Carolina, with Colonel John Dooly and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke of Georgia, defeats a larger force of 700 Loyalist militia commanded by Colonel James Boyd.

1779

Captain Cook killed in Hawaii

On February 14, 1779, Captain James Cook, the great English explorer and navigator, is killed by Native Hawaiians during his third visit to the Pacific island group.

1818

Frederick Douglass is born

Frederick Douglass, a towering figure of American history, is born enslaved as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. He would go on to make a daring escape North and become one of the most famous people in 19th-century America. As a celebrated orator, author and activist, he became a powerful and eloquent voice not only for the abolition of slavery, but for broader human rights.

1884

Theodore Roosevelt’s wife and mother die

Future President Theodore Roosevelt’s wife and mother die, only hours apart, on February 14, 1884.

1886

First trainload of oranges leaves Los Angeles

Destined to become one of the state’s major exports, the first trainload of oranges grown by Southern California farmers leaves Los Angeles via the transcontinental railroad.

1929

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran.

1943

Battle of the Kasserine Pass begins

On this day, German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against an Allied defensive line in Tunisia, North Africa. The Kasserine Pass was the site of the United States’ first major battle defeat of the war.

1950

USSR and PRC sign mutual defense treaty

The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, the two largest communist nations in the world, announce the signing of a mutual defense and assistance treaty.

1957

Noam Chomsky publishes his groundbreaking book “Syntactic Structures”

Noam Chomsky presents his groundbreaking theory about human speech with the publishing of Syntactic Structures on February 14, 1957 (although some scholars debate the exact date). The book launches his career as the father of modern linguistics and helps to trigger the "cognitive revolution" in psychology and other fields.

1980

Lillian Hellman sues Mary McCarthy for libel

In one of the most caustic literary feuds of the 20th century, playwright Lillian Hellman sues novelist and critic Mary McCarthy for libel, demanding $2.25 million in damages. The case poses the question of where the legal line stands between a critic's free speech and malicious libel.

1988

Olympic speed skater Dan Jansen falls after sister dies

On February 14, 1988, U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen, a favorite to win the gold medal in the 500-meter race at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, falls during competition, only hours after learning his sister had died of cancer. Jansen suffered disappointment after disappointment in the Olympics, earning him a reputation as “the heartbreak kid,” before he finally captured an Olympic gold medal in 1994.

1989

Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini calls on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses”

On February 14, 1989, Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini decrees a death sentence for author Salman Rushdie after publication of his novel The Satanic Verses ignited a storm of outrage among Muslims, many of whom consider the book blasphemous. The controversy would test the limits of free speech in a multicultural, multifaith world.

1989

Sandinistas agree to free elections

At a meeting of the presidents of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and El Salvador, the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua agrees to free a number of political prisoners and hold free elections within a year; in return, Honduras promises to close bases being used by anti-Sandinista rebels. Within a year, elections in Nicaragua resulted in the defeat of the Sandinistas, removing what officials during the administration of President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) referred to as a “beachhead of communism” in the Western Hemisphere.

2018

Teen gunman kills 17, injures 17 at Parkland, Florida high school

On February 14, 2018, an expelled student entered Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and opened fire, killing 17 people and wounding 17 others, in what became at the time the deadliest shooting at a high school in United States history.

People are brought out of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after a shooting there on February 14, 2018.

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Citation Information

Article title
“Pale Blue Dot” photo of Earth is taken
Website Name
History
Date Accessed
March 23, 2025
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
January 30, 2025
Original Published Date
March 10, 2020

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