Template:Selected anniversaries/April 8
1541: Physician and archaeologist Michele Mercati born. Mercati will be one of the first scholars to recognize prehistoric stone tools as human-made rather than natural or mythologically created thunderstones.
1732: Inventor, astronomer, mathematician, clockmaker, and surveyor David Rittenhouse born. Rittenhouse will become the first Director of the United States Mint, hand-striking the new nation's first coins.
1803: Mathematician Louis François Antoine Arbogast dies. Arbogast was the first writer to separate the symbols of operation from those of quantity. He wrote on series and the derivatives known by his name.
1903: Mathematician Marshall Harvey Stone born. Stone will contribute to real analysis, functional analysis, topology, and the study of Boolean algebra structures.
1911: Physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, discoverer of superconductivity, makes a terse entry in his notebook: Kwik nagenoeg nul ("Mercury[’s resistance] practically zero [at 3 K].").