Template:Selected anniversaries/October 8
1604: The supernova now called "Kepler's nova" was first sighted in the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer. Johannes Kepler observed it from the time of its appearance as an apparently new star. It encouraged him to write The New Star in 1606.
1860: Telegraph line between Los Angeles and San Francisco opens.
1907: Author and illustrator Richard Sharpe Shaver born. He will write stories in which he claimed that he has had personal experience of a sinister, ancient civilization that harbors fantastic technology in caverns under the earth.
1924: Mathematician and statistician John Nelder born. He will contribute to experimental design, analysis of variance, computational statistics, and statistical theory. He will also be responsible, with Max Nicholson and James Ferguson-Lees, for debunking the Hastings Rarities.
1942: Physicist, mathematician, and engineer Sergey Chaplygin dies. He is known for mathematical formulas such as Chaplygin's equation, and for a hypothetical substance in cosmology called Chaplygin gas, named after him.
1985: Mathematician, cryptographer, and author Gordon Welchman dies. During the Second World War, he developed traffic analysis techniques for breaking German codes.