In 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was born.
Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the Solar System. Such a model is called a heliocentric system. In this new ordering the Earth is just another planet (the third outward from the Sun), and the Moon is in orbit around the Earth, not the Sun.
Learn more at http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/retrograde/copernican.html
In 1878, Thomas Alva Edison patented the phonograph at his laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ.
Originally, Edison had set out to invent a telegraph repeater, but came up with the phonograph or, as he called it, the speaking machine.
Learn more at http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2002/02-13.jsp
