The Last Transit of Venus and the Stories of 5 June

The Last Transit of Venus and the Stories of 5 June On 5 June 2012, millions watched Venus cross the face of the Sun for the last time in any living person’s lifetime. The next transit won’t occur until 2117. This rare celestial event once sent Captain Cook to Tahiti in 1769 and helped unlock the true scale of the solar system. But the fifth of June holds other remarkable stories: in 1983, the Soviet cruise ship Aleksandr Suvorov collided catastrophically with a railway bridge on the Volga River, killing over a hundred passengers. In 1995, physicists at the University of Colorado created the first Bose-Einstein condensate, a state of matter predicted by Einstein seventy years earlier. In 1956, Elvis Presley’s hip-swivelling performance of Hound Dog on The Milton Berle Show scandalised critics and ignited rock and roll on primetime television. And in 1949, Orapin Chaiyakan became the first woman elected to Thailand’s Parliament. From planetary mechanics to cultural flashpoints, this episode explores the moments that still resonate from a single day in history. Chapters The Last Black Dot On 5 June 2012, Venus crossed the Sun for the last time in our lifetimes. The next transit won’t occur until 2117. This rare event once sent Captain James Cook to Tahiti in 1769 to help calculate the Earth-Sun distance, sparking the first coordinated international scientific effort. The episode also covers the 1983 Aleksandr Suvorov bridge collision on the Volga River, the 1995 creation of the first Bose-Einstein condensate, Elvis Presley’s controversial 1956 television performance, and Orapin Chaiyakan becoming Thailand’s first female MP in 1949.