This Week in History

November 9, 1731, Benjamin Banneker was born in Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland. Banneker was a self-taught Astronomer and Mathematician. He was one of the first African Americans to gain distinction in the sciences. Most of his life was on his family’s farm outside Baltimore. He taught himself by using borrowed textbooks.

In 1789, Banneker made astronomical calculations that enabled him to successfull...