This week in weather history

This week in science and weather history looks at historic firsts, a lunar finale and a few events that shaped American history. We even look at one pop event too.

Here is a brief look at a few of the events that happened this week in history:

On this day in 1972, the last “moonwalk” of the Apollo 17mission occurred. Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent more than 7 hours outside of the lunar lander, collecting lunar samples and doing scientific experiments.

Cernan and Schmitt are the last humans to set foot on the Moon as the Apollo program concluded.

On December 14, 1911, a team of Norwegians, let by Roald Amundsen, reached the South Pole, becoming the first one to do it. They used sleighs and sled dogs to reach the point. In total, it took them 99 days to do the roundtrip from their base camp on Antarctic coast.

On this day in 1970, Venera 7, a Soviet Union spacecraft, landed on Venus. It was the first successful landing on another planet and the spacecraft sent back important data about Venus’s surface and atmosphere.

In protesting against the British taxing of tea and in other ways the British parliament ruled over the American colonies, a group called the Sons of Liberty dumped hundreds of crate of tea into the Boston Harbor.

This event would later be known as the Boston Tea Party and would be the first act of the American Revolution.

On December 17, 1989, the start of an historical television run that has lasted 33 seasons —and counting — began with the debut of The Simpson on the FOX television network.

The premiere episode, titled “Simpson Roasting on an Open Fire,” is a Christmas-themed episode that introduced the family and the origin story of the family dog, Santa’s Little Helper.

On December 18, 2018, a meteor exploded high above over the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia. The force of the explosion was 10 times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. This was detected by satellite. No damage was reported.

On December 19, 2001, the highest barometric pressure adjusted to sea-level was recorded in Mongolia. The read was 1085.6 millibars (32.06 inches of mercury).

Barometric pressure is often adjusted to sea-level conditions to help meteorologists create a sea-level surface map that is used to find areas of high and low pressure and fronts.