Template:On This Day (nonfiction)/April 11
1789: Clockmaker Jean-André Lepaute dies. He was an innovator, introducing numerous improvements in clockmaking, especially his pin-wheel escapement, and his clockworks in which the gears are all in the horizontal plane.
1798: Physicist and academic Macedonio Melloni born. Melloni will demonstrate that radiant heat has physical properties similar to those of light.
1914: Mathematician Dorothy Lewis Bernstein born. She will be the first woman to be elected president of the Mathematics Association of America.
1962: Physicist and academic Ukichiro Nakaya dies. He created the first artificial snowflakes.
1980: Viking program: After operating on the surface of Mars for 1316 days (1281 sols), the Viking 2 lander is turned off when its batteries fail.
2006: The Venus Express spacecraft arrives at Venus after 153 days of journey, and begins continuously sending back science data from its polar orbit around Venus.