The first photograph of a star was taken on this day in 1850 at the Harvard Observatory. The star photographed was Vega in the Lyra constellation, the 2nd brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere. The Civil War brought the return of governmentally issued paper money to this country. On July 17, 1861 Congress authorized the printing and circulation of Legal Tender paper worth 60 million dollars. The Constitution Act of 1919 specified that Finland would become a republic and served as the nation’s first constitution. The ratification of Finland’s form of government laid the foundations for the country’s modern democracy and highly functional society. France abandoned atmospheric nuclear testing in 1974 and moved to underground testing in the midst of intense world pressure which was sparked by the New Zealand Government of the time, which sent two frigates in July 1973 to the atoll in protest for a nuclear free Pacific.
