By: HISTORY.com Editors

1974

The Arecibo Message, an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrials, is sent into space

Published: November 14, 2024Last Updated: January 30, 2025

On November 16, 1974, eight years before E.T. did the “Phone Home” thing on film, researchers send humanity’s first real-life, deliberate radio message into outer space to extraterrestrials. The message goes out from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, where the Arecibo radio telescope was getting a major upgrade and conducting a ceremony to mark the upgrades.

Nobody responded to the message. But the researchers, wanting to showcase humanity’s technical advancement, weren’t expecting an answer.

“It was strictly a symbolic event, to show that we could do it,” Donald Campbell, professor of astronomy at Cornell University, told the Cornell Chronicle in 1999. He was a research associate for the Arecibo Observatory at the time.

The transmission—created by astronomers Carl Sagan and Frank Drake—consisted of a simple, visual message aimed at possible intelligent life in the globular star cluster called M13. This cluster is at the edge of the Milky Way, some 21,000 light years from Earth. The message included the formula for DNA, a crude diagram of the solar system, a drawing of the Arecibo telescope and a stick figure of a human.

As for the Arecibo telescope, it shaped cosmic research for six decades, but collapsed in 2020 after two cable failures. Two years later, the National Science Foundation announced it would decommission and dismantle it, replacing it with an education center. At the 2021 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, presenters wrote that Arecibo “left an indelible mark on planetary science, radio astronomy and space and atmospheric sciences.”

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Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on November 16th

1532

Francisco Pizarro traps Incan emperor Atahualpa

Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish explorer and conquistador, springs a trap on the Incan emperor, Atahualpa. Pizarro forces him to convert to Christianity before eventually killing him.

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1776

British capture Fort Washington

Hessian Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen and a force of 3,000 Hessian mercenaries and 5,000 Redcoats lay siege to Fort Washington at the northern end and highest point of Manhattan Island. Throughout the morning, Knyphausen met stiff resistance from the Patriot riflemen inside the fort, but by afternoon, the Patriots were overwhelmed, and the garrison […]

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1821

Trade opens on the Santa Fe Trail

On November 16, 1821, Missouri Indian trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, sells his goods at an enormous profit and makes plans to return the next year over the route that will become known as the Santa Fe Trail. It would become one of the most important and lucrative of the Old […]

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1849

Fyodor Dostoevsky is sentenced to death

On November 16, 1849, a Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for his allegedly anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group. His execution is stayed at the last minute. Dostoevsky’s father was a doctor at Moscow’s Hospital for the Poor, where he grew rich enough to buy land and serfs. After his father’s […]

1:24m read

1907

Oklahoma enters the Union

Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory collectively enter the United States as Oklahoma, the 46th state. Oklahoma, with a name derived from the Choctaw Indian words okla, meaning “people,” and humma, meaning “red,” has a history of human occupation dating back 15,000 years. The first Europeans to visit the region were Spanish explorers in the 16th […]

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1941

Joseph Goebbels publishes his screed of hate

On November 16, 1941, Joseph Goebbels publishes in the German magazine Das Reich that “The Jews wanted the war, and now they have it”—referring to the Nazi propaganda scheme to shift the blame for the world war onto European Jews, thereby giving the Nazis a rationalization for the so-called Final Solution. Just two days earlier, […]

1:22m read

1957

Body of Ed Gein’s final victim, Bernice Worden, is found

On November 16, 1957, the body of Bernice Worden of Plainfield, Wisconsin, is found, the final victim of infamous killer Edward Gein. His grave robbing, necrophilia and copious corpse trophies gained national attention, and may have provided inspiration for the characters of Norman Bates in Psycho and serial killer Buffalo Bill in The Silence of […]

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1959

“The Sound of Music” premieres on Broadway

On November 16, 1959, The Sound of Music opens on Broadway, becoming a smash success from the first night. Did a young Austrian nun named Maria von Trapp really take to the hills surrounding Salzburg to sing spontaneously of her love of music? No, but nearly all of the particulars of her 1949 book, The […]

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2001

First Harry Potter film opens

On November 16, 2001, the British author J.K. Rowling’s star creation—bespectacled boy wizard Harry Potter—makes his big-screen debut in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which opens in movie theaters across the United States. Based on the mega-best-selling fantasy novel of the same name, the film, which starred Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, went […]

2:36m read

Space Exploration

11 videos

Space Exploration

6 Ways the Space Race Transformed Everyday American Life

The launch of Sputnik in October 1957 sparked a space race that reshaped education, science, technology and everyday life.

Space Exploration

Earthrise: Behind the Famed Apollo 8 Photo

Earthrise is a photo taken by NASA astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, that gave people an awe-inspiring view of their home planet.

Space Exploration

The Rise and Fall of Planet Pluto

Look back at the controversial decision to give Pluto the pink slip and shrink the solar system from nine planets to eight.

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