where Medieval Arabs recorded meteor showers, as they regarded them as good omens. A meteor shower in August 1583 was recorded in the Timbuktu manuscripts. The Lyrids meteor shower is the oldest such event to be continuously recorded, with records in China dating back to 687 BCE.

In 1789, Antoine Lavoisier published the first modern chemistry textbook titled, Traité Élémentaire de Chimie.