Full Title: Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode-Island, New Hampshire & Vermont Almanack, with an Ephemeris, for the Year of our Lord 1802: Being the VIth after Bissextile, or Leap Yrar, and 26th of Columbian Independence. From Creation, according to Scriptures, 5764 . . . Containg, besides the more than usual Astronomical Calculations, a lerger Quantity and greater Variety, than are to be found in any other Almanack, of Matters Curious, Useful and Entertaining. Printed at Worcester, Massachusetts, by Isaiah Thomas, Jun. . . . [1801]
A NEW PLANET.
Another new Planet is discovered. This celestial phenomenon moves between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and is an intermediate planet between them. It was discovered by Mr. Piazzi, an Italian Astonomer on the 1st of January, 1801. He concealed the discovery, to preserve all the honor and observations to himself, till after six weeks close watching, he fell ill. It is but a small planet, ranking only as a star of the 8th magnitude, and therefore invisible to the naked eye. Its motion is nearly parallel to the ecliptic, it was then about four degrees and a half to the north of it, and nearly entering the sign of Leo. The distance from the sun is about two threefifth times that of the earth, and the periodical time nearly four years and two months. . . .
ANECDOTES, &C.
The late Earl of Chatham, who bore no good will to a certain physican, was rallying him one day about the inethicacy of his prescriptions. To which the doctor replied, “He defied any of his patients to find fault with him.” — “I believe you,” replid the witty Earl, “for they are all dead.”
Eighteenth-Century Reading Room 