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Masani Nagata: The Farmer Who Discovered a Comet
By July of 1931 the melon season was winding down in Southern California’s Imperial Valley. With fewer runners from the local produce companies wiring eastern wholesale markets, the Western Union telegraph office in the farming town of Brawley would reduce its business hours as it did each year when the harvest came to an end. But in the middle of the month a flurry of incoming telegrams caused quite a stir. The wires came from unheard-of sources—astronomical observatories across the country and scientists around the world. Causing even more disbelief was to whom they were inten…
