when was helium discovered

Helium was first discovered on August 18, 1868, during a total solar eclipse when French astronomer Pierre Janssen observed a new bright yellow spectral line in the Sun's chromosphere. Independently, English astronomer Joseph Norman Lockyer observed the same line two days later and concluded it was caused by a new element, which he named helium after the Greek word for Sun, Helios. However, helium was not discovered on Earth until 1895 when Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay isolated it from a uranium mineral called cleveite.