Abstract
A significant association (p < .01) was found between the occurrence of tight aspects (orb < 1°) that the five outer planets make in the sky and the occurrence of independently sourced historical highlights over the period 1984 to 2021. The aspects considered were all conjunctions and oppositions between Uranus, Neptune and Pluto and the same aspects these planets make with Jupiter and Saturn. The number of news highlights in a year was compared with the frequency of these aspects in that year or in the previous year. The conditional probability of a high-news year given two or more such aspects was 0.68, compared to a conditional probability of 0.23 given one or zero aspects. A high-news year was therefore nearly three times as likely when two or more aspects occurred in the  same year or in the previous year than when they did not.