Black holes started as an idea in 1783 when John Michell thought of “dark stars” trapping light with gravity, a notion Pierre-Simon Laplace shared in 1796. In 1915, Einstein’s relativity showed gravity warps space, and in 1916, Karl Schwarzschild suggested a point where light can’t escape. By the 1930s, scientists like Chandrasekhar and Oppenheimer said big stars could collapse into these dense spots. John Wheeler named them “black holes” in 1967. Proof came later: in 1971, Cygnus X-1 hinted at