In 1868, a French Astronomer, Pierre-Jules-César Janssen, spotted a yellow line in the sun's spectrum while studying a total solar eclipse. 

An English astronomer, Sir Norman Lockyer, realized that this line could not be produced by any element known at the time and concluded that a new element on the sun was responsible for this mysterious yellow emission. 

Lockyer named this unknown element helium, based on the Greek god of the sun, Helios.

In 1895, a Scottish chemist, Sir William Ramsay, conducted an experiment with a mineral called clevite. He exposed the mineral to mineral acids and collected the gases that were produced. 

He sent a sample of these gases to Lockyer and Sir William Crookes, who were able to identify the helium within it. 

It is also the second-lightest element in the universe, has the lowest boiling-point of any gas, and is commonly used through the world to inflate party balloons. 

It is an nonreactive, colorless, and odorless gas. Helium is also an inert gas and does not easily combine with other elements. 

Some of it's uses include:

• Airships - Since helium is lighter than air, it can be used to inflate airships, blimps, and balloons, providing lift. It is greatly preferred compared to the cheaper option of hydrogen because helium is non - flammable making it the safer choice.
• MRI Scanners - Helium's low boiling point makes it useful to cool down the superconductive magnets coil in MRI scanners to a temperature below 10 Kelvin. 
• Deep - Sea Diving - Divers use mixtures of helium, oxygen and nitrogen to breathe underwater, avoiding the problems caused by breathing ordinary air under high pressure
• Rockets - Helium is used to clean out rocket engines, pressurize the interior of liquid fuel rockets, condense hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel, and force fuel into the engines during rocket launches.
• Dating - It can also be used to estimate the age of rocks and minerals containing uranium and thorium by measuring their possession of helium.
• Telescopes - It is used in solar telescopes to prevent the heating of the air, which reduces the distorting effects of temperature variations in the space between lenses.

But recently, the House and Senate approved a bill that would keep the Federal Helium Reserve open and slowly end the reserve's practice of giving away the gas for below - market rates, a practice that has led to excessive waste of the scarce resource.

The hard-drive industry has been eyeing helium for years now, but no company has ever been able to make it work because helium tends to leak out of whatever container it’s placed inside. HGST claims that they have overcome these challenges and is producing hard drives guaranteed to last five years.