Saturn is the only planet with rings
The old claim turned out to be wrong and was rejected by evidence.
TaughtSaturn is unique in the solar system: it is the one planet with a ring system.
NowAll four giant planets have rings. Uranus's were found in 1977, Jupiter's by Voyager 1 in 1979, and Neptune's rings were confirmed by Voyager 2 in 1989.
What actually happened
Saturn's rings are spectacular and visible in a backyard telescope, so for three centuries the reasonable conclusion was that they were a one-off. They are not; they are just the brightest.
Uranus's rings were found by accident in 1977 when astronomers watched the planet pass in front of a star and the star blinked several times before and after the planet itself occulted it. Voyager 1 spotted Jupiter's faint dusty ring in 1979. Neptune's rings, including the strange incomplete arcs in the Adams ring, were confirmed when Voyager 2 flew past in August 1989.
If you graduated in the early 1980s, your textbook's claim was already out of date when it was printed. Textbook revision cycles are slower than spacecraft.
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Sources
- NASA Science: Planetary ring systemsscience.nasa.gov
- NASA: Voyager mission science highlightsscience.nasa.gov
Who was taught this
Still standard through 1992, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 1989 learned the earlier version.