Also known as
asteroid 944, Hidalgo was discovered on October 31, 1920 by
Walter Baade in
Hamburg,
Germany. It was named after Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the father of
Mexican independence, after Mexico allowed Baade's group to observe a 1923 solar eclipse in that country.
Hidalgo has an extremely elliptical orbit (at 0.70, more so than even Pluto), that takes it to within striking distance of the Martian orbit to well past Saturn. It's inclination of 42.4° is almost diagonal, and its especially long period of around 14.1 years (the longest for any asteroid) lead some to believe that Hidalgo is actually an extinct comet.
Aside from Hidalgo's strange characteristics, it isn't particularly noteworthy, except perhaps for its inclusion in odd 'scientific' works. In 1946, W.H. Pickering (the planet predictor) listed Hidalgo as an outer planet in his attempt to prove the existance of a trans-Plutonian planet at 77.8 AU (more than twice Pluto's distance from the Sun).