Comet Arend–Roland was discovered on November 6, 1956, by Belgian astronomers Sylvain Arend and Georges Roland on photographic plates.

[7] In November 1956, a double astrograph at the Uccle Observatory in Brussels was being used for routine investigation of minor planets.

On 6 November 1956, the Belgian astronomers Sylvain Arend and Georges Roland discovered a comet on their photographic plates.

[8] The orbital elements for this comet were computed by Michael Philip Candy, who predicted perihelion passage on 8 April 1957.

As the comet was already well developed, he predicted that the object would present a prominent display during April in the northern hemisphere.

[13] Comet Arend–Roland was the subject of the first edition of the BBC's long-running astronomy program The Sky at Night on 24 April 1957.

[14] Astronomer Carl Sagan relates an anecdote on page 80 of his 1980 book Cosmos about being on duty in an observatory near Chicago in 1957 when a late-night phone call from an inebriated man asked what was the "fuzzy thing" they were seeing in the sky.

[15] When an orbital solution is computed that includes non-gravitational forces that vary as the inverse square of the heliocentric distance, somewhat different values are derived (see the Marsden (1970) column in the table below).