In 1660 – Twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray met after Wren’s astronomy lecture to discuss the formal constitution of a society of philosophers that would become the Royal Society. It still exists and recently opened its archives on the Web.

In 1814 – For the first time, an automatic steam-powered press printed The Times in London. German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer built the press. The Times quickly pointed out that they would not layoff workers, but instead increase printing, bringing the paper to a wider audience.

In 1964 – NASA launched Mariner 4 toward Mars where it would conduct the first successful flyby of the red planet.

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In 1971 – The Soviet Union’s Mars 2 orbiter released its descent module which probably had too steep an angle of entry, and malfunctioned and crashed. But hey, it was still the first manmade object to reach the surface of Mars.

In 1995 – Microsoft released Internet Explorer 2.0, touting its privacy and encryption, and stepping up the browser war with Netscape.

In 2001 – Scientists announced they had used the Hubble telescope to detect and analyze the atmosphere on an extrasolar planet for the first time. The planet HD 209458 b, unofficially called Osiris was found to have sodium in its atmosphere.

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In 1894 – Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri. He would get his BA in mathematics at age 14 but is most remembered for his theory of regulation and of signal transmission which he called “cybernetics”

In 1922 – “Toll of the Sea” debuted. It was the first color movie that didn’t require a special projector, the second technicolor film ever, and the first in wide release.

In 2003 – The final flight of a Concorde ended when the supersonic jet touched down at Filton, Bristol, England, the airfield where it was built.

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In 1816 – Gaslight illuminated Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Theatre, improving on an innovation pioneered in London. Instead of coal the gas was created from pitch, reducing the malodorous vapors caused by the wonder’s creation.

In 1957 – PG&E and General Electric inaugurated the Vallecitos Nuclear Power Plant in Pleasanton California. It was the first privately funded atomic power plant.

In 1976 – The Project Viking landers passed through superior conjunction at Mars, enabling scientists to begin an experiment that used the landers as transponders. The data collected confirmed the Shapiro Delay, becoming one of the best confirmations of General Relativity we have seen.

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