In 1857 – William Francis Channing of Boston, Mass. and Moses Gerrish Farmer, of Salem, Mass. received the first U.S. patent for an “electromagnetic fire alarm telegraph for cities” (No. 17,355).

In 1961 – Venera 1 became the first manmade object to fly-by another planet by passing within 100,000 KM of Venus. The probe did not send back any data having lost contact with Earth a month earlier.

In 2006 – Apple opened its 20,000-square foot store at 767 Fifth Avenue. It was the second Apple store in New York City but the iconic glass cube made it the most famous.

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In 1923 – The first patent application for the rotary-dial telephone was submitted in France by Antoine Barnay.

In 1969 – Apollo 10 launched, completing all the stages of a moon landing mission without landing on the Moon. Astronauts Eugene Cernan and Thomas Stafford descended in the Lunar Module to within 15KM of the lunar surface.

In 1998 – The United States Department of Justice and twenty U.S. states filed civil actions against Microsoft, alleging the company abused monopoly power regarding operating system and Web browser sales.

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In 1902 – While going through objects recovered by divers near Antikythera off the coast of Greece, archaeologist Valerois Stais discovered a strange device with gear-wheels inside. The Antikythera mechanism have been puzzling investigators for over a hundred years.

In 1943 – The U.S. Army and the University of Pennsylvania signed a contract to develop ENIAC. It was planned to use vacuum tubes and calculate ballistic firing tables.

In 1954 – The first shovel load of earth was dug on the Meyrin site of the first CERN Laboratory building in Geneva.

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In 1888 – Emile Berliner demonstrated his flat disc recording and reproduction in a lecture he gave to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, which was printed in the institute’s Journal (vol. 125, no. 60).

In 1946 – At the meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE, now IEEE) in San Francisco, Jack Mullin demonstrated the world’s first professional-quality tape recorded in the US.

In 1960 – While working at the Hughes Research Laboratories of the Hughes Aircraft company in Malibu, California, physicist Theodore Maiman used an artificial ruby to create the first laser.

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