In 1945 – The United States detonated a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. The Trinity test ushered in the atomic age.

In 1951 – VisiCalc creator Dan Bricklin was born in Philadelphia.

In 1969 – Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins, blasted off from Cape Kennedy on Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the surface of the moon.

1928 – Germany’s ENIGMA machine encoded its first message. Crackign the EMIGMA during World War II brought together some of the finiest minds in computer science at Bletchley Park in England.

In 1983 – Nintendo released the Family Computer or Famicom, along with Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye cartridges. It would later be released in the US under as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES.

In 2003 – AOL Time Warner disbanded the Netscape browser development team. In conjunction, Mozilla created the Mozilla Foundation giving the project its first independent legal existence. 4

In 2006 – After a few months being used internally at Odeo, the Twttr service launched for public use. They later added some vowels and spun Twitter out as its own company.

In 1867 – Alfred Nobel demonstrated dynamite for the first time at Merstham Quarryl, Surrey.

1918 – Computer pioneer and MIT professor Jay Forrester was born on a cattle ranch in Climax, Nebraska. With Robert Everett, Forrester led one of the most important early computer projects, the Whirlwind, and developed and founded the field of system dynamics.

In 1965 – The Mariner 4 did a fly-by of Mars, taking 21 full pictures, the first close-up photos of another planet returned from space.

In 1919 – The British airship R34 finished the first roundtrip journey across the Atlantic from Scotland to Mineola, Long Island and back to Norfolk, England after 182 hours of flight.

In 1973 – Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of the Nixon tapes to the US Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in. Always make back-ups, unless you want to remain President.

In 1977 – Lightning struck a Consolidated Edison substation on the Hudson River, tripping two circuit breakers and setting off a chain of events that resulted in a massive power failure. The entire city of New York was blacked out.

In 1854 – George Eastman was born to Maria Kilbourn and George Washington Eastman in Waterville, New York. He went on to found the Eastman Kodak Company and invented the roll of film.

1949 – At an IBM sales meeting, Thomas J. Watson Jr. predicted that within 10 years, electronics would replace moving parts in machines. His vision launched IBM into dominating the computer industry.

In 2004 – Apple announced the iTunes Music Store sold its 100,000,000th downloaded song. “Somersault (Dangermouse remix)” by Zero 7 was purchased by Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas.