2001 – Dennis Tito became the first “space tourist” in human history paying his own way to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

http://www.space.com/11492-space-tourism-pioneer-dennis-tito.html

2003 – Apple opened the iTunes Music Store with 200,000 songs at 99 cents a piece. Songs could play on any iPod and up to three authorised Macs. Windows users were out of luck but tracks could be burned to unlimited numbers of CDs.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/04/28Apple-Launches-the-iTunes-Music-Store.html

2003 – Apple unveiled the “third-generation” iPod. The new iPods were thinner and featured the bottom Dock Connector port rather than the top-mounted FireWire port. The iPod controls also became entirely touch sensitive.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/04/28Apple-Introduces-New-iPods.html

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1981 – The first mouse integrated with a personal computer made its appearance with the Xerox Star workstation.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox-8010/

1995 – The Justice Department sued to block Microsoft’s purchase of Intuit, claiming the acquisition would raise prices and squash innovation. Intuit still exists but Microsoft Money is long gone.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2026&dat=19950427&id=CfQqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jdAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6545,2500946

1998 – Roughly 8,000 AOL subscribers joined the first known live interspecies chat with Koko the gorilla. Koko signed her answers; Penny Patterson interpreted them; and an AOL chat facilitator entered them in the computer.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9804/24/gorilla.chat/index.html

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1884 – The New York Times reported that “sending mails by electricity” was to be investigated by the Post Office Committee of the US House, by providing for contracts with an existing telegraph company. The article promised it could lead to 10 cent telegrams!

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9803E3DA1138E033A25755C2A9629C94659FD7CF

1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization entered into force.

http://www.wipo.int/ip-outreach/en/ipday/

1986 – Design flaws made worse by human error during a safety test, led to the worst nuclear disaster yet, and a partial meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Chernobyl-Accident/#.Ud7xfz54Zvg

1999 – RePlay TV began shipping the first Digital Video Recorder. It could pause and rewind live TV as well as schedule shows to be recorded. Models ranged from being able to store 6 hours to 26 hours of recorded shows.

https://books.google.com/books?id=DnjwTdlpsekC&pg=PT11&lpg=PT11&dq=replaytv+april+1999&source=bl&ots=Y2SJbfViMA&sig=5ZFQ5SAFV5C5tUPnU7MVas8Vmb0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii5dHQidrLAhVU3GMKHVavDRQQ6AEILTAD#v=onepage&q=replaytv%20april%201999&f=false

2014 – A team of archaeologists hired by Fuel Entertainment and Xbox Entertainment Studios uncovered a pile of buried Atari E.T. games in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The games were dumped 31 years before after the game flopped in sales.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/landfill-excavation-unearths-years-of-crushed-atari-treasure/

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1944 – Lt. Carter Harman of the 1st Air Commando Group rescued four men from the jungle in Burma, flying a Sikorsky YR-4 helicopter. It was the first combat rescue by helicopters in the US Army Air Forces.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130312201246/http://www.pacaf.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090422-085.pdf

1953 – Watson and Crick presented their findings on the double helical structure of DNA in the publication Nature. They noted that the structure “suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” 50 Years later the Human Genome Project had concluded sequencing the genome and published a follow-on in Nature on their vision for genetic research.

http://www.sns.ias.edu/~tlusty/courses/landmark/WatsonCrick1953.pdf

1961 – Robert Noyce received the US patent for the silicon-based integrated circuit. He went on to found the Intel Corporation with Gordon E. Moore in 1968. Noyce fought a long patent rights battle with Jack Kilby who invented a germanium based integrated circuit.

http://www.pbs.org/transistor/background1/events/icinv.html

2014 – Microsoft completed its acquisition of Nokia’s handset business. Nokia retained its mapping, research and network infrastructure business. Microsoft gained most of the mobile phone parts of the company.

http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-closes-nokia-deal-pays-more-than-expected/#ftag=CAD590a51e

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1970 – The Chang Zheng-1 rocket launched, carrying the first Chinese satellite, the Dong Fang Hong-1.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2010/06/china-launch-shi-jian-12-satellite-research-mission/

1981 – At a meeting called “Apple II Forever”, Apple introduced the portable Apple IIc. The machine came with 128 kilobytes of RAM and a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive.

http://apple2history.org/history/ah08/

1990 – The Space Shuttle Discovery launched with the Hubble Space Telescope on board. The following day, Hubble was released into space.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/story/the_story_2.html

2015 – The Apple Watch started shipping. It could be bought in some high-end fashion stores but Apple Stores had none in stock. Only online orders could be taken through Apple.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/03/09Apple-Watch-Available-in-Nine-Countries-on-April-24.html

2017 – Peggy Whitson broke the record for most cumulative time in space by a US astronaut, passing Jeff Williams record of 534 days, 2 hours and 48 minutes.

https://gizmodo.com/astronaut-peggy-whitson-just-smashed-another-record-1794590766

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1827 – Mathematics student William Rowan Hamilton presented his “Theory of Systems of Rays” at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. It led to the development of the wave theory of light which led to the development of quantum mechanics.

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Hamilton/Rays/PtFst.pdf

1940 – A patent was granted to Herman Anthony for a leak-proof dry-cell battery. The patent was assigned to Ray-o-Vac.

http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US2197780.pdf

1941 – Ray Tomlinson was born in Amsterdam, New York. In 1971 he would expand SNDMSG to work between computers on the Arpanet, which would become email. He chose the @ symbol to separate the recipient’s name from the computer domain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Tomlinson#cite_note-3

1982 – Sinclair launched the ZX Spectrum which popularised home computing in the UK.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/23/spectrum_zx_25/

2005 – At 8:27 PM, Jawed Karim, one of the co-founders of YouTube, uploaded the video Me at the zoo making it the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_at_the_zoo

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1592 – Wilhelm Schickard was born. He would grow up to create an early form of calculating machine called the “calculating clock”, that could add and subtract up to six-digit numbers.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/April/22/

1993 – NCSA Mosaic 1.0 was released, becoming the first web browser to achieve popularity among the general public.

http://books.google.com/books?id=YkEdWYvuUk8C&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=april+22+1993+mosaic&source=bl&ots=I5xbJ39Jt7&sig=nhZVU4BHGpi35GYmqWH6-vTY8UE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=499CU4vrA6_8yAGry4DQDw&ved=0CIwBEOgBMAk#v=onepage&q=april%2022%201993%20mosaic&f=false

2000 – The Big Number Change took place in the United Kingdom, changing how phone numbers were dialed in many areas. With the boom in mobile devices, the UK had almost exhausted all possible numbers, and needed the change to increase the pool of numbers to be assigned.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/oftel/publications/1999/consumer/qanum999.htm

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1962 – President John F. Kennedy opened the Seattle World’s Fair by telephone from Palm Beach, Florida. He pressed a gold telegraph key which focused an antenna at Andover, Maine and a Navy radio telescope station in Maryland on a star to pick up a 10,000 year-old radio signal. That in turn set in motion various exhibits at the fair.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKPOF-037-040.aspx

1964 – Satellite Transit-5BN-3 failed to reach orbit after launch. It carried 2.1 pounds (0.95 kg) of radioactive plutonium from its SNAP RTG power source.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Afb6E7z0FVMC&pg=PA235&lpg=PA235&dq=Transit-5bn+satellite+fails&source=bl&ots=wSQnvHepKD&sig=TGcmeUG4cO2nDXf6i6B04dTFojk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5et0T8DnM8axiQKA9synDg&ved=0CGQQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Transit-5bn%20satellite%20fails&f=false

1988 – Tandy Corp. held a press conference in New York to announce its plans to build IBM PS/2 clones.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/April/21/

1989 – Nintendo released the original GameBoy in Japan. It sported the same controls as the NES and used black and gray pixels for the display.

http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2014/04/21/nintendos-original-game-boy-now-25-years-old/

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1926 – Sam Warner approved the sound-on-disc system created by Western Electric and created the Vitaphone company to develop the process to add sound to film.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/new-sound-process-for-films-announced

1940 – Vladimir Zworykin and his team from RCA demonstrated the first electron microscope. It measured 10 feet high and weighed half a ton, achieving a magnification of 100,000x.

https://webfiles.uci.edu/mcbrown/display/john_coleman.html

1964 – The first AT&T picturephone transcontinental call was made between test displays at Disneyland and the New York World’s Fair.

http://www.beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/pdf/picturephone.pdf

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1947 – A report appeared in Billboard magazine of the first public demonstration of the Jerry Fairbanks Zoomar lens. The National Broadcasting Company in New York City conducted the demo and the zoom lens soon became standard TV equipment.

http://books.google.com/books?id=oQwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT14&lpg=PT14&dq=zoomar+lens+national+broadcasting+corporation&source=bl&ots=htr7_jw8_1&sig=WfOmu4YGW6Ij4FeONMXBhoPT2xc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uHhuT6iCEarniAKTsdWeBQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=zoomar%20lens%20national%20broadcasting%20corporation&f=false

1957 – The first non-test FORTRAN program was compiled and run by Herbert Bright, manager of the data processing center at Westinghouse. It produced a missing comma diagnostic. Once fixed, a successful attempt followed.

http://books.google.com/books?id=x8BvqSRbR3cC&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289&dq=april+19+1957+first+fortran+program&source=bl&ots=2fy7lq-7vX&sig=Vanzeie3xfLAw_-u-34YjFBb1Fg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VhlnUZqDDcaIiAKRo4CQCw&ved=0CGUQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=april%2019%201957%20first%20fortran%20program&f=false

1965 – “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits” by Gordon Moore was published in Electronics. Moore projected that over the next ten years the number of components per chip would double every 12 months. By 1975 he turned out to be right, and the doubling became immortalized as “Moore’s law.”

http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1965-Moore.html

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