In 1996 – Microsoft releases Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 3.0, touting customization options like parental controls and the ability to handle shared applications and Web phone calls.

In 1989 – Cornell student Robert Tappan Morris became the first person indicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after releasing a worm on the Internet. Morris claimed his worm was just measuring the size of the Internet.

In 2004 – Motorola announced that its next generation of cell phones would be iTunes-compatible. This first Apple phone, the Rokr, was not to meet with much success.

1959 – Christopher Cockerell’s Hovercraft crossed the English Channel for the first time, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Frenchman Louis Bleriot’s historic first cross-Channel heavier-than-air flight.

In 1990 – Microsoft became the first software company to exceed $1 billion in sales in a single year, reporting revenues of $1.18 billion for fiscal year 1990.

In 2010 – Wikileaks published classified documents about the War in Afghanistan, one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history.

1874 – Woodward and Evans Light filed a patent for Artificial light by means of Electricity with the Canadian Department of Agriculture. Woodward later sold the patent to Thomas Edison, who patented a different and more successful version of the incandescent lamp in the US..

In 1950 – The Bumper 8, made of a German V-2 missile lower stage and WAC-Corporal upper stage launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It was the first launch from what would become the Kennedy Space Center.

In 1969 – Apollo 11 arrived safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first manned mission to land on the Moon.

In 1903 – Ford sells its first car to Dr. Ernst Pfenning of Chicago. The two-cylinder Model A was assembled at Mack Avenue Plant in Detroit.

In 1985 – Commodore introduced the Amiga personal computer at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center. Amiga cost $1,295 and shipped with a base configuration of 256K of RAM.

In 1996 – The first commercial HDTV signal was broadcast in North Carolina by WRAL channel 32 operating at 100 kilowatts with an antenna 1,750 feet above the ground. 200 members of the press watched the broadcast at WRAL.

In 1933 – Wiley Post returned to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes after leaving, becoming the fastest person to circumnavigate the Earth by air and the first to do it solo.

In 1962 – The first Mariner space probe to Venus had to be destroyed shortly after lift-off because of “improper operation of the Atlas airborne beacon equipment.” The error was caused by a missing overbar in the program that must have disappeared during hand transcription.

In 1997 – Apple announced OS 8 for Macintosh computers. It added easier Internet integration and a 3D look to the OS.

1975 – Xerox announced its withdrawal from computer mainframe manufacturing. The company did indicate it would continue activities in other computer-related businesses like computer disk drives, serial printers, and apparently giving away secrets to companies like Apple and Microsoft.

In 2002 – WorldCom filed for the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. history. It was the number two long-distance phone company, at a time when that still meant something. It would end up changing its name back to MCI, and its remains exists as Verizon’s business division.

In 2011 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility Runway 15, ending the US space shuttle missions.

In 1960 – In a first for missiles, a Polaris A1 test vehicle was successfully launched from the USS George Washington submarine off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

In 1969 – In a first for humans, Neil Armstrong and Edwin A. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. Successfully landed the Lunar Module “Eagle” on the surface of the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission and became the first humans to ever set foot on earth’s satellite.

In 1976 – In a first for robots, the Viking 1 lander successfully set down on on Mars in the Chryse Planitia and performed its mission.

In 1961 – Trans World Airlines began offering regular in-flight movies on scheduled flights. The first film shown, only in the first class cabin, mind you, was “By Love Possessed,” starring Lana Turner and Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

In 1983 – On July 19, 1983, Michael W. Vannier and his co-workers J. Marsh and J. Warren published the first three-dimensional reconstruction of single computed tomography (CT) slices of the human head.

In 2004 – Apple announced the fourth-generation iPod with 12-hour battery life and the ability to shuffle songs. HP announced they would sell an HP branded version of this model fo the iPod.

In 1968 – Robert Noyce, Andy Grove and Gordon Moore incorporated Moore and Noyce electronics, swiftly renamed at Noyce’s daughter’s suggestion to Integrated Electronics Corporation, or Intel for short

In 1992 – Silvano de Gennaro, an IT developer at CERN took a picture of the singing group ‘Les Horribles Cernettes’ who sang mostly about physics. Tim Berners-Lee would later use that picture as a test, making it the first photo uploaded to the World Wide Web.

In 2001 Apple announced Mac OS X 10.1 Puma, the first update to OS X.

In 1899 – Nippon Electric Company Ltd. (NEC) was founded by Iwadare Kunihiko, an expert in telegraphic systems who worked under Thomas Edison. Western Electric provided funding, making it the first Japanese joint-venture with a foreign company.

In 1997 – DNS was widely disrupted making email routing and web page delivery spotty throughout the day. An Ingres database failure resulted in corrupt .COM and .NET zone files. A system administrator mistakenly released the zone file without regenerating the file and verifying its integrity.

In 2002 – Apple announced PC versions of the iPod with MusicMatch software instead of iTunes. The company also announced a 20 GB version of the music player and touch-sensitive scroll wheel and dropped the prices.