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

http://www.information-britain.co.uk/famdates.php?id=572
http://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/biographical/articles/dolan/

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.
http://jsterman.scripts.mit.edu/docs/Lane-2011%20Profiles%20in%20Operations%20Research.pdf

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

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1964-077A

2015 – The New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto after traveling for nine and a half years and three billion miles. It was the last of the nine planets to be approached by a probe, though Pluto had been reclassified as a dwarf planet after New Horizons had launched.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/science/space/nasa-new-horizons-spacecraft-reaches-pluto.html?_r=0

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1919 – The British airship R34 finished the first airship roundtrip journey across the Atlantic from Scotland to Mineola, Long Island and back to Norfolk, England after 182 hours of flight.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1919/1919%20-%200948.html

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.

http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/butterfieldapapers.asp

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.

http://www.bronx.com/news/local/429.html

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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.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Eastman

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.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/July/12/

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.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/07/12iTunes-Music-Store-Downloads-Top-100-Million-Songs.html

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1976 – K&E produced its last slide rule, which it presented to the Smithsonian Institution. While slide rules continue to be made, especially for marine and aviation uses, K&E had been the dominant manufacturer, and this signaled the end of an era, and the rise of the electronic calculator.

http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4390151/Last-slide-rule-manufactured–July-11–1976

1979 – The US space station Skylab returned to Earth scattering debris over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/skylab/

2008 – Apple’s second phone, the iPhone 3G went on sale, featuring 3G data connectivity.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/07/10iPhone-3G-on-Sale-Tomorrow.html

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1856 – Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, Lika, Croatia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a Serbian Orthodox Priest and his mother an inventor of household appliances.

http://www.teslasociety.com/biography.htm

1962 – The world’s first communication satellite, Telstar, was launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral on a Delta rocket.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/vol42-1963/articles/bstj42-4-1449.pdf

1990 – The Electronic Frontier Foundation was formally founded, immediately coming to the aid of Steve Jackson Games, who’s BBS had been seized by the Secret Service.

http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/SJG/?f=eff_creation.html

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1941 – British cryptologists including Alan Turing broke the code used by the German army to direct ground-to-air operations on the eastern front.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/enigma-key-broken

1971 – Marc Andreessen was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He would grow up to develop the Netscape browser, which powered the explosion of the Web in the late 1990s.
http://www.biography.com/people/marc-andreessen-9542208

1979 – Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Jupiter, coming within 570,000 kilometers of the planet.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/history/70s/Voyager2_1979.htm

1982 – Disney released the movie Tron, which used the most extensive computer-generated graphics and special effects to that time.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/

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1908 – Charles Urban demonstrated Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion-picture process, at a scientific meeting in Paris attended by Auguste and Louis Lumière.
http://books.google.com/books?id=JGoLZrIqa_wC&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=july+8+1908+kinemacolor&source=bl&ots=txw5pg8N-G&sig=BXNkiUCZrOEpNgbV01fq80SiEwM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iwGnU6KlFoTZoATB_4KQBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=july%208%201908%20kinemacolor&f=false

1946 – The University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering began a summer school course on computing that inspired the EDSAC, BINAC, and, many other similar computers.

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200208/history.cfm

2011 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on the final Space Shuttle mission.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/space-shuttle-atlantis-final-flight-launches-florida-struggling/story?id=14024251#.T87MB9VYvmI

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1752 – Joseph Marie Jacquard was born in Lyon, France. The weaver and inventor created the first programmable power loom and the cards he used to program it would be adapted by Herman Hollerith and others for programming the first computers.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/July/7/

1936 – Henry F. Phillips received patents for a new kind of screw and the screwdriver used with it. Endless numbers of computer cases have been held together by it since.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=MINJAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

1981 – The first solar-powered aircraft, Solar Challenger, flew 163 miles from Corneille-en-Verin Airport north of Paris across the English Channel to Manston Royal Air Force Base south of London, staying aloft 5 hours and 23 minutes.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-054-DFRC.html

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1920 – A US Navy F5L seaplane took off from Hampton Roads, Virginia, using a radio compass for the first time. The pilots located and flew to the Battleship Ohio about 94 miles offshore.
http://www.history.navy.mil/today-in-history/july-6.html

1947 – The AK-47 went into production in the Soviet Union– the name stands for Automatic rifle Kalashnikov model of 1947.
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/07/dayintech_0706/

1996 – AOL settled lawsuits in California that accused the company of misleading subscribers about monthly service charges.

http://news.cnet.com/AOL-to-settle-class-action-suits/2100-1023_3-216681.html

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1833 – Nicéphore Niépce died. He created the first permanent photograph in 1826– an image of the outside of his house.

http://www.photo-museum.org/life-nicephore-niepce/

1954 – The BBC broadcast its first daily television news bulletin. Richard Baker read the 20-minute bulletin billed as an “Illustrated summary of the news.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/5/newsid_3856000/3856397.stm

1963 – Radio station WWVB began broadcasting standard frequencies in Fort Collins, Colorado for use by satellite and missile programs. Its time code was later used for synchronizing power plants and coordinating telephone networks and eventually for setting alarm clocks.

http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/wwvb-062513.cfm

1994 – Jeff Bezos founded online book seller Amazon in Bellevue, Washington. It would eventually sell more than just books.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/amazon

2001 – Rob Flickenger and friends posted details of their now legendary 12db Pringles-can antenna to boost WiFi signal distance.

http://kentropolis.com/wp-content/uploads/vb/f62.pdf

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