1878 – Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone to Queen Victoria at her Osborne House estate on the Isle of Wight. He reached out and touched her, a faux pas which made him the first commoner in years to lay hands on the royal person.

1973 – Elvis Presley’s concert, “Aloha from Hawaii” was broadcast live via satellite, and set a record as the most watched broadcast by an individual entertainer in television history.

2005 – The Huygens space probe landed on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. It was the first landing in the outer solar system, and the furthest from Earth.

2014 – US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of Verizon regarding two FCC net neutrality rules that prevented blocking of applications and discriminating against traffic.

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1910 – The first public radio broadcast took place with a live performance of the opera Cavalleria rusticana sung by Enrico Caruso and others was broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. The transmitter had 500 watts of power.

1928 – Three television sets were installed by GE in homes in Schenectady, New York, in order to demonstrate the first home television receiver. The picture was 1.5 inches long by 1 inch wide and 24 lines at 16 frames per second.

1976 – Raymond Kurzweil and the leaders of the National Federation of the Blind announced the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the first text-to-speech machine. Walter Cronkite used it to deliver his signature sign-off, “And that’s the way it was, January 13, 1976.”

2014 – Google announced it would acquire smart appliance maker Nest.

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1908 – Lee de Forest, an engineer and scientist, broadcast a phonograph record show from the Eiffel Tower for an audience of less than 50 people. The show was also heard over 500 miles from the tower, becoming the first long-distance radio message transmission.

1964 – Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He would grow up to study computer science at Princeton, and set the standard for online shopping with his company, Amazon.com.

2005 – Deep Impact launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta 2 rocket, headed to an impact with comet 9P/Tempel.

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1954 – BBC TV broadcast their first ‘in-vision’ weather forecast. George Cowling of the Meteorological Office presented from the BBC’s Lime Grove studios with two hand-drawn weather charts pinned to an easel.

2001 – AOL and Time Warner completed their merger. At the time it was seen as a signal of the victory of the Internet over old media. Time Warner would eventually come out on top and spin AOL back out as separate company.

2001 – Dave Winer revealed “Payloads for RSS” which allowed among other things, enclosures. One example was an RSS feed which would deliver a different Grateful Dead song each day. It was the proto-podcast.

2005 – Apple introduced the first iPod Shuffle, a music player with no screen and flash memory.

2013 – RSS 1.0 and Reddit Developer Aaron Swartz was found dead after committing suicide.

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1899 – A US patent was issued for an “Electric Device,” invented by David Misell, which used D size batteries laid end to end in a paper tube with a light bulb and a brass reflector at the end. The batteries only lasted long enough for a “flash” of light, hence the name Flashlight.

1946 – The Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories in New Jersey received the first echoes off the Moon of an experiment to send the first radio transmissions through outer space.

1949 – In response to Columbia’s new 33-RPM long playing record, RCA kicked off a platter war introducing the seven-inch diameter 45 rpm “single” in the US.

1962 – NASA announced plans to build the C-5, a three-stage rocket launch vehicle. It became better known as the Saturn V, which launched every Apollo Moon mission.

2008 – Sony BMG became the last major label to agree to sell DRM-free MP3s.

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1901 – The first application for a patent for Meccano was submitted. Known at first as “Mechanics Made Easy,” this invention of Frank Hornby became a worldwide success and is sold in the US under the name “Erector Set”

1992 – Apple CEO John Sculley coined the term Personal Digital Assistants, or PDAs, and indicated Apple would get into the business of making them later that year.

2001 – Apple introduced iTunes for the Macintosh, featuring CD ripping, digital music organizing, and Internet radio.

2007 – Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced an iPod, an Internet device and a phone all in one. It was called the iPhone and would go on sale later that summer. It was pretty popular at the time.

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1889 – Herman Hollerith received a patent for his electronic tabulating machine. His Tabulating Machine Company would go on to merge with three others and be called International Business Machines, known today as IBM.

1973 – Less than a month after the last manned Moon mission, Apollo 17, the USSR launched space mission Luna 21 carrying lunar rover Lunakhod 2.

1982 – The United States vs. AT&T settlement was finalized with AT&T agreeing to divest itself of local exchanges in exchange for being allowed to start AT&T Computer Systems. Like Voltron, the behemoth would eventually reassemble.

1986 – “The Mentor” wrote “The Conscience of a Hacker” writing “This is our world now.” It was published on Phrack and is often referred to as the Hacker Manifesto.

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1714 – Henry Mill patented a machine for transcribing letters “one after another, as in writing.” Sadly, he died before he perfected the first typewriter.

1839 – Louis Daguerre made the first announcement of his photographic system at the Académie des Sciences in Paris, though details were not presented until August of that year.

1954 – In New York at IBM headquarters, IBM and Georgetown University showed off their joint project on machine translation. More than 60 sentences were translated from Russian to English using eight grammar rules.

2003 – Apple released the public beta of its new browser, called Safari.

2016 – the 49th Mersenne prime was discovered by Dr. Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. It was written as 2^74,207,281-1.

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1838 – Samuel Morse, with his partner, Alfred Vail, gave the first public demonstration of their new electric telegraphic system at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, NJ. They used Morse’s specially designed code to send the message “A patient waiter is no loser.”

1851 – Leon Foucault proved the rotation of the Earth experimentally. He wrote in his journal that he made the discovery at 2:00 AM working with his famous pendulum in the cellar of his house.

2004 – Apple debuted the iPod Mini, a diminutive 4GB version of the iPod available in five colors at $249.

2016 – Oculus began taking orders for the Oculus Rift VR headset. It cost $599 and came with a remote, Xbox One controller and external sensor on a stand for $599. It was also bundled with the game Lucky’s Tale and access to Eve: Valkyrie.

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1948 – Warner Brothers showed the very first color newsreel, featuring the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl football game.

1972 – President Richard M. Nixon announced that NASA would develop a space shuttle system, emphasizing its reliability, reusability and low cost.

1984 – Richard Stallman began working on the GNU Operating system, a free UNIX-like OS. GNU/Linux is seen as the most successful outgrowth of that project.

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