In 1877 – Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone for the first time in public at the Salem Lyceum Hall. The demonstration ended with the sending of the first telephone news dispatch which was received by the Boston Globe.

In 1973 – Along Interstate 71 in Ohio, the first metric distance road signs to be erected in the US were put in place. They informed of the distance between Colubus and Cleveland and Columbus and Cincinnati.

In 2001 – The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touched down on 433 Eros after transmitting 69 close up pictures. It became the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

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In 1847 – Proud parents Samuel and Nancy welcomed their seventh and last child into the world. Thomas Edison would grow up to embody the word inventor.

In 1970 – With the launch of Osumi 5, Japan became the fourth country (after the US, USSR and France) to place a satellite into orbit.

In 1997 – The Space Shuttle Discovery launched on Mission STS-82 with the objective of making significant upgrades to the scientific capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope. The upgrades helped turn the Hubble from a punchline, to one of the greatest telescopes ever created.

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In 1958 – Scientists at Lincoln Laboratory at MIT bounced radar signals off the planet Venus, calling it the first measurement of interplanetary distances.

In 1996 – Chess’s international grandmaster Garry Kasparov began a six-game match against IBM’s Deep Blue. Deep Blue won the first game. It was the first time that a current world champion had ever been beaten by a computer opponent under regular tournament conditions. But Kasparov took the match 4-2.

In 2009 – One of Motorola’s communication satellites Iridium 33 collided with defunct Russian satellite Kosmos-2251 destroying both. It was an unprecedented space collision.

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In 1870 – US President Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill authorizing “the Secretary of War to take observations at military stations and to warn of storms on the Great Lakes and on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.” This agency operating under the Signal Service eventually became the National Weather Service.

1969 – The Queen of the Skies, the Boeing 747 jumbo jet took flight for the first time. It was the first wide-body plane ever produced.

1995 – Dr. Bernard Harris became the first African-American to walk in space. Joining him, Michael Foale became the first British-born American to walk in space.

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In 1971 – 10 years after the SEC suggested automation could solve the problem of fragmentation in over-the-counter stocks, the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations or NASDAQ index began trading, the world’s first electronic stock market.

In 1996 – John Perry Barlow posted “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” written in Davos, Switzerland. He foresaw a “civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.”

Also In 1996 – The U.S. Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It attempted to hold website operators responsible for anyone younger than 18 seeing porn on the Internet. That provision was later struck down by the Supreme Court, however Section 230 which provides safe harbor to service providers is still in force.

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