In 1962 – NASA “Relay 1” launched, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.

In 1977 – Young Bill Gates was arrested for traffic violation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, leading to one of the most famous mugshots ever.

In 1977 – Robert Metcalfe et. al were awarded a patent for “Multipoint data communication system with collision detection” AKA ethernet.

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In 1896 – Guglielmo Marconi amazed a group at Toynbee Hall in East London with a demonstration of wireless communication across a room. Every time Marconi hit a key a bell would ring from a box across the room being carried by William Henry Preece.

In 1973 – Founder of LinkExchange, CEO of Zappos, and promoter of customer-centric business, Tony Hsieh was born.

In 1980 – Apple’s stock was initially offered for sale. Regulators in Massachusetts prohibited individual investors in the state from buying the stock, as it was deemed too risky.

In 1991 – Paul Kunz sets up the first website in North America. It searched particle physics literature at Stanford.

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In 1910 – Georges Claude, the first person to apply an electrical discharge to a sealed tube of neon gas, displayed the first neon lamp to the public at the Paris Motor Show.

In 1967 – The Concorde, a joint British-French venture and the world’s first supersonic airliner, was unveiled in Toulouse, France. Bigger news than the speed of the jet was the announcement that it was finally agreed that the British and French planes would both be spelled with an “e” at the end.

In 1972 – Apollo 17 became the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon.

In 1998 – The Mars Climate Orbiter was successfully launched on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida. However, the probe disappeared on September 23rd before reaching Mars, apparently destroyed because scientists had failed to convert English measures to metric values.

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In 1815 – Ada Byron was born in London England to the poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke. She would later marry William King and take on his title as Lady Lovelace. But she is best remembered as Charles Babbage’s friend, and writer of the first program for his Difference Engine. She is considered by many to be the first computer programmer.

In 1942 – Germany conducted the first powered test flight of a V-1 Rocket, launched from beneath an Fw-200.

In 1944 – Paul Otlet died. His theories presciently described a global interlinked “web” of documents, presaging the World Wide Web almost 50 years before its invention.

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