In 1890 – The U.S. Census Bureau began using Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine for the first time. This gave Hollerith the basis to later found his Tabulating Machine Company, which was one of four companies that merged to form IBM.

In 1944 – The Colossus Mark 2 was put into service at Bletchley Park in Great Britain, just in time for the invasion at Normandy.

In 1999 – The Windows version of music-sharing program Napster was released.

In 1941 – Electric eye detectors were first used to measure high-jumping height attained. A track meet of the Schenectady, NY, Patrolmen’s Association used equipment designed by General Electric, comprising of a movable light source and four electric eyes.

In 1943 – Chief consultant John Mauchly and chief engineer John Presper Eckert began leading the military commission on the new computer ENIAC. They would take one year to design the computer and 18 months to build it.

In 2006 – Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay website and shut it down. The site relaunched from servers outside Sweden.

In 1959 – The first experimental hovercraft, Christopher Cockerell’s SRN-1 made its first trials at Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

In 1987 – North American Philips Company introduced the compact disc video (CD-V), a 12 cm (4-3/4 inch) CD-sized implementation of storage for full motion video and CD-audio.

In 1996 – AT&T announced they finally had a system that would allow computers to make and receive video phone calls over standard telephone lines. It was not called Skype. It did not catch on.