In 1919 – The observation of starlight bending as it passed through the sun’s gravitational field during a total solar eclipse allowed the first experimental test of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The test was later used to confirm the relativistic effect.

In 1935 – Workers poured the last concrete at the iconic Hoover Dam hydroelectric site. Four months later after the concrete was well and truly set, President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the dam.

In 1999 – Space Shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.

In 1936 – Alan Turing submitted his paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem“ for publication in which he postulated hypothetical Turing Machines would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical computation if it were representable as an algorithm.

In 1959 – A committee of government, military and business computer experts met at the Pentagon and laid the foundations for the COBOL computer language.

In 1971 – The U.S.S.R. launched Mars 3. It would arrive at Mars in December and its lander would become the first spacecraft to land successfully on Mars.

In 1931 – Auguste Piccard and Charles Knipfer took man’s first trip into the stratosphere when they rode in a pressurised cabin attached to a balloon to an altitude of 51,800 feet.

In 1959 – After almost a decade, MIT shut down its Whirlwind computer. It ran 35 hours a week at 90 percent utility using an electrostatic tube memory.

In 1986 – Dragon Quest was released in Japan. It combines the the full-screen map of Ultima with the battle and statistics-oriented screens of Wizardry and paved the way for RPG games.

In 1969 – Apollo 10 returned to Earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the manned moon landing.

In 1981 – Satya Pal Asija received the first U.S. patent for a computer software program. It was called Swift-answer. The patent took seven years to issue, and the validity of software patents has been debated ever since.

In 1995 – Bill Gates authored an internal memo entitled “The Internet Tidal Wave” calling the Internet the most important development since the IBM personal computer. Microsoft soon got to work on its own Web browser.