In 1884 – The New York Times reported that “sending mails by electricity” was to be investigated by the Post Office Committee of the U.S. House, by providing for contracts with an existing telegraph company. It could lead to 10 cent telegrams!

In 1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization entered into force.

In 1986 – Design flaws made worse by human error during a safety test, led to the worst nuclear disaster yet, and a partial meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant.

In 1944 – Lt. Carter Harman of the 1st Air Commando Group rescued four men from the jungle in Burma Flying a Sikorsky YR-4 helicopter. It was the first combat rescue by helicopters in the U.S. Army Air Forces.

In 1953 – Watson and Crick’s presented their findings on the double helical structure of DNA in the publication Nature. They noted that the structure “suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” 50 Years later the Human Genome Project had concluded sequencing the genome and published a follow-on in Nature on their vision for genetic research.

In 1961 – Robert Noyce received the US patent for the silicon-based integrated circuit. He went on to found the Intel Corporation with Gordon E. Moore in 1968. Noyce fought a long patent rights battle with Jack Kilby who invented a germanium based integrated circuit.

In 1970 – The Chang Zheng-1 rocket launched the first Chinese satellite, the Dong Fang Hong-1.

In 1981 – Apple introduced the portable Apple IIc. The machine came with 128 kilobytes of RAM and a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive.

In 1990 – The Space Shuttle Discovery launched with the Hubble Space Telescope on board. The following day, Hubble was released into space.