In 1839 – Sir John Herschel presented his ‘Note on the Art of Photography, or the application of the Chemical Rays of Light to the purposes of Pictorial Representation’ to the Royal Society, likely the first use of the word ‘photography’.
In 1879 – Albert Einstein was born in Ulm in Württemberg, Germany. He would grow up to work in the Swiss patent office. And reinvent physics.
In 1994 – Linus Toirvalds posted to comp.os.linux.announce that Linux kernel release 1.0. had arrived.