In 1948 – IBM dedicated its “SSEC” in New York City. The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator handled both data and instructions using electronic circuits made with 13,500 vacuum tubes and 21,000 relays.

In 1967 – The first US astronauts died in the line of duty. Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed on the launch pad when a flash fire engulfed their command module during testing for the first Apollo-Saturn mission.

In 2006 – Western Union discontinued its Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. The company still handles money transfers.

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In 1932 – The US Patent Office received a patent application for the cyclotron by Ernest Orlando Lawrence as a “Method and Apparatus for the Acceleration of Ions.”

In 1949 – The Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory saw first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming the largest aperture optical telescope. Hubble photographed Hubble’s Variable Nebula (NGC 2261).

In 1983 – Lotus began selling its spreadsheet application for Microsoft DOS, called 1-2-3. It would quickly become the most popular spreadsheet software but not make the transition to Windows well and fall behind Excel permanently.

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In 1881 – Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company in agreement with the Anglo-Indian Telephone Company Ltd. The company was licensed to sell telephones in Greece, Turkey, South Africa, India, Japan, China and several other Asian countries.

In 1915 – AT&T inaugurated transcontinental telephone service with a call made between New York City and San Francisco, Cal. The line had been completed the previous summer too early for the Panama Pacific Exposition, where it was introduced.

In 1921 – A play called Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) by Karel Capek debuted at the National Theater in Prague. It was the first appearance of the word robot. Spoiler alert, the robots end up killing all the humans but one.

In 1979 – Robert Williams was killed on the job in a Flat Rock, Michigan, casting plant, becoming the first recorded human death by robot.

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In 1935 – Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Finest Beer went on sale in Richmond, Virginia in cans, developed by the American Can Company. Cans protected beer better than translucent bottles.

In 1950 – Percy LeBaron Spencer received a patent for a “Method of Treating Foodstuffs” which we would recognize as the microwave oven. Spencer was working on an active radar set and accidentally melted a candy bar in his pocket.

In 1984 – The original Macintosh was introduced becoming the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface rather than a command line interface.

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In 1896 – Wilhelm Roentgen spoke to the Würzburg Physical Medical Society where he demonstrated X-rays by photographing the hand of session chair Dr. Albert von Kolliker, a famous anatomist.

In 1960 – With a crew of two, the bathyscaphe Trieste, descended 10,911 meters in the Pacific Ocean into Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench near Guam, the deepest known point in the oceans.

In 2003 – Earth lost communication with space probe Pioneer 10 which was 12 billion-kilometers from Earth.

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In 1939 -John Dunning’s Cyclotron split the uranium atom for the first time at Columbia University in New York City. And the Manhattan Project was on.

In 1968 – Apollo 5 lifted off carrying the first Lunar module into space.

In 1984 – Apple aired the famous “1984” commercial for the Apple Macintosh, directed by Ridley Scott.

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In 1957 – NBC taped and broadcast President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second inauguration address, further popularizing the taping of video.

In 1981 – The first DeLorean DMC-12 sports car rolled off the production line in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. This one made no use of gigawatts in any way.

In 2004 – The Mars Rover Spirit abruptly stopped transmitting. Apparently too many files had been written to the flash memory and it went into fault mode.

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In 1929 -The movie In Old Arizona was released. It was the first full-length talking motion picture in the US to be filmed outdoors.

In 1934 – Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd., the photographic and electronics company known today as Fujifilm, was founded in Tokyo, Japan.

In 1981 – The inauguration of US President Ronald Reagan is the world’s first broadcast to feature live teletext subtitles for the hearing impaired.

In 2009 – The inauguration of US President Barack Obama became the most widely-streamed Presidential inauguration to that time. According to Akamai’s Net Usage Index, web traffic peaked at 5.4 million requests per minute — and two terabits per second.

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In 1883 -The first electric lighting system using overhead wires went into service in Roselle, New Jersey.

In 1983 – Apple released the Lisa, the second commercial computer with a graphical user interface (after the Xerox Star). It only cost $9,995 too!

In 1986 – Brain became the first computer virus released into the wild. It was a boot sector virus transmitted by floppy disks. The Farooq Alvi Brothers of Lahore, Pakistan created the virus.

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In 1902 – Nikola Tesla filed a patent application for wireless energy transmission. The patent was granted 12 years later. We’re still waiting for the kinks to get worked out.

In 1903 – The first two-way transatlantic communication, and first wireless telegram was sent between North America and Europe. US President Teddy Roosevelt and King Edward VII. They wrote to each other how awesome the wireless telegraph was.

In 2012 – Many websites, led by Reddit, Wikipedia and others, conducted an Internet “blackout” to protest the US SOPA/PIPA bills.

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