In 1957 -The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, becoming the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, and motivating the US to get into gear and heat up the space race.

In 1985 – Richard Stallman started a non-profit corporation called the Free Software Foundation, dedicated to promoting the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software. The FSF among other things, enforces the copyleft requirements of the GNU General Public License often referred to as the GPL.

In 2004 – SpaceShipOne returned from its third journey, a reusable spacecraft that could carry passengers beyond the earth’s atmosphere. It won the $10 million Ansari X prize for private spaceflight.

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In 1942 – Germany conducted the first successful test of the V-2/A4 rocket, launched from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde. It traveled 118 miles.

In 1950 – John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley received US patents for circuits what would eventually be called the transistor.

In 1972 – The first USA/Japan Computer Conference was held in Tokyo.
http://books.google.com/books/about/First_USA_Japan_Computer_Conference_proc.html?id=eY4mAAAAMAAJ

In 1985 – STS-51J lifted off Sending the Space Shuttle Atlantis on its maiden flight. It was the fourth shuttle created and eventually became the last shuttle to fly in July 2011.

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In 1925 – John Logie Baird performed the first test of a working television system. It delivered a grayscale 30-line vertically scanned image, at five frames per second. After a ventriloquist’s dummy appeared on screen, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton became the first person televised in full tonal range.

In 1955 – ENIAC was shut down for the last time. After 11 years running at 5,000 operations a second and taking up 1,000 square feet of floor space, it had earned its retirement.

In 1996 – US President Bill Clinton signed amendments to the Freedom of Information Act requiring the US government to make electronic documents available online.

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In 1958 – The National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics was officially absorbed by the brand new National Aeronautics and Space Agency. Another expanded government bureaucracy that was only good for putting people on the moon.

In 1971 – The first clinical human CT scan was performed on a middle aged lady with a suspected frontal lobe tumour, at Atkinson Morley’s Hospital in South London.

In 1982 – Sony started selling the first CD players to the public, the CDP-101 for 168,000 yen (that’s about $730 US). At the time you could get Billy Joel’s album 52nd street on CD– and soon many more.

In 2003 – 4Chan launched its main page, intended as a sister-site to the Japanese 2Chan for discussions of manga and anime. They provided the fertile ground for the growth of lolcats, Rickrolling, Anonymous, Pedobear and more.

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In 1882 – Thomas Edison’s first commercial hydroelectric power plant began operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin.

In 1954 – The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, was commissioned at Groton, CT.

In 1980 – Xerox published the Version 1.0 specifications for Ethernet in conjunction with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation.

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In 1920 – The Joseph Horne department store in Pittsburgh ran an advertisement in the Pittsburgh Sun, describing wireless Victrola music being picked up by radio. Amateur Wireless Sets were on sale for $10.

In 1954 – CERN officially came into being. In addition to countless advancements in science, it would go on to foster the invention of the World Wide Web.

In 1994 – Programmers first demonstrated the HotJava prototype browser to executives at Sun Microsystems Inc. It was an attempt to port the Java language to the Web. It worked.

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In 1998 – Microsoft’s Internet Explorer passed Netscape Navigator as the Web browser with the greatest market share, according to a report from the International Data Corporation.

In 2008 – SpaceX launched the Falcon 1, the first ever private spacecraft to enter orbit.

In 2011 – Amazon shook up the tablet market, announcing the the Amazon Kindle Fire 7-inch tablet for $199.

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In 1922 – Scientists at the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory near Washington, DC, demonstrated radar by showing that if a ship passed through a radio wave broadcast between two stations, that ship could be detected.

In 1983 – Richard Stallman announced the GNU project which aimed at the time to develop a free Unix-like operating system.

In 1996 – Kevin Mitnick was indicted on charges he broke into the systems of major software companies, then transferred stolen material to computers at USC via the Internet. Seems prosaic today, but was unheard of at the time.

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In 1960 – For the first time, a US presidential debate was televised. Vice President Nixon and Senator Kennedy debated in Chicago and were perceived differently by those who listened on radio versus those who watched on television.

In 1983 – 17-year-old Neal Patrick, of the hacking group 414s testified before the US House of Representatives about computer break-ins and how they might be stopped.

In 1991 – Eight people entered Biosphere 2, an airtight replica of the Earth’s biosphere in Oracle, Arizona. They left exactly two years later in 1993. Results of the experiment are still controversial.

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In 1956 – The first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, TAT-1 was inaugurated, replacing slow telegraph and unreliable radio systems.

In 2001 – Apple announced the release of Mac OS X 10.1 Puma, the first major upgrade to OS X.

In 2012 – Blizzard launched its 4th World of Warcraft expansion, called Mists of Pandaria.

In 2013 – Amazon announced the Kindle HDX tablets with a service called “Mayday” that promised to let users speak with a real person by video over the Internet within 15 seconds of tapping a button.

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