1873 – Andrew Smith Hallidie took his San Francisco cable car for its first test run. The tracks ran from Clay and Kearny Streets for 2800 feet to a hill 307 feet above.

1967 – The US Navy recalled Captain Grace Murray Hopper to active duty to help develop the programming language COBOL.

1981 – MTV began broadcasting in the United States, playing The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and changing how we view music forever.

2013 – Motorola announced the Moto X Android phone with multiple customization options. It was the first phone designed entirely after Google bought Motorola.

2014 – Apple officially acquired Beats Electronics making Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre Apple employees.

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1910 – Dr. Hawley Crippen was arrested when the boat he was on docked in Quebec. He was the first person to be caught as a result of a wireless telegraph.

1971 – Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin became the first humans to take a drive on the Moon in the lunar rover.

1976 – NASA issued a press release describing one photo taken by Viking 1 on Mars as resembling “a human head.” Conspiracy theories about the face on Mars still run today, though close-up pictures from the Mars Express mission have debunked most of them.

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1889 – Vladimir Zworykin was born in Russia. He would go on to earn the title “Father of Television” (one of several called that) for his work on the iconoscope and the kinescope. He worked on television for RCA.

1898 – The Winton Motor Carriage Company placed a magazine advertisement in Scientific American calling on readers to “dispense with a horse.” It’s the earliest known automobile ad.

1971 – The Apollo 15 mission landed the first lunar rover onto the moon.

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1947 – ENIAC was switched on after being transferred to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. It operated continuously until October 2 1955.

1951 – A recording was made of Beethoven’s 9th by EMI that eventually became used to justify the diameter of the CD.

1958 – President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

2015 – Microsoft launched Windows 10 as a free upgrade for users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

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1858 – The first use of fingerprints as identification took place in India. William James Herschel, magistrate of Nuddea, India requested local businessman Rajyadhar Konai make a handprint on the back of a contract. Herschel wanted to “frighten [Konai] out of all thought of repudiating his signature.”

1997 – Dell announced its entry into the workstation market with the Dell Workstation 400.

2000 – Ted Kekatos celebrated the First System Administrator Appreciation Day. He had been inspired by an HP ad showing people bringing gifts to their System Administrator. The day is celebrated annually on the last Friday of July.

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1949 – The first jet-powered airliner, the de Havilland Comet, made its first flight. Previously jet engines had only been used to power small fighter aircraft.

1981 – Microsoft bought the rights for QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products for $25,000.

1993 – Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1, completing its attempt to build an advanced 32-bit operating system from scratch.

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1989 – Cornell student Robert Tappan Morris became the first person indicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after releasing a worm on the Internet. Morris claimed his worm was just measuring the size of the Internet.

1996 – Microsoft released Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 3.0, touting customization options like parental controls and the ability to handle shared applications and Web phone calls.

2004 – Motorola announced that its next generation of cell phones would be iTunes-compatible. This first Apple phone, the Rokr, was not to meet with much success.

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1959 – Christopher Cockerell’s Hovercraft crossed the English Channel for the first time, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Frenchman Louis Bleriot’s historic first cross-Channel heavier-than-air flight.

1990 – Microsoft became the first software company to exceed $1 billion in sales in a single year, reporting revenues of $1.18 billion for fiscal year 1990.

2010 – Wikileaks published classified documents about the War in Afghanistan, one of the largest leaks in US. military history.

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1874 – Woodward and Evans Light filed a patent for “Artificial light by means of electricity” with the Canadian Department of Agriculture. Woodward later sold the patent to Thomas Edison, who patented a different and more successful version of the incandescent lamp in the US.

1950 – The Bumper 8, made of a German V-2 missile lower stage and WAC-Corporal upper stage launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It was the first launch from what would become the Kennedy Space Center.

1969 – Apollo 11 arrived safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first manned mission to land on the Moon.

2013 2013 – Google announced the Chromecast, a $35 HDMI stick, powered by USB, that streamed video from the Internet and other devices to a TV.

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1903 – Ford sold its first car to Dr. Ernst Pfenning of Chicago. The two-cylinder Model A was assembled at Mack Avenue Plant in Detroit.

1985 – Commodore introduced the Amiga personal computer at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center. Amiga cost $1,295 and shipped with a base configuration of 256K of RAM.

1996 – The first commercial HDTV signal was broadcast in North Carolina by WRAL channel 32 operating at 100 kilowatts with an antenna 1,750 feet above the ground. 200 members of the press watched the broadcast at WRAL.

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.