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.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10802059

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

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_15/surface_opp/

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.

http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Mars_Express/SEM09F8LURE_0.html

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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.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/July/30/

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.

https://www.wired.com/2009/07/dayintech-0730/

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

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo15/index.html

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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.

https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4374183/Construction-begins-on-ENIAC–May-31–1943

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

http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.111060&catNum=8111060&filetype=About+this+Recording&language=English

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

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/Why_We_29.html

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

http://www.itpro.co.uk/operating-systems/23119/windows-10-release-date-and-specs-76

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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.”

http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/dcjs/html/nyidbur2.html

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

http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-07-1997/swol-07-eyeoncomp.html#0

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.

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/149581-interview-with-the-founder-of-system-administrator-appreciation-day-ted-kekatos

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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.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schoolradio/subjects/history/britainsince1930s/transport/hovercraft

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.

https://www.phase3.net/1990-july-25th-microsoft-revenue-breaks-1-billion/

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-military-leaks

2016 – The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Abu Dhabi a year and two days after taking off on a journey to circumnavigate the globe on solar power. André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard alternated flying the plane but still needed rest between legs. The plane itself was capable of lying nonstop.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/26/12283128/solar-impulse-2-completes-round-the-world-trip-sun

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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.

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/cool/002027-2003-e.html

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.

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/first-launch-cape-canaveral-florida-july-24-1950

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

http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/as11/a11facts.htm

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

http://gigaom.com/2013/07/24/google-announces-chromecast-a-dongle-to-stream-online-videos-to-your-tv/

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1933 – Wiley Post returned to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes after leaving, becoming the fastest person to circumnavigate the Earth by air and the first to do it solo.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wiley-post-flies-solo-around-the-world

1962 – The first Mariner space probe to Venus had to be destroyed shortly after lift-off because of “improper operation of the Atlas airborne beacon equipment.” The error was caused by a missing overbar in the program that must have disappeared during hand transcription.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0A16F63C59137B93C1AB178CD85F468685F9

1997 – Apple announced OS 8 for Macintosh computers. It added easier Internet integration and a 3D look to the OS.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/sep97/applesep97.html

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1975 – Xerox announced its withdrawal from computer mainframe manufacturing. The company did indicate it would continue activities in other computer-related businesses like computer disk drives, serial printers, and apparently giving away secrets to companies like Apple and Microsoft.

http://www.navy.mil/SUBMIT/display.asp?story_id=57218

2002 – WorldCom filed for the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in US history. It was the number two long-distance phone company, at a time when that still meant something. It would end up changing its name back to MCI, and its remains exists as Verizon’s business division.

http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/19/news/worldcom_bankruptcy/

2011 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility, Runway 15, ending the US space shuttle missions.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts135/launch/sts-135_mission-overview.html

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1960 – In a first for missiles, a Polaris A1 test vehicle was successfully launched from the USS George Washington submarine off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

http://www.public.navy.mil/subfor/underseawarfaremagazine/Issues/Archives/issue_55/StratDeter.html

1969 – In a first for humans, Neil Armstrong and Edwin A. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. successfully landed the Lunar Module “Eagle” on the surface of the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission and became the first humans to ever set foot on Earth’s satellite.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo11.html

1976 – In a first for robots, the Viking 1 lander successfully set down on on Mars in the Chryse Planitia and performed its mission.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/viking.html

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1961 – Trans World Airlines began offering regular in-flight movies on scheduled flights. The first film shown, only in the first class cabin, mind you, was “By Love Possessed,” starring Lana Turner and Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

https://travelersunited.org/today/81-years-since-the-first-inflight-movie-was-shown/

1983 – Michael W. Vannier and his co-workers J. Marsh and J. Warren published the first three-dimensional reconstruction of single computed tomography (CT) slices of the human head.

http://radiology.rsna.org/content/150/1/179.full.pdf

2004 – Apple announced the fourth-generation iPod with 12-hour battery life and the ability to shuffle songs. HP announced they would sell an HP branded version of this model of the iPod.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/07/19Apple-Introduces-the-New-iPod.html

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