In 1981 – Commander John Young and Pilot Robert Crippen crewed the first launch of a Space Shuttle on mission STS-1. During the mission the space shuttle Columbia used an HP-41 calculator to calculate the exact angle at which they needed to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
In 1994 – Immigration Lawyers Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel intentionally posted to more than 6,000 Usenet discussion groups about their green card services. It is considered the first occurrence of commercial spam.
Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.