1898 – Building on Henri Becquerel’s discovery of spontaneous radioactivity two years earlier the husband-and-wife team of Pierre and Marie Curie discovered Radium. Marie particularly figured out how to separate it from its radioactive residues.
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/12/1221curies-discover-radium/
1937 – Walt Disney’s first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs opened in Los Angeles. It ran 83 minutes. It was also the first animated film produced in color.
1968 – Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew performed the first ever manned Trans Lunar Injection and became the first humans to leave Earth’s gravity. The Apollo Guidance Computer was the first computer to use integrated circuit logic.
http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/as08/a08sum.htm
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.