1922 – Scientists at the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory near Washington, DC, report on experiments with short wave radio that show if a ship passed through a radio wave broadcast between two stations, that ship could be detected. It was a development on the road to radar.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/classic/world-war-i-flight-timeline7.htm
1983 – Richard Stallman announced the GNU project which aimed at the time to develop a free Unix-like operating system.
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html
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.
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-09-27/local/me-47980_1_computer-hacker
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.