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Today in Tech History
Oct. 5, 1895: Cycling’s ‘Race of Truth’
1895: The North Road Cycling Club in London holds what is widely regarded as the first bicycle time trial.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 4, 1958: ‘Comets’ Debut Trans-Atlantic Jet Age
1958: Two DeHavilland Comets depart London and New York, each bound for the other city. Flying for the British Overseas Airways Corporation, the two aircraft complete the first...
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 3, 1947: Birth of Palomar’s ‘Giant Eye’
1947: After 13 years of grinding and polishing, the Palomar Observatory mirror is completed at Caltech.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 2, 1996: FOIA Law Ushers in Digital Democracy
1996: President Bill Clinton signs amendments to the Freedom of Information Act that help usher in a new age of digital democracy. The new law requires the government to make...
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 1, 1950: Come Fly With Me, Says BBC
1950: The BBC airs the first live, in-flight TV broadcast, from a specially outfitted plane flying over London. It is not free of glitches, but once TV stations are introduced to...
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 28, 1998: Internet Explorer Leaves Netscape...
1998: A report from the International Data Corporation shows that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has passed Netscape Navigator in browser share for the first time.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 27, 1822: Deciphering the Rosetta Stone...
1822: Jean-François Champollion shows a draft translation of the mysterious Rosetta stone and demonstrates to the world how to read the voluminous hieroglyphics left behind...
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 24, 1979: First Online Service for Consumers...
1979: CompuServe begins offering a dial-up online information service to consumers.
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Today in Tech History
Aug. 14, 1901: Before the Wright Bros., There Was...
1901: Gustave Whitehead purportedly travels a mile-and-a-half in the air aboard his birdlike monoplane. If he did, that means he flew nearly two-and-a-half years before the Wright...
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Today in Tech History
Aug. 7, 1991: Ladies and Gentlemen, the World Wide Web
1991: The World Wide Web becomes publicly available on the internet for the first time.
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Today in Tech History
July 30, 2003: Last Vee-Dub Marks the End of an...
2003: The last “old style” Volkswagen Beetle rolls off a Mexican assembly line.
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Today in Tech History
July 25, 1965: Dylan’s Move to Electric Leaves...
1965: Bob Dylan trades acoustic for electric at the Newport Folk Festival. It does not go over well.
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Today in Tech History
July 24, 1959: Nixon, Khrushchev Have a Chat in the...
1959: Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev engage in the so-called Kitchen Debate, an entertaining parry-and-thrust between the two on ideology,...
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Today in Tech History
July 23, 1962: Telstar Provides First-Ever TV Link...
1962: The Telstar 1 communications satellite relays the first trans-Atlantic television signal in history.
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Today in Tech History
July 19, 1963: Cracking the 100-Kilometer-High...
1963: Test pilot Joe Walker takes an X-15 aircraft to an altitude of 67 miles (106 kilometers), becoming the only pilot to surpass the 100-kilometer barrier in a rocket plane...
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Today in Tech History
July 11, 1975: Unearthing Qin Shi Huang’s...
1975: Archeologists complete excavation of the necropolis of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, and discover 8,000 terra-cotta warriors and their horses guarding...
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Today in Tech History
July 10, 1962: Swedes Set to Belt Us All … Safely
1962: Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin receives a U.S. patent for the three-point, lap-and-shoulder, vehicle safety belt. It’s considered one of the most important and...
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Today in Tech History
July 4, 1054: Crab Nebula Makes a Spectacular Debut...
1054: A supernova noted by Chinese observers heralds the creation of the Crab Nebula. The exact date has been disputed, but most accounts accept the Chinese date of July 4.
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Today in Tech History
July 2, 1928: America’s First TV Station Goes on...
1928: W3XK, the first American TV station, begins broadcasting from suburban Washington, D.C.
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Today in Tech History
June 27, 1954: World’s First Nuclear Power Plant...
1954: The first nuclear power plant to be connected to an external grid goes operational in Obninsk, outside of Moscow.
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Today in Tech History
June 25, 1997: Minor Collision Doesn’t Dull Cargo...
1997: An unmanned “Progress” spacecraft collides with the Mir space station while attempting to dock.
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Today in Tech History
June 20, 1963: Cuban Missile Crisis Spurs...
1963: A “hot line” is established between the White House and the Kremlin. Now, the leaders of the two most powerful nations on Earth can communicate quickly in a crisis.
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Today in Tech History
June 19, 240 B.C.: The Earth Is Round, and It’s...
240 B.C.: Greek astronomer, geographer, mathematician and librarian Eratosthenes calculates the Earth’s circumference. His data was rough, but he wasn’t far off.
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Today in Tech History
June 18, 1983: Sally Ride, the First American Woman...
1983: Sally Ride becomes the first American woman to travel into space.
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Today in Tech History
June 13, 1955: Innumerable Carats of Ice Amid...
1955: Soviet geologists in eastern Siberia discover a massive deposit of diamond in what will become the Mir mine, the second largest excavated pit in the world.
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Today in Tech History
June 11, 1644: The Barometer Gets Its First...
1644: Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli demonstrates the principles of the mercury barometer, an instrument he invented the previous year.
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Today in Tech History
June 6, 1944: Artificial Harbor Paves the Way for...
1944: The invasion of Normandy was as much a triumph of technology as it was a feat of logistics or firepower. That an invasion was coming was well known by everyone, including...
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Today in Tech History
June 4, 1783: Balloons That Carry Passengers?...
1783: The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph and Jacques, stage a public demonstration of the first hot-air balloon capable of carrying passengers.
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Today in Tech History
May 31, 1977: Trans-Alaska Pipeline a Source of Oil...
1977: The 800-mile-long Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is completed.
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Today in Tech History
May 25, 1961: JFK Vows to Put American on Moon by...
1961: President Kennedy declares his intention of putting an American astronaut on the moon by the end of the decade.
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Today in Tech History
May 23, 1985: Selling Stealth Secrets to the Reds...
1985: Aerospace engineer Thomas Patrick Cavanagh is sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of trying to sell secrets of the stealth bomber to the Soviet Union.
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Today in Tech History
May 21, 1927: Lucky Lindy Flies His Way Into the...
1927: Charles Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget airfield outside of Paris, completing the first nonstop transatlantic flight and becoming an instant international celebrity.
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Today in Tech History
May 16, 1988: Nicotine Declared as Addictive as...
1988: C. Everett Koop, surgeon general of the United States, publishes a report declaring nicotine as addictive as either heroin or cocaine.
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Today in Tech History
May 9, 1960: Easy Birth Control Arrives, But...
1960: The birth control pill wins the approval of the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA gives its blessing to the 10-milligram dose of Enovid, which by then had been in...
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Today in Tech History
May 8, 1886: Looking for Pain Relief, and Finding...
1886: Trying to come up with a headache cure and general pain reliever, pharmacist John Pemberton invents the...
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Today in Tech History
May 7, 558: The Roof Caves In on the Hagia Sophia
558: The dome of the Hagia Sophia cathedral in Constantinople collapses following an earthquake.
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Today in Tech History
May 2, 1952: First Commercial Jet Flies From London...
1952: A de Havilland Comet, flying for British Overseas Airways Corporation, becomes the first jet aircraft to enter commercial service, carrying passengers from London to...
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Today in Tech History
May 1, 1851: All’s Fair in Love, War, Machinery...
1851: The Great Exhibition opens in London’s Hyde Park. It’s the birth of the world’s fair, a cosmopolitan...
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Today in Tech History
April 30, 1897: J.J. Thomson Announces the Electron...
1897: Physicist J.J. Thomson tells a startled scientific audience that he’s discovered something smaller than an atom, a particle with a minuscule mass and a negative charge.
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Today in Tech History
April 26, 1956: The Container Ship’s Maiden Voyage
1956: The converted tanker Ideal X leaves Newark, New Jersey, carrying 58 cargo-laden truck-trailers on its specially fitted deck. Containerization is born....
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Today in Tech History
April 25, 1859: Big Dig Starts for Suez Canal
1859: Egyptian workers under French engineers begin construction of the Suez Canal.
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Today in Tech History
April 24, 1184 B.C.: Trojan Horse Defeats...
1184 B.C.: During the Trojan War, the Greeks depart in ships, leaving behind a large wooden horse as a victory offering. It is hauled inside the walls of Troy, and Greek soldiers...
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Today in Tech History
April 23, 1940: Batteries Included, and They...
1940: Engineer Herman Anthony of Ray-O-Vac receives a patent for the leakproof battery. His invention is about to go to war.
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Today in Tech History
April 20, 1964: Picturephone Dials Up First...
1964: Bell’s Picturephone service dials up the world’s first videophone call, and the New York World Fair’s science consultant William L. Laurence gets some face...
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Today in Tech History
April 17, 1790: America Loses One of Its Most...
1790: Benjamin Franklin dies.
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Today in Tech History
April 13, 2000: Seek and Destroy – Metallica Sues...
2000: Heavy metal band Metallica sues Napster for enabling thievery and copyright infringement. The rockin’ lawsuit came on the heels of the
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Today in Tech History
April 12, 1976: Apple’s ‘Adult Supervision’...
1976: Ronald Wayne, who with Steves Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer,
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Today in Tech History
April 11, 1888: Concertgebouw, Home of Nearly...
1888: The Concertgebouw concert hall opens in Amsterdam.
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Today in Tech History
April 10, 1849: Safety Tech Gets to the Point, Baby
1849: A New York inventor receives a patent for the spring safety pin. He invented it because he needed some cash and was able to sell the rights within hours. Parents and babies...
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Today in Tech History
April 9, 1959: America Meets Its 7 Original Astronauts
1959: The first seven astronauts selected to participate in NASA’s Project Mercury are introduced by the space agency at a press conference in Washington.
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Today in Tech History
April 6, 1909: Peary Claims North Pole, But Is the...
1909: American explorer Robert Peary claims to have reached the geographic North Pole on this date. If true, it makes him the first person to attain “the Big Nail”...
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Today in Tech History
April 5, 1956: Disneyland’s Bathroom of the...
1956: The Crane Company Bathroom of Tomorrow opens in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, promising visitors the lavish lavatory of the future, which was actually “Available Today!” from — you...
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Today in Tech History
April 4, 1581: Francis Drake Knighted by His...
1581: Francis Drake, having completed the first circumnavigation of the world a few months earlier, is knighted by Queen Elizabeth aboard his ship, the Golden Hind.
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Today in Tech History
April 3, 1996: Unabomber Nabbed in His Montana Hideout
1996: Ted Kaczynski is arrested by the FBI at his cabin outside Lincoln, Montana. The Unabomber’s reign of terror is over.
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Today in Tech History
April 2, 1845: Photographing the Sun, Measuring...
1845: French physicists Armand H. L. Fizeau and J. Leon Foucault take the first photograph of the sun.
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Today in Tech History
March 29, 1993: Teleportation Beams From Sci-Fi to...
1993: Scientists show teleportation is possible, at least theoretically. The downsides: The original teleported object must be destroyed, and it can’t happen instantaneously.
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Today in Tech History
March 28, 1910: It Floats, It Flies, It’s a Seaplane
1910: Henri Fabre makes the first successful seaplane flight at Martigues, near Marseilles, France.
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Today in Tech History
March 27, 1933: Just One Word … Plastics
1933: Two British research chemists miss an important detail … and make polyethylene.
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Today in Tech History
March 23, 1983: Reagan Taunts the Russians With...
1983: President Reagan announces his “Star Wars” missile-defense program.
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Today in Tech History
March 22, 1981: RCA SelectaVision Spins (Briefly)...
1981: RCA’s long-awaited videodisc system, essentially a vinyl record that plays video, hits stores in the United States. The company spent 15 years and $200 million...
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Today in Tech History
March 21, 1963: The Rock
Once used to house the most dangerous criminals in the federal penal system, Alcatraz was deteriorating badly by 1963, a victim of the same harsh elements of sea, wind and fog that made it such a...
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Today in Tech History
March 20, 1800: Volta’s Battery Shows Potential
Volta had already created the electrophorus to create static electric charges and discovered methane before becoming professor of...
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Today in Tech History
March 19, 1474: Venice Enacts a Patently Original Idea
The crafts guilds, especially those of Venice’s lucrative glass-blowing trades, had their own restrictions, but the
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Today in Tech History
March 16, 1975: Mariner 10 Bids Mercury Farewell
Mariner 10, the last of the Mariner family, launched on Nov. 3, 1973 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. With Mariner 10′s narrow-angle cameras, ultraviolet spectrometers and infrared radiometers,...
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Today in Tech History
March 14, 1899: Zeppelin Gets Patent for a Really...
Zeppelin, who received a German patent nearly four years earlier, can more accurately be said to have perfected, rather than invented, the cylindrical-shaped craft. His final designs were based on...
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Today in Tech History
March 13, 1842: Henry Shrapnel Dies, But His Name...
Shrapnel, a British lieutenant, was serving in the Royal Artillery when he perfected his shell in the mid-1780s. A shrapnel shell, unlike a conventional high-explosive artillery round, is designed...
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Today in Tech History
March 12, 1923: Talkies Talk … On Their Own
Inventors as august as Thomas Edison had been trying to link two marvels of the age — the phonograph and the moving picture — for several decades. The fidelity was as good (or bad) as...
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Today in Tech History
March 9, 1862: Ironclads
The battle took place at Hampton Roads, Virginia, where a day earlier the CSS Virginia (known popularly as the Merrimack, her name when she had been a frigate in the...
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Today in Tech History
March 5, 1872: Westinghouse Gives Railroads a Brake
Before the air brake, railroad engineers would stop trains by cutting power, braking their locomotives and using the whistle to signal their brakemen.
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 29, 45 B.C.: Julius Caesar Takes the Leap
Caesar was reforming a calendar based on 364 days, with an occasional extra leap month. But the Roman religious officials in charge of minding the calendar had been asleep at the switch,...
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 28, 1561: ‘Father of Surgery’ Explains the...
Surgery, in Paré’s time, was considered a low profession and very few physicians deigned to practice it. Barbers, oddly enough, were often called upon to do the actual cutting and...
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 27, 1812: Rage, Rage Against the Industrial Age
The Frame Breaking Act made it a capital offense for anyone convicted of “machine breaking,” the willful destruction of mechanized looms and cloth-finishing machinery and other new...
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 24, 1938: Americans Can Now Stop Chewing on...
1938: The first nylon-bristled toothbrushes go on sale, a welcome alternative to chewing on sticks or scrubbing the teeth with ground-up oyster shells.
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 22, 1918: A Really Big Kid From Alton, Illinois
Wadlow, the oldest of five children born to Harold and Addie Wadlow, was a normal-sized newborn (8 pounds, 6 ounces) who began his rapid growth almost immediately. At 6 months old, he weighed 30...
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 21, 1947: ‘Take a Polaroid’ Enters the...
The camera, which became better known by the name of Land’s company, Polaroid, was the first so-called instant camera. Using...
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 17, 1864: We’re Sunk
The Hunley‘s attack served both to illustrate the submarine’s effectiveness as a stealth weapon and to...
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 16, 2005: Matter of Protocol
The need to get greenhouse emissions under control and face the specter of global warming is now almost universally accepted, but opponents of
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 15, 1995: Mitnick Arrested
1995: Perhaps the most celebrated cracking case in history begins with the arrest of Kevin Mitnick by the FBI on charges of wire fraud and breaking into the computer systems of...
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 13, 1633: Church vs. Galileo
Galileo’s long-running feud with the Roman Catholic Church over whether the Earth revolved around the sun (the Copernican view advocated by Galileo) or the sun around the Earth (the...
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 8, 1828: Sci-Fi’s Prophetical Father Is Born
Verne was the son of a highly analytical father and a highly imaginative mother, and this amalgamation shows in his writing. “
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 7, 2000: Mafiaboy’s Moment
Using a bot network to gain control of millions of computers, this not-so-callow youth staged a classic DoS attack lasting a week, flooding the websites with an overwhelming volume of traffic....
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 2, 1935: You Lie
Criminal justice systems in many societies have long believed that you can spot a liar based on several physiological reactions to questioning. An increase in blood pressure and heart rate, dry...
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Today in Tech History
Feb. 1, 2003: Second Shuttle Lost
Damage to the orbiter’s thermal protection system, which occurred at launch when foam insulation detached from the main propellant tank and struck the left wing, was immediately suspected...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 31, 1961: A Chimp Named Ham Spaces Out
But this was no leisure tour for Ham. There was work to be done — specifically, to see if chimps, and by close genetic association, humans, had slower reaction times in space. Ham, whose...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 30, 1790: The Lifeboat, an Idea Whose Time Has...
Christened the Original, she was a 30-foot-long, double-ended, 10-oar longboat built by Henry Greathead of South Shields. She carried 7 hundredweight (784 pounds or 356 kilograms) of...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 26, 1906: Fred Marriott Lets Off Some Steam
His vehicle was a modified “Stanley Steamer,” a popular consumer model that the Stanley Motor Carriage Company produced from 1897 to 1924. Such steam-powered automobiles, which were at one...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 25, 1945: Fluoridation — Better Teeth, or...
Fluoridation, implemented as a means of reducing tooth decay, involves adding one part per million of fluoride to the water supply. (The optimum level, according to the Centers for Disease...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 24, 1848: Gold!
While the gold rush made millionaires out of some, most prospectors did not strike it rich. Some returned home with little more than they had arrived with, and others stayed on to make a new life...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 23, 1911: Science Academy Tells Marie Curie,...
A healthy dose of sexism, racism and chauvinism, all alive and well in the rarified air of the fin de siècle French scientific fraternity, conspired to deny Curie the seat, which was...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 20, 2009: Mr. President, You’re Live
Over 1 billion people are estimated to have watched the inauguration on their TVs and computers, with nearly 2 million people crammed onto the National Mall. The web content delivery service...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 19, 2006: NASA’s New Horizons Blasts Off...
Lifting off from Cape Canaveral, the probe left Earth faster than any man-made object before it — 36,373 mph — on its way to the last planet in our system to be visited by a...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 17, 1966: H-Bombs Rain Down on a Spanish...
The bomber collided with the KC-135 tanker at 31,000 feet. Exploding fuel completely destroyed the tanker, killing all four crew members. The B-52 broke apart, spilling its payload — four...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 13, 2004: Duck!
Although the asteroid was small, measuring roughly 30 meters in width, the potential for local devastation and loss of life was real enough that astronomers seriously considered contacting the...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 11, 1911: In the Gathering Shadows, a Sliver...
Established to promote the sciences, even as Germany stood at the threshold of its stormiest political epoch, the society, which served as an umbrella organization for a variety of scientific...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 10, 1949: A Brand-New Format for the...
Flat disc records began replacing the cylinder for reproducing recorded sound as early as 1887. The original standard, what we know as the 78, had a 10-inch diameter disc with a rotational speed...
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Today in Tech History
Jan. 4, 1903: Edison Fries an Elephant to Prove His...
1903: Thomas Edison stages his highly publicized electrocution of an elephant in order to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current, which, if it posed any immediate danger...
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Today in Tech History
Dec. 23, 1970: World Trade Center Tops Out
The massive project was conceived in the 1950s to energize lower Manhattan. Architect Minoru Yamasaki worked in...
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Today in Tech History
Dec. 19, 1974: Build Your Own Computer at Home!
A small New Mexico company — with the big name of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems and the small name of MITS — manufactured the Altair as a do-it-yourself kit. At its...
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Today in Tech History
Dec. 12, 1896: Marconi Demos Radio — Dec. 12,...
Dec. 12: Inventor Guglielmo Marconi amazes a London assemblage in 1896 with a demonstration of wireless communication across a room. Five years later to the date, Marconi sends...
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Today in Tech History
Dec. 7, 1941: Attack at Pearl Harbor a Bold,...
Japan knew it could not defeat the Americans in a conventional war, lacking as it did sufficient manpower and raw materials (notably oil) for such a sustained effort. By destroying the U.S. fleet...
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Today in Tech History
Dec. 5, 1901: Disney, Heisenberg — Separated at...
1901: Animation pioneer Walt Disney and nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg are born. So, if you’ve ever thought the Uncertainty Principle was a bit goofy, you may be onto...
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Today in Tech History
Nov. 30, 2004: Who Is Ken Jennings?
2004: Ken Jennings, the longest-reigning Jeopardy! champion and one of the biggest money winners in game-show history, meets his Waterloo.
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Today in Tech History
Nov. 28, 1660: Hey, Guys, Let’s Found Britain’s...
1660: An informal group of “natural philosophers” establish what will become the Royal Society, Britain’s foremost scientific academy.
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Today in Tech History
Nov. 21, 1968: Love Canal Calamity Surfaces
1968: Karen Schroeder, a second-generation resident of the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York, gives birth to an infant girl with multiple birth defects. The...
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Today in Tech History
Nov. 14, 1666: Watching a Transfusion, and Taking Notes
1666: Samuel Pepys, writing in his famous diary, records the first description of a blood transfusion.
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Today in Tech History
Nov. 10, 1983: Gates Opens Windows a Bit Early
1983: Microsoft chief Bill Gates unveils the Windows operating system for PCs. Don’t hold your breath waiting until you can buy a copy … unless you can hold your...
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Today in Tech History
Nov. 7, 1905: Remote Control Wows Public
1905: Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres-Quevedo uses a radio remote controller to operate a boat more than a mile away in the Bilbao estuary. The crowd is amazed.
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Today in Tech History
Nov. 2, 1947: Spruce Goose … Or an Expensive Turkey?
1947: The Spruce Goose, with Hollywood producer-aviator-tycoon Howard Hughes at the controls, makes its first — and only — flight, skimming the waters of...
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Today in Tech History
Nov. 1, 1859: A Welcome Sight for Those in Peril...
1859: The second lighthouse at Cape Lookout, North Carolina, is lit for the first time.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 31, 1951: We’ll Cross That Street When We...
Postwar Britain had only 10 percent of its current road traffic, but fatalities were mounting. The typical pedestrian crossing was marked with...
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 28, 1989: Critter Crunch, Mother of All Robot...
1989: The 21st Annual MileHiCon, a sci-fi and fantasy gathering in Denver, hosts a truly epochal moment in the history of geekdom: the birth of robot battles.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 27, 1946: And Now a Few Words From Our Sponsor
The Federal Radio Commission (later renamed the Federal Communications Commission) started issuing television licenses in 1928. These noncommercial licenses did not allow selling airtime or any...
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 25, 1671: Cassini Spots a Two-Toned Saturnian Moon
1671: Giovanni Cassini discovers Iapetus, one of Saturn’s moons.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 24, 1960: Soviet Rocket Explodes, Killing Top...
1960: The attempted launch of a prototype R-16 ICBM ends in disaster when the Soviet rocket blows up on a launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, killing more than 100 engineers,...
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 18, 1945: Red Spy Steals U.S. Atom Bomb Secrets
1945: Klaus Fuchs passes U.S. atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union for the first time.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 17, 1973: Angry Arabs Turn Off Oil Spigot
1973: The Arab oil-producing states impose an embargo against nations supporting Israel in the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, also known as the October War, Ramadan War or Yom Kippur War.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 14, 1858: This History Might Ring a Bell
1858: Manual labor hoists the great hour bell into place high in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament in London. Some people are already calling the 14.33-ton bell...
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 13, 1972: Survival Instincts Put to the Test
1972: A chartered flight carrying a Uruguayan rugby team to its match in Chile crashes in the high Andes, resulting in one of the most grueling survival ordeals of modern times.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 12, 1928: Iron Lung, Savior to a Generation
1928: A young polio sufferer at Children’s Hospital in Boston becomes the first person to use the iron lung artificial respirator. Her recovery from respiratory failure is...
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 10, 1861: The Journey Begins for Nansen
1861: Fridtjof Nansen is born. He will become a towering figure in Arctic exploration, the natural sciences and international diplomacy.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 7, 1959: Luna 3’s Images From the Dark Side
1959: The space probe Luna 3 takes the first photographs of the far side of the moon.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 6, 1956: Sabin Polio Vaccine Ready to Test
Updated 6:30 p.m., in next-to-last paragraph.
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 5, 1986: Israel’s Secret Nuke Arsenal Exposed
1986: The existence of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program is revealed by a former nuclear-plant technician, whose story is published by The Sunday Times of...
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 4, 1957: Soviets Put Man-Made Moon in Orbit!
1957: The Space Age dawns a little sooner than expected with the successful launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union. It’s a pivotal moment, the kind of event that —...
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Today in Tech History
Oct. 3, 1947: Birth of Palomar’s ‘Giant Eye’
1947: After 13 years of grinding and polishing, the Palomar Observatory mirror is completed at Caltech.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 27, 1941: First Liberty Ship Launched, More...
1941: SS Patrick Henry, the first Liberty ship, is launched at the Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyard near Baltimore.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 26, 1960: JFK, Nixon Open the Era of TV Debates
1960: In the first televised U.S. presidential debate in history, John F. Kennedy comes off well. His opponent, Richard Nixon, does not. Television instantly emerges as the...
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 23, 1846: Neptune Right Where They Said It...
1846: German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, knowing exactly where to look, confirms the existence of an eighth planet in the solar system, Neptune.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 22, 1792: Day One of Revolutionary Calendar
1792: It’s 1 Vendémiaire of An I in the French Revolutionary Calendar, the first day of fall and the first day of the first month of the first year of the First Republic of...
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 21, 1937: The Hobbit Opens Up a Brave New World
1937: Before there is The Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is The Hobbit. J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel is first published on this date.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 20, 1952: Kitchen Blender Pegs DNA as Stuff...
1952: Geneticists Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase publish the findings of their so-called blender experiments, which conclude that DNA is where life’s hereditary data is found.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 19, 1982: Can’t You Take a Joke? :-)
1982: At precisely 11:44 a.m., Scott Fahlman posts the following electronic message to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University:
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 15, 1916: All Disquiet on the Western Front
1916: The tank makes its debut as a battlefield weapon, attacking the Germans as part of a British assault near Bois d’Elville, or Delville Wood, on the Western Front.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 14, 1959: Moon Feels First Cold Touch of Humans
1959: Luna 2 becomes the first artifact of humanity to strike the moon.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 13, 1899: New Yorker Becomes First U.S....
1899: Henry Bliss becomes the first pedestrian known to be killed by an automobile in North America.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 12, 1958: Kilby Chips In, Integrates Circuit
1958: New hire Jack Kilby shows his Texas Instruments colleagues a little something he’s built. A very little something: a working integrated circuit on a piece of...
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 9, 1999: 9/9/99 No Big Deal for Computers
1999: Some people fear massive computer problems, but does 9/9/99 create headaches? Nein, nein, nein.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 8, 1966: Liftoff for the Starship Enterprise
1966: Star Trek makes its network television debut.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 7, 1998: If the Check Says ‘Google Inc.,’...
1998: Handed a check for $100,000 made out to “Google Inc.,” Sergey Brin and Larry Page figure they better incorporate their fledgling search engine. So they do.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 6, 1891: Risky Heart Surgery Saves Stabbing...
1891: The victim of a stab wound becomes the first person to undergo heart surgery involving the suturing of the pericardium, or heart sac.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 2, 1859: Telegraphs Run on Electric Air in...
1859: A magnetic explosion on the sun causes bright auroras on Earth and upends the the fledgling telegraph network.
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Today in Tech History
Sept. 1, 1939: Wehrmacht Puts the Blitz in Krieg
1939: Germany invades Poland, starting the second European war in a generation and introducing the world to a new kind of warfare: blitzkrieg.
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Today in Tech History
Aug. 31, 1968: One Donor + Four Patients = Medical...
1968: Dr. Michael DeBakey supervises five teams of surgeons in the first simultaneous, multi-organ transplant.
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Today in Tech History
Aug. 30, 1885: Daimler Gives World First ‘True’...
Daimler, the automotive pioneer usually associated with building the world’s first successful internal combustion engine (and, subsequently, the first automobile), staked his
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