1921
Lee De Forest files a patent application for his sound-on-film system.
1926
Underwater color photographs are published for the first time in National Geographic magazine. The photos were taken off the Florida Keys.
1945
The US government successfully detonates a plutonium-based nuclear weapon in the first atomic test, code-named “Trinity,” at Los Alamos, New Mexico, less than a month before similar devices will be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
1951
Little, Brown and Company publish the novel Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. J. D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, panned the previous day in the New York Times, is published.
1953
The F-86D Sabre sets a new air speed record of 715.7mph (1152KPH), beating out its own previous record. Various models of the Sabre held the world speed records five consecutive years, beginning in September 1948, when an F-86A set the Sabre’s first official world speed record of 570mph, and would continue to hold the record for another year. The model “D,” however, was the first in the line to improve on its own record.
1969
Apollo 11 is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida on a mission to become the first manned space mission to land on the Moon. The Apollo 11 is crewed by Mission Commander Neil A. Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins. The mission is the fulfillment of President John F. Kennedy’s call to reach the Moon by the end of the sixties, which he gave during a speech before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961.
1990
The first Pakistani satellite, Badr A, is launched.
1993
The CircleMUD (Multi-User Dungeon) game codebase written by Jeremy Elson is first released. A derivative of DikuMUD, the game is written entirely in the C programming language. Read more about the history of CircleMUD. Visit the game’s official website.
1994
The planet Jupiter is hit by the first of 21 asteroids that are the remaining fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet which had broken up two years earlier. When the first fragment strikes Jupiter’s surface, it creates a 1,200 mile wide, 600 miles high fireball visible to astronomers from Earth. The fragments were created when the comet passed within Jupiter’s Roche limit and the planet’s tidal forces pulled it apart. The impacts will continue through July 22nd.
1995
The ecommerce site Amazon.com opens for business. The website is run from a converted garage in Bellevue, Washington on three SPARC workstations rigged to ring a bell each time Amazon recorded a sale. The first books sold by the company will be Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.
1998
Scientists at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston and the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland announce that that have successfully mapped the 1.1 million base pairs that constitute the genome of the Syphilis bacterium. The researchers behind the project hope the breakthrough will lead to a new vaccine. The details of will be reported in the next week’s issue of the journal Science.
1999
Artisan Entertainment releases the independently produced horror film The Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and starring Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams, premieres in the twenty-seven US theaters. Produced on a budget of only US$60,000, the film will gross US$1,512,054 in its opening weekend. The film premieres after months of publicity, including a ground-breaking grassroots Internet campaign, which insinuates that the film is actually a documentary. It will be widely released nationwide to 1,101 theaters on July 30th. The film, which is shot documentary-style, tells the story of three young student filmmakers who get lost in the woods while filming a documentary about a legend. After being terrorized by an unseen person or force for several days, they begin to mysteriously disappear, one by one. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Length: 1 hr 26 mins
2003
Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA) is renamed to Entertainment Software Association (ESA).
2004
20th Century Fox releases the action film I, Robot, directed by Alex Proyas and starring Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, and Bruce Greenwood, to US theaters. Produced on a budget of US$120 million, it will gross US$144.8 million over the course of its US theatrical run. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 55 mins
Michael Dell, founder of Dell, Inc., steps aside as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) but retains his position as Chairman of the Board. Kevin B. Rollins, who had held a number of executive posts at Dell, becomes the company’s new CEO.
OpenDarwin.org releases version 7.2.1 of OpenDarwin, an open source, multi-platform Unix-like operating system based on Apple’s commercial operating system, Darwin. This version will be the last stable release of the system. Visit the now defunct OpenDarwin website.
The science fiction television series Stargate Atlantis premieres on the Sci-Fi Channel with the episode “Rising.” (No. 101) The series stars Joe Flanigan, Torri Higginson, Rainbow Sun Francks, David Hewlett, and Rachel Luttrell. In the episode, Weir leads an expedition through the Antarctic StarGate to the lost city of Atlantis in the Pegasus galaxy. The series will run for one hundred episodes across five seasons. GateWorld entry
The wuxia action film House of Flying Daggers, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Ziyi, and Andy Lau, premieres in China. In the film, a secret organization called “The House of the Flying Daggers” rises to opposes the Tang dynasty in China. An officer called Leo sends officer Jin to investigate a young dancer named Mei, claiming that she has ties to the “Flying Daggers.” Leo arrests Mei, only to have Jin breaking her free in a plot to gain her trust and lead the police to the new leader of the secret organization. IMDB listing
2005
The children’s fantasy novel Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowlings is released by Bloomsbury in the UK and by Scholastic in the US. Released at the stroke of midnight at bookstores around the world, the book sells more than 6.9 million copies on the first day of its release in the United States alone. It is the sixth of seven novels in J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series. Length: 607 (UK) / 652 (US)
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