1928
Austrian Friedrich Schmiedl launches his first experimental rocket. Though his first rocket design isn’t successful, on September 9, 1931, Schmiedl will operate the world’s first official postal rocket-mail service in Austria using a V-7 rocker, until laws prohibiting the civilian use of explosives are passed.
1938
A 450 metric ton meteorite strikes the Earth in an empty field near Chicora, Pennsylvania.
1955
The HMTS Monarch sets out from Clarenville, Newfoundland laying the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, TAT-1. On September 26th, the Monarch will reach the Firth of Lorne in Oban, Scotland.
1956
The first atomic reactor built for the purpose of private research goes into operations in Chicago, Illinois.
1965
The first commercial communications satellite, “Early Bird,” goes into commercial service, relaying a commercial telephone conversation over a satellite between America and Europe for the first time. Early Bird has a capacity for 240 voice circuits capacity or one black and white television channel. The satellite will later be renamed Intelsat I.
1982
The Spring COMDEX trade show is held, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. At the event, Microsoft announces a new corporate logo (dubbed the “Blibbet”), new packaging, and a comprehensive new set of retail dealer support materials. The logo design is the name, Microsoft, with a distinctive letter “o” filled with horizontal lines.
1984
Motorola introduces the 16MHz 68020 processor, a 32-bit version of the 68000, with CMOS and an on-board cache. The 68020 will be used in the Apple Macintosh II and Macintosh LC computers, as well as in Sun 3 workstations and Hewlett Packard 8711 Series Network Analyzers.
1990
In the case of Lotus Development Corp. v. Paperback Software Int’l, a Boston Federal District Court rules that Paperback Software International, founded by computer pioneer Adam Osborne, is ruled to have infringed on the copyright of Lotus 1-2-3 with its own competing spreadsheet application. The Court ruled that “[t]his particular expression of a menu structure is not essential to theelectronic spreadsheet idea, nor does it merge with the somewhat less abstract idea of a menu structure for an electronic spreadsheet….the overall structure, the order of commands in each menu line, the choice of letters, words, or ’symbolic tokens’ to represent each command, the presentation of these symbolic tokens on the screen, the type of menu system used, and the long prompts — could be expressed in a great many if not literally unlimited number of ways.”
1999
The Brazilian website of Top Access is hacked by “bl0w team”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
Chinese-American Kingman Quon, age, 22, is sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty in February to randomly e-mailing race-based death threats targeting Latinos to Hispanic-sounding e-mail addresses found on the internet.
Version 1.01 of the popular bulletin board system (BBS) HydraBBS Software is released.
Yahoo! launches the GeoCities web hosting service.
2000
The Brazilian website of DC2000 Comercial Ltda is hacked by anonymously. View an archived version of the defaced website.
The Brazilian website of Fadom is hacked by “MAD-MAN”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
Intel announces that “Pentium 4″ will be the official brand name of its new generation of desktop microprocessors. The new Pentium 4 logo will become part of the Intel Inside program, the largest co-op advertising program in the world. Intel predicts that the chip will be available in the second half of 2000. Code-named: “Willamette”
Yahoo! acquires the email list management service eGroups. The service will become a part of Yahoo! Groups.
2001
Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announces that it will decrease the price of its PlayStation 2 video game console to US$281.7 beginning Friday, June 29.
A US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously overturns a lower court’s order to split the Microsoft Corporation into two companies, as well as the court’s finding that Microsoft attempted to extend its monopoly to the Web browser market. The ruling does, however, uphold the lower court’s finding that the company illegally used its monopolistic power to market its Windows operating system. The decision also bars Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson from making any new rulings on the case, concluding that he had “seriously tainted” the proceedings with several potentially biased comments regarding the company. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly was picked at random to replace Jackson, and the trial court is directed to revisit the issue of Microsoft tying the browser to Windows.
Yahoo! to acquires Launch Media, Inc.
2004
Version 2 (v5.0) (beta 2) of the Java programming language is released. Visit the official Java website.
2005
AMD files an antitrust lawsuit against rival chipmaker Intel.
Sony demonstrates the first commercial 4K digital cinema projector, the SRX-R100. The first unit will be installed in the Nova Kino at Trondheim, Norway.
2006
Google launches its Google Checkout payment processing service in the United States. The service will be free for merchants through January 2008. Visit the official Google Checkout website.
Former United States Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) describes the internet as a “series of tubes” in an analogy while criticizing a proposed amendment to a committee bill on network neutrality that would have prohibited internet service providers from giving some companies higher priority access to their networks or their customers. The next day, Ryan Singel will cover Stevens’ speech on Wired magazine’s 27B Stroke 6 blog. The article will be posted across many of the internet’s most popular link aggregators, including BoingBoing, DailyKos, Fark, and Slashdot. Mockery of the phrase and Stevens’ misunderstandings of Internet technology will become a widespread internet meme.
2007
The American Medical Association announced that it would decline to designate excessive video-game playing as a formal psychiatric addiction. Instead, AMA delegates adopted a declaration that, while overuse of video games and online games can be a problem for children and adults, calling it a formal addiction would be premature. “While more study is needed on the addictive potential of video games, the AMA remains concerned about the behavioral, health and societal effects of video game and Internet overuse,” said AMA president Dr. Ronald Davis.
Scientists successfully transfer genetic material from one species of bacteria to another, altering the second strain so that it became genetically identical to the first. The achievement is heralded by the media as potentially being the first step towards one day creating a synthetic lifeform.
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