1897
The horror novel Dracula is published by Irish author Bram Stoker.
1910
The Earth passes through the tail of Halley’s Comet, and it becomes visible from Earth, against the face of the sun.
1923
Antoine Barnay files the first patent application for a rotary dial telephone in France.
1952
Professor W.F. Libby determines that Stonehenge was built in 1848 BC through charcoal analysis.
1953
Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier, when she flies a F-86 Sabrejet at an average speed of 652.337 miles per hour (1049.835 km/h) at Rogers Dry Lake in California.
1955
The first nuclear reactor to use controlled nuclear fission (an atomic pile) is patented following nearly thirteen years of operation. (US No. 2,708,656) The patent, which Enrico Fermi and Leó Szilárd had filed eleven years earlier, was delayed due to the highly classified nature of the technology. Unfortunately, the patent comes six months after Fermi’s death.
1958
An F-104 Starfighter sets a world air speed record of 1,404.19 mph (2,259.82 km/h).
1969
NASA launches the Apollo 10 spacecraft. The mission is a complete test run of the Apollo 11 mission without an actual lunar landing. The mission is the second manned mission to orbit the Moon and the first to travel to the Moon bearing the complete Apollo configuration.
1974
India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon in the course of project Smiling Buddha, becoming the sixth nation with a nuclear arsenal.
1979
The film Battlestar Galactica, starring Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, and Lorne Greene, is released to US theaters. The film will act as a pilot for the science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica. IMDB listing
1984
Release 15 of the Infocom interactive fiction game Zork III for personal computers.
1990
In France, a modified TGV train achieves a new world rail speed record of 515.3km/h, beating out the previous record of 406.9km/h set by the German InterCityExperimental train.
1992
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Next Phase” first airs. (No. 524) In it, a transporter accident traps Geordi and Ro Laren out of phase with the rest of matter on the Enterprise. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew think the two are dead. Memory Alpha entry
1993
US District Court Judge Fern Smith rules that Atari Games infringed upon a copyright and patent held by Nintendo by duplicating software code found in Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) cartridges. Atari Games announces that it will appeal the decision. Read more about the lawsuit at Digital Law Online.
1994
Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. establishes its Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) division, to market video games for its upcoming PlayStation video game system in the US.
1998
The United States Justice Department along with the Attorneys Generals of twenty states and the District of Columbia file an antitrust lawsuit, alleging that the Microsoft Corporation illegally stifled competition, harmed consumers, and undercut software innovation. The case focuses on Microsoft’s integration of the Internet Explorer web browser into its Windows 98 operating system. The States ask the Court to issue a preliminary injunction ordering Microsoft to offer a version of its operating system with either no browser bundled into it or with a selection of alternative browsers, such as Netscape Navigator. The case will be tried before US District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.
1999
Version 4.6 of Netscape Communicator is released. Visit the official Netscape website.
2000
Boo.com, a high-profile online designer clothing and cosmetics retailer based in the UK, is placed in receivership less than six months after its launch. What makes the failure notably, is that many analysts attribute the company’s poor sales to its poor web design.
2001
DreamWorks releases the animated comedy Shrek to 3,587 US theaters. It will go on to become the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Produced on a budget of US$60 million, the film will gross US$42,347,760 domestically in its opening weekend and US$487,655,011 in the course of its theatrical run. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hr 30 mins
Infogrames releases the survival horror game Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare for the PlayStation in Europe. The game is the fourth in the series that began with Alone in the Dark, one of the first games in the survival horror genre, in 1992. (ELSPA: 15+)
2002
The chess match between Grandmaster Mikhail Gurevich and the IBM supercomputer Junior 7 in Greece ends with Junior winning with three wins and one draw.
2004
The NASA Cassini-Huygens space probe enters into the orbit of Saturn, at which point the gravitational pull of the planet overtake the influence of the Sun. Visit the official Cassini–Huygens website.
Sony announces that it has shipped a total of one hundred million PlayStation video game consoles globally to date, including the PSone. Visit the official PlayStation website.
Version 2 (Tettnang) of the Fedora Core operating system is released. Fedora is an RPM-based Linux distribution, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat. Visit the official Fedora Project website.
2005
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is held over three days in Los Angeles, California. At the event, Microsoft unveils its Xbox 360 video game console. Visit the event’s official website.
2006
CipSoft GmbH releases version 7.7 of the Tibia massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) for Windows with significant updates to the game’s client. Visit the game’s official website.
Dell announces that it will roll out new servers based on the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Opteron chips by year’s end, thus ending the company’s long-standing exclusive relationship with Intel. Dell will also began offering AMD X2 processors in their desktop line by September 2006.
Elephants Dream, a computer-generated short film produced entirely on open source applications, including Blender, CinePaint, and Seashore, is released for download directly via BitTorrent on the film’s official website, along with all of the film’s production files. Visit this film’s official website. IMDB listing
2007
Disneyland and Walt Disney World launch ten wireless internet hot spots, scattered throughout the parks’ attractions. Visitors playing the game Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End on Nintendo DS handheld video game systems in the parks can download bonus content not available anywhere else. Visit the game’s official website.
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