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In 1856 – Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, Lika, Croatia, which was then part of the Austo-Hungarian Empire. His father was a Serbian Orthodox Priest and his mother an inventor of household appliances.

In 1962 – The world’s first communication satellite, Telstar, was launched into orbit from cape Canaveral on a Delta rocket.

In 1990 – The Electronic Frontier Foundation was formally founded, immediately coming to the aid of Steve Jackson Games, who’s BBS had been seized by the Secret Service.

In 1971 – Marc Andreessen was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He would grow up to develop the Netscape browser, which powered the explosion of the Web in the late 1990s.

In 1979 – Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Jupiter, coming within 570,000 kilometers of the planet.

In 1982 – Disney released the movie Tron, which used the most extensive computer-generated graphics and special effects to that time.

In 1908 – Charles Urban demonstrated Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion-picture process, at a scientific meeting in Paris attended by Auguste and Louis Lumière.

In 1946 – The University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering began summer school course on computing that inspired the EDSAC, BINAC, and, many other similar computers.

In 2011 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on the final Space Shuttle mission.

In 1752 – Joseph Marie Jacquard was born in Lyon, France. The weaver and inventor created the first programmable power loom and the cards he used to program it would be adapted by Herman Hollerith and others for programming the first computers.

In 1936 – Henry F. Phillips received patents for a new kind of screw and the screwdriver used with it. Endless numbers of computer cases have been held together by it since.

In 1981 – The first solar-powered aircraft, Solar Challenger, flew 163 miles from Corneille-en-Verin Airport north of Paris across the English Channel to Manston Royal Air Force Base south of London, staying aloft 5 hours and 23 minutes.

In 1920 – A U.S. Navy F5L seaplane took off from Hampton Roads, Virginia, using a radio compass for the first time. The pilots located and flew to the Battleship Ohio about 94 miles offshore.

In 1947 – The AK-47 went into production in the Soviet Union — the name stands for Automatic rifle Kalashnikov model of 1947.

In 1996 – AOL settled lawsuits in California that accused the company of misleading subscribers about monthly service charges.

In 1833 – Nicéphore Niépce died. He created the first permanent photograph in 1826 — an image of the outside of his house.

In 1954 – The BBC broadcast its first daily television news bulletin. Richard Baker read the 20-minute bulletin billed as an “Illustrated summary of the news.”

In 2001 – Rob Flickenger and friends posted details of their now legendary 12db Pringles-can antenna to boost WiFi signal distance.

In 1951 – Bell Labs held a press conference announcing the invention of the junction transistor. Dr. William Shockley was featured at the conference.

In 1956 – The five-year-old MIT computer Whirlwind added the ability to input data directly with a keyboard. Programmers began to enjoy independence from punch cards.

In 1996 – Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched a free web email service called HoTMaiL, a play on HTML. Microsoft bought it a year later, but still calls it Hotmail.

1886, Karl Benz drove his Patent Motor Wagen on Mannheim’s Ringstraße, reaching a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph) powered by a 0.75-hp one-cylinder four-stroke gasoline engine. It was the first public drive of what is considered the first purpose-built automobile.

In 1998 – Danielle Bunten Berry died of lung cancer. She was a pioneering game designer most famous for creating the multiplayer game M.U.L.E. in 1983.

In 1999 – At the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, Billy Mitchell became the first ever to achieve a perfect score on Pac-Man.

1897 – 23-year-old Guglielmo Marconi received a patent in England for his wireless telegraphy which we now call radio. The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. Ltd. was formed a few weeks later.

In 1928 W3XK, owned by the Jenkins Television Corporation, went on the air becoming the first television broadcasting station in the US.

In 2001 – Bram Cohen first revealed BitTorrent on a Yahoo group called decentralization.

In 1979 – Sony introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2. It weighed 14 ounces, was blue and silver, and had a second earphone jack. It was originally marketed in the US as the Sound-About and in the UK as the Stowaway.

In 1991 – Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the world’s first GSM call over a privately operated network to Vice Mayor Kaarina Suonio in Tampere. The Prime Minister used Nokia gear on GSM’s original 900MHz band.

In 2008 – Bill Gates retired as an employee of Microsoft, to focus on the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He remained Chairman pf the Board.