1941 – 80% of US AM radio frequencies were reassigned to new channels as part of the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement.

http://archive.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/03/0329radio-stations-shuffle-frequencies

1945 – German soldiers blew the launch tracks for the V-1 rocket site near Letelle, Netherlands, ending the rocket attacks.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/v-1-buzz-bomb-london-1945/

1974 – NASA’s Mariner 10 became the first space probe to cross the orbit of Mercury about 704 km from the surface.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1973-085A

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1905 – Cornelius Ehret of Rosemont, Pennsylvania received a patent for the “Art of Transmitting Intelligence.” It was the forerunner of the modern fax.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=gUdlAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false/

1935 – Robert Goddard launched the first rocket equipped with gyroscopic controls near Roswell, New Mexico. The rocket reached an altitude of 4,800 feet and flew 13,000 feet at a speed of 550 mph.

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/thismonth/this_month_march10.html

1979- A combination of equipment malfunction and human error caused a partial reactor meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania. While no injuries or deaths have been attributed to the accident, it changed US nuclear attitudes significantly.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html/

2016 – The first Oculus Rift VR headsets for consumers began being delivered. Co-founder Palmer Luckey hand-delivered the first one the weekend before to Ross Martin in Alaska who had been the first to pre-order.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/28/11317024/oculus-rift-first-delivered-palmer-luckey/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1850 – San José was incorporated as one of the first cities in California and was the site of the first state capital. It would lose the capital to Vallejo in 1852 but eventually become the center of Silicon Valley and the de facto capital of the technology world.

http://www.sanjoseca.gov/about.asp

1884 – The first successful long-distance telephone conversation took place. Bell and Watson experimented with a line of two twelve gauge hard-drawn copper wires connecting Boston and New York City. The line worked for about ninety minutes before finally falling.

http://books.google.com/books?id=HVAiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=march+27+1884+long-stance&source=bl&ots=VWUQpviOz6&sig=lDHwYOgLGYD53rnVBzaDTWAllwc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JuAfU9DbF8fEoATnxYDoCg&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=march%2027%201884%20long-stance&f=false/

1899 – Guglielmo Marconi made the first wireless transmission from France to England. A message was sent 32 miles from Wimereaux near Boulogne, France, to the South Foreland lighthouse near Dover, England. This became an important alternative to laying undersea cables for telegraphy.

http://books.google.com/books?id=wfSABTyeiV4C&pg=PA326&lpg=PA326&dq=1899+Marconi+transmission&source=bl&ots=oIkS3RAXyr&sig=64hQaAIs8x-hpg6KE9Esvm-KM6I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-i5YT7CiNcawiQK5k9mkCw&ved=0CHAQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=1899%20Marconi%20transmission&f=false/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1850 – San José was incorporated as one of the first cities in California and was the site of the first state capital. It would lose the capital to Vallejo in 1852 but eventually become the center of Silicon Valley and the de facto capital of the technology world.

http://www.sanjoseca.gov/about.asp

1884 – The first successful long-distance telephone conversation took place. Bell and Watson experimented with a line of two twelve gauge hard-drawn copper wires connecting Boston and New York City. The line worked for about ninety minutes before finally falling.

http://books.google.com/books?id=HVAiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=march+27+1884+long-stance&source=bl&ots=VWUQpviOz6&sig=lDHwYOgLGYD53rnVBzaDTWAllwc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JuAfU9DbF8fEoATnxYDoCg&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=march%2027%201884%20long-stance&f=false/

1899 – Guglielmo Marconi made the first wireless transmission from France to England. A message was sent 32 miles from Wimereaux near Boulogne, France, to the South Foreland lighthouse near Dover, England. This became an important alternative to laying undersea cables for telegraphy.

http://books.google.com/books?id=wfSABTyeiV4C&pg=PA326&lpg=PA326&dq=1899+Marconi+transmission&source=bl&ots=oIkS3RAXyr&sig=64hQaAIs8x-hpg6KE9Esvm-KM6I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-i5YT7CiNcawiQK5k9mkCw&ved=0CHAQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=1899%20Marconi%20transmission&f=false/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1973 – Larry Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan. He would go on to help invent and co-found Google.
http://www.biography.com/people/larry-page-12103347/

1976 – Queen Elizabeth II sent the first royal email, from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in Malvern as a part of a demonstration of networking technology.

http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=net/

1999 – The “Melissa” worm showed up in a file on the alt.sex usenet group and became the first successful mass-mailing worm. The worm’s creator, David L. Smith, apparently named the worm after a lap dancer in Florida.

http://www.ecs.csus.edu/csc/iac/csc250/lecture_notes/wk11/wk11_12.html

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1925 – John Logie Baird gave his first public demonstration of his ‘Silhouette Television’ at the Selfridges department store, Oxford Street, London. It was part of the store’s birthday celebration.

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/25/8285977/mechanical-television/

1979 – The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, was delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center in preparation for its first launch.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/basics/history/index.html

1995 – Ward Cunningham installed the First Wiki, WikiWikiWeb on a $300 computer someone gave him. He connected it to the Internet, using a 14.4-baud dial-up modem.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki/

2014 – Facebook announced it would purchase Oculus VR, makers of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, for $2 billion.

http://time.com/37842/facebook-oculus-rift//

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1925 – John Logie Baird gave his first public demonstration of his ‘Silhouette Television’ at the Selfridges department store, Oxford Street, London. It was part of the store’s birthday celebration.

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/25/8285977/mechanical-television/

1979 – The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, was delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center in preparation for its first launch.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/basics/history/index.html

1995 – Ward Cunningham installed the First Wiki, WikiWikiWeb on a $300 computer someone gave him. He connected it to the Internet, using a 14.4-baud dial-up modem.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki/

2014 – Facebook announced it would purchase Oculus VR, makers of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, for $2 billion.

http://time.com/37842/facebook-oculus-rift/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1802 – Richard Trevithick and Andrew Viviane of Camborne Parish in the County of Cornwall, enrolled a patent for a steam engine that could power a full-sized road locomotive. He had previously demonstrated it by driving up a hill in a car he called the “Puffing Devil”.

http://books.google.com/books?id=P6L2tXEwVDEC&pg=PA269&lpg=PA269&dq=Richard+Trevithick+patent+issued+1802&source=bl&ots=vqxN-pfHQ-&sig=6gkCDPjiQju1QURj-9bar4FMjPk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rw9VT-mNNqb-iQKf8_m0Bg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Richard%20Trevithick%20patent%20issued%201802&f=false/

1896 – A. S. Popov made the first radio transmission in human history. Popov is said to have transmitted the words “Heinrich Hertz” from one building to another on the campus of St. Petersburg University, though the assertion was not published until years later because of the need for military secrecy.

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Aleksandr_Popov

2001 – Apple released its new operating system Mac OS X, code named Cheetah, with a retail price of $130.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/03/21Mac-OS-X-Hits-Stores-This-Weekend.html

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1857 – The first department store elevator for passengers was installed at E.V. Haughwout & Co. in New York City. This was a significant development towards the building of skyscrapers.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/03/0323otis-elevator-first/

1882 – Amalie “Emmy” Noether was born in Erlangen, Germany. Albert Einstein called her a mathematical genius. She broke ground in theories of rings, fields and algebra and developed Noether’s theorem which explained the fundamental connection between symmetry and conservation laws.

http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/noether.htm/

1996 – The US space shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian space station Mir for the third time, and for the first time dropped off a US astronaut. Shannon Lucid began her record-breaking stay on the space station.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/07/shuttle-atlantis-mir-realization-program-goal/

2001 – The final commands to light the engines of the Progress supply ship were sent to the Russian Mir space station, which then broke up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/sci_tech/2001/mir/2001.stm

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1895 – The Lumiere brothers showed their first film to an audience. It was a romantic comedy about a crowd of mostly women leaving a building.

https://film110.pbworks.com/w/page/12610310/The%20Lumi%C3%A8re%20Brothers/

1960 – Arthur Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes were granted the first patent for a laser (US. No. 2,929,922) under the title “Masers and Maser Communications System.”
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F35%2F4597088%2F04597099.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4597099&authDecision=-203/

1981 – RCA’s first SelectaVision VideoDisc the SFT100W went on sale. The machine used Capacitance Electronic Discs to fit a couple hours of video programming on a 12-inch vinyl disc that sold for around $15.

http://www.cedmagic.com/history/sft100-1981.html/

1993 – The Intel Corporation shipped the first Pentium chips featuring 60 and 66 MHz CPUs.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/first-pentium-cpus-shipped-14-years-ago-yesterday/331

2016 – Sony began taking orders for its Playstation VR headset. The first pre-orders were for a $499 bundle including the headset as well as Move controllers and a camera.

http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/22/psvr-400-bundle-preorder/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.