In 1947 – The aircraft-carrier Midway became the first U.S. vessel from which a long-range rocket was launched. The rocket had a mishap though, and exploded at 5,000 feet.

In 1954 – US President Eisenhower waved a ceremonial “neutron wand” over a neutron counter in Denver, Colorado, to signal a bulldozer in Shippingport, Pennsylvania to begin construction on the first commercial nuclear power plant. It was part of the “Atoms for Peace” program.

In 1997 – The USS Grace Murray Hopper, guided missile destroyer, was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in San Francisco, named after the computer pioneer.

In 1977 – NASA launched Voyager 1 after a brief delay. Although it was launched 16 days after Voyager 2, it’s faster flight path would take it past Jupiter first.

In 1980 – The last IBM 7030, AKA STRETCH, mainframe computer was decommissioned at Brigham Young University.

In 1984 – STS-41-D ends with the landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery after its maiden voyage.

In 1888 – George Eastman was issued U.S. patent No. 388,850 for his roll-film box camera.

In 1956 – IBM introduced the IBM 350 Disk storage unit for the RAMAC 305, the first commercial computer to use magnetic disk storage.

In 1998 – Larry Page and Sergey Brin filed for incorporation of Google, allowing them to cash a $100,000 check Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun, had written to Google Inc.

In 1930 – An experimental electric engine was put in service by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad between Hoboken and Montclair, NJ. Thomas Edison served as engineer at the throttle.

In 1976 – Viking 2 landed on Mars and began taking high resolution pictures, measuring the atmosphere and surface, and look for evidence of life.

In 1993 – Infogear filed an application for a U.S. trademark on “I PHONE” for its “communications terminals. The company would later register “IPhone” as well. Cisco acquired Infogear in 2000 and later worked out a deal with Apple to share the name.

In 1859 – A unique combination of solar events including a magnetic explosion severely affected the young telegraph network in North America and Europe. Wires shorted out, fires started and some machines reportedly worked even when disconnected from batteries.

1997 – IBM announced that its RS/6000 SP model parallel supercomputer, was now 58 percent faster than Deep Blue, the computer that beat Kasparov at chess.

In 2001 – At ECTS in London, Blizzard announced an online RPG version of its popular Warcraft franchise, called “World of Warcraft”.