1845 – Scientific American began publication with the issue for this day. It would become the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=sciam

1991 – The crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis sent an electronic mail message using AppleLink. The message read: “Hello Earth! Greetings from the STS-43 Crew. This is the first Applelink from space. Having a GREAT time, wish you were here!”

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/6115/First%20E-mail%20From%20Space%20Is%20Sent%20from%20a%20Mac%20Portable

2009 – Apple released Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard featuring many minor improvements and integration with Microsoft Exchange.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/08/24Apple-to-Ship-Mac-OS-X-Snow-Leopard-on-August-28.html

2017 – Amazon acquired the Whole Foods grocery store chain and immediately set about cutting prices.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-28/amazon-cuts-prices-at-whole-foods-as-much-as-50-on-first-day

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

1962 – NASA launched the Mariner 2 unmanned space mission to Venus.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1962-041A

1989 – The first direct-to-home TV satellite launched from Cape Canaveral. Marco Polo I delivered the British Satellite Broadcasting service to homes in the UK.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1989-067A

2003 – Fairbanks, Alaska got the world’s biggest UPS backup. The city hooked up the world’s largest storage battery, built to provide an uninterrupted power supply of 40 megawatts.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3312118/Worlds-biggest-battery-switched-on-in-Alaska.html

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

1938 – A New York radio station first used the Philips-Miller system of tape recording on a radio broadcast.

http://books.google.com/books?id=G2wGxDT0f2MC&pg=PT526&lpg=PT526&dq=tape+1938+august+26+WQXR&source=bl&ots=Kkuw9uJ6U7&sig=74PYEzrL1Xph_B5PL7ffmuyXcp0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Tr8JUNXJNO3k2wWkmsDABw&ved=0CGAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=tape%201938%20august%2026%20WQXR&f=false

1984 – Miss Manners confronted her first computer issue. The columnist responded to a reader’s concern about typing personal correspondence on a personal computer.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/August/26/

1996 – Netscape Communications Corp. announced it had partnered with several other big companies to create a software company called Navio Corp. Navio was meant to create an operating system to compete with Windows.

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Netscape-Startup-Navio-Focuses-on-Non-PC-Users-2969143.php

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

1609 – Galileo Galilei craftily beat a Dutch telescope maker to an appointment with the Doge of Venice. Galileo impressed the Doge and received a lifetime appointment and a doubled salary. Later that autumn, Galileo pointed his telescope to the Moon, and trouble began.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post/400-years-ago-galileos-telescope-wa-2009-08-26/?id=400-years-ago-galileos-telescope-wa-2009-08-26

1981 – Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Saturn. Eight years later on the same day in 1989, Voyager 2 would make its closest approach to Neptune.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/fastfacts.html

1991 – 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Torvalds wrote a newsgroup post about a free operating system he was working on. He said it was “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu.” His OS would eventually be called Linux.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/comp.os.minix/dlNtH7RRrGA

2014 – Amazon announced it had acquired Twitch.TV the popular video game streaming site. Rumors had indicated Google was going to buy the company, but the deal fell through.

http://blog.twitch.tv/2014/08/a-letter-from-the-ceo-august-25-2014/

2016 – NuTonomy began the first public trial of an autonomous taxi service. Customers could hail a self-driving taxi in Singapore’s One North business district. A human engineer sat in the driver’s seat ready to assume control if needed.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/24/mit-spinout-nutonomy-just-beat-uber-to-launch-the-worlds-first-self-driving-taxi/

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