1933 – Wiley Post returned to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes after leaving, becoming the fastest person to circumnavigate the Earth by air and the first to do it solo.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wiley-post-flies-solo-around-the-world

1962 – The first Mariner space probe to Venus had to be destroyed shortly after lift-off because of “improper operation of the Atlas airborne beacon equipment.” The error was caused by a missing overbar in the program that must have disappeared during hand transcription.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0A16F63C59137B93C1AB178CD85F468685F9

1997 – Apple announced OS 8 for Macintosh computers. It added easier Internet integration and a 3D look to the OS.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/sep97/applesep97.html

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

1975 – Xerox announced its withdrawal from computer mainframe manufacturing. The company did indicate it would continue activities in other computer-related businesses like computer disk drives, serial printers, and apparently giving away secrets to companies like Apple and Microsoft.

http://www.navy.mil/SUBMIT/display.asp?story_id=57218

2002 – WorldCom filed for the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in US history. It was the number two long-distance phone company, at a time when that still meant something. It would end up changing its name back to MCI, and its remains exists as Verizon’s business division.

http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/19/news/worldcom_bankruptcy/

2011 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility, Runway 15, ending the US space shuttle missions.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts135/launch/sts-135_mission-overview.html

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

1960 – In a first for missiles, a Polaris A1 test vehicle was successfully launched from the USS George Washington submarine off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

http://www.public.navy.mil/subfor/underseawarfaremagazine/Issues/Archives/issue_55/StratDeter.html

1969 – In a first for humans, Neil Armstrong and Edwin A. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. successfully landed the Lunar Module “Eagle” on the surface of the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission and became the first humans to ever set foot on Earth’s satellite.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo11.html

1976 – In a first for robots, the Viking 1 lander successfully set down on on Mars in the Chryse Planitia and performed its mission.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/viking.html

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

1961 – Trans World Airlines began offering regular in-flight movies on scheduled flights. The first film shown, only in the first class cabin, mind you, was “By Love Possessed,” starring Lana Turner and Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

https://travelersunited.org/today/81-years-since-the-first-inflight-movie-was-shown/

1983 – Michael W. Vannier and his co-workers J. Marsh and J. Warren published the first three-dimensional reconstruction of single computed tomography (CT) slices of the human head.

http://radiology.rsna.org/content/150/1/179.full.pdf

2004 – Apple announced the fourth-generation iPod with 12-hour battery life and the ability to shuffle songs. HP announced they would sell an HP branded version of this model of the iPod.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/07/19Apple-Introduces-the-New-iPod.html

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