1945 – The United States detonated a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. The Trinity test ushered in the atomic age.

http://www.osti.gov/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/trinity.htm

1951 – VisiCalc creator Dan Bricklin was born in Philadelphia.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/July/16/

1969 – Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins, blasted off from Cape Kennedy on Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the surface of the moon.

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo-11/apollo-11.html

1995 – Amazon.com opened for business selling books online. Shipments were packed into boxes from a desk made out of a spare door in a two-car garage in Bellevue, Washington.

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2004089,00.html

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

1928 – The Polish Cipher Bureau picked up enciphered radio signals from the German Reicswehr for the first time. The messages were encoded with Germany’s ENIGMA machine. Cracking the EMIGMA during World War II brought together some of the finest minds in computer science at Bletchley Park in England.

http://books.google.com/books?id=hfWTDr_bvMwC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=july+15+1928+enigma&source=bl&ots=9M41qBR6P2&sig=uvtGXuu4q3DeZol6pbJs3rfzq28&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GYjMUYSBIOWciQKOv4GoDg&ved=0CFwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=july%2015%201928%20enigma&f=false

1983 – Nintendo released the Family Computer or Famicom, along with Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye cartridges. It would later be released in the US as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1437208/Nintendo-console

2003 – AOL Time Warner disbanded the Netscape browser development team. In conjunction, Mozilla created the Mozilla Foundation giving the project its first independent legal existence.

http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=3434

2006 – After a few months being used internally at Odeo, the Twttr service launched for public use. They later added some vowels and spun Twitter out as its own company.

http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/

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

1867 – Alfred Nobel demonstrated dynamite for the first time at Merstham Quarry, Surrey.

http://www.information-britain.co.uk/famdates.php?id=572
http://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/biographical/articles/dolan/

1918 – Computer pioneer and MIT professor Jay Forrester was born on a cattle ranch in Climax, Nebraska. With Robert Everett, Forrester led one of the most important early computer projects, the Whirlwind, and developed and founded the field of system dynamics.
http://jsterman.scripts.mit.edu/docs/Lane-2011%20Profiles%20in%20Operations%20Research.pdf

1965 – Mariner 4 flew by Mars, taking 21 full pictures, the first close-up photos of another planet returned from space.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1964-077A

2015 – The New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto after traveling for nine and a half years and three billion miles. It was the last of the nine planets to be approached by a probe, though Pluto had been reclassified as a dwarf planet after New Horizons had launched.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/science/space/nasa-new-horizons-spacecraft-reaches-pluto.html?_r=0

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

1919 – The British airship R34 finished the first airship roundtrip journey across the Atlantic from Scotland to Mineola, Long Island and back to Norfolk, England after 182 hours of flight.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1919/1919%20-%200948.html

1973 – Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of the Nixon tapes to the US Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in. Always make back-ups, unless you want to remain President.

http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/butterfieldapapers.asp

1977 – Lightning struck a Consolidated Edison substation on the Hudson River, tripping two circuit breakers and setting off a chain of events that resulted in a massive power failure. The entire city of New York was blacked out.

http://www.bronx.com/news/local/429.html

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