1943 – Jon Postel was born in Altadena, California. He created the Internet’s address system, and administered it for 30 years as director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/grants-and-awards/awards/postel-service-award/ten-year-tribute-jon-postel

1963 – Skilled hacker, future government prisoner, and eventual famous security expert Kevin Mitnick was born in Van Nuys, California.

http://www.nndb.com/people/448/000022382/

1991 – Tim Berners-Lee posted a short summary of his WorldWideWeb Project to alt.hypertext and pointed to a simple browser and a Web page describing the project. Thus the WWW became a publicly available service on the Internet.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/alt.hypertext/eCTkkOoWTAY/bJGhZyooXzkJ

1997 – At MacWorld in Boston, Microsoft announced it would invest $150 million in Apple, and continue to make Microsoft Office for Mac for at least five years. The two companies also ended their lawsuit.

https://news.microsoft.com/1997/08/06/microsoft-and-apple-affirm-commitment-to-build-next-generation-software-for-macintosh/

2014 – The European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe became the first spacecraft to maneuver alongside a speeding body as it caught up with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28659783

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

1858 – The west end of the first transatlantic cable was completed when the ship Niagara anchored at the Newfoundland coast having laid 1,016 miles of telegraph cable.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-transatlantic-telegraph-cable-completed

1914 – The American Traffic Signal Co. installed their first electric traffic light at East 105th street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.

http://allthingsclevelandohio.blogspot.com/2008/03/cleveland-birthplace-of-first-electric.html

1921 – The first radio broadcast of a baseball game happened on KDKA from Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. Harold W. Arlin announced the game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Philadelphia Phillies.

http://www.digitaldeliftp.com/Recommendations/KDKAFirst1921.htm

2011 – The Juno space probe launched on a mission to explore Jupiter.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/overview/index.html

2012 – The Mars Science Laboratory, known as the Curiosity Rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars in one of the most complicated automated landings ever, involving a sky crane.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/mars-curiosity-rover-lands-successfully-mars/story?id=16934302#.UeHYyz54Zvg

2014 – Justin.TV announced its closure. It had started as a lifecasting channel for Justin Kan and spawned the massively successful Twitch video game streaming channel.

http://gigaom.com/2014/08/05/live-streaming-pioneer-justin-tv-shuts-down-as-company-focuses-on-twitch/

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

1921 – The first facsimile was transmitted by radio across the Atlantic Ocean using the Belinograph invented by Edouard Belin. A message written by C. V. Van Anda, managing editor of The New York Times and addressed to the Matin in Paris, was sent in seven minutes.

http://todayinsci.com/B/Belin_Edouard/Belinogram1921-NYT.htm

1988 – A computer halted an engine test in preparation for the launch of the space shuttle Discovery. The flight would be the first since the Challenger explosion in 1986.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/August/4/

2007 – NASA’s Phoenix spaceship launched on its mission to survey the Martian Arctic in search of water, geological discoveries, and evidence of conditions for biological life.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/launch/index.html

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

1811 – Elisha Otis was born. He invented a safety brake that prevented elevators from falling if the hoisting cable broke. Thank him every time you get in an elevator.

http://www.theelevatormuseum.org/e/E-5.htm

1958 – The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus became the first watercraft to reach the geographic North Pole. Commanding Officer, Commander William R. Anderson, announced to his crew, “For the world, our country, and the Navy – the North Pole.”

http://www.ussnautilus.org/nautilus/index.shtml

1977 – Tandy Corp of Texas held a New York press conference to announce that it would manufacture the TRS-80.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2010/08/august-3-1977-the-trs-80-personal-computer-goes-on-sale/

1995 – John Romero released the first screenshots of Quake on the Internet. They were 320 x 200 TIFFs.
http://rome.ro/news/2016/6/22/happy-20th-birthday-quake

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