1781 – English astronomer William Herschel observed what he initially thought was a comet but turned out to be the planet Uranus. It was the first planet to be discovered using a telescope.

1882 – At the Royal Institution, Eadweard J. Muybridge demonstrated his zoopraxiscope, an optical apparatus that exhibited photographs of moving animals. It is sometimes considered the first movie projector.

1969 – Apollo 9 returned safely to Earth after orbital testing of the first crewed Lunar Module.

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1790 – John Frederic Daniell was born. He would grow up to invent the Daniell cell, a battery that supplied an even current during continuous operation, thus making battery power practical.

1889 – Almon B. Strowger of Kansas City filed his patent for the first automatic telephone exchange.

1923 – Inventor Lee De Forest demonstrated the Phonofilm for the press. It was the first motion picture with a sound-on-film track.

1989 – Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper proposing an “information management” system that became the foundation of the World Wide Web. He called it the Mesh at the time.

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105 – Ts’ai Lun demonstrated his process for making paper to the Han emperor in China. He probably didn’t invent it, but he certainly turned it into an industry for the first time. And the industry still survives 20 centuries later even in the face of the computers that plot its doom.

1985 – The Southern New England Telephone Company turned on ConnNet, the nation’s first local, public packet-switching network. Customers could access CompuServ, NewsNet and other services at a blistering 4,800 to 56,000 bits per second. The service’s X.25 protocol went obsolete in the 1990s with the popularity of the Internet Protocol.

2011 – Apple began selling the iPad 2, a thinner version of the first iPad, that also included a camera.

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1876 – Alexander Graham Bell spoke the immortal words “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.” over a telephone in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant from the next room. It is widely considered the first instance of someone using technology when they bloody well could have just got up and spoke to someone in person. It is also widely considered the first phone call.

1891 – Almon B. Strowger was issued a US patent for his electromechanical switch to automate a telephone exchange. Strowger wasn’t the first to think of of automatic switching but he was the first to make a practical switch.

2000 -The Nasdaq hit 5,048.62, the highest point of the dot-com boom. The bust began the next day.

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1948 – The University of California at Berkeley and the Atomic Energy Commission announced the artificial production of mesons using the 184-inch cyclotron at the university’s Radiation Laboratory.

1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launched, carrying a human dummy and and the dog Chernushka. It completed 1 orbit and was successfully recovered upon return. Yes, the dog made it back unharmed.

2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-133 made its final landing after 39 flights.

2015 – Apple and HBO announced a new Internet-only streaming version of HBO called HBO Now would launch in early April exclusively on Apple products including the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. Apple also announced the Apple Watch would come April 24.

2016 – In the first of 5 games, DeepMind’s AlphaGo machine intelligence defeated 18-time Go champion Lee See-dol in Seoul, Korea.

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