In 1964 – The opening ceremonies of the summer Olympics in Tokyo became the first Olympic broadcast relayed live by geostationary communication satellite. Too bad all the US networks gave up on live broadcasts of the Olympics.

In 1967 – The Outer Space Treaty came into force, banning nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction from being placed in Earth orbit or on any other celestial body. It also prevented any state from claiming sovereignty over any celestial resource like the Moon.

In 1994 – Håkon Wium Lie published “Cascading HTML style sheets – a proposal.” He proposed addressing the problems of existing style sheets being static, platform-specific and not allowing enough influence by the HTML author.

In 1995 – The Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrapped up “A Day in the Life of Cyberspace” an attempt to chronicle what people did online that day.

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In 1876 – The first two-way telephone conversation occurred over outdoor wires between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Watson. They used a two-mile telegraph line linking Boston and East Cambridge.

In 1947 – Eckert-Mauchly Computer Co. signed a contract with Northrop to develop the BINary Automatic Computer. BINAC was the only computer ever built by the company founded by ENIAC pioneers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly.

In 2009 – The first lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecrafts kicked up some dust as part of NASA’s Lunar precursor Robotic program. The impact led to greater certainty that there is water on the moon.

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In 1860 – Telegraph lines opened between Los Angeles and San Francisco. This allowed gold miners to tell backers farther south that they still hadn’t found any gold.

In 1921 – KDKA radio in Pittsburgh conducted the first live broadcast of a football game from Forbes Field. The University of Pittsburgh beat West Virginia University.

In 2003 – To allow IT departments to prepare for critical updates, Microsoft conducted the first regularly scheduled Windows patch release. It became lovingly known as “Patch Tuesday”.

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In 1806 – Englishman Ralph Wedgwood received the first patent on carbon paper, which led to the initials cc to indicate a carbon copy which led to the email option to “cc” somebody.

In 1954 – IBM sounded the death knell of vacuum tubes, building the first calculating machine to use solid-state transistors. It was an experimental version of the IBM 604 Electronic Calculating Punch, that was desktop-sized and slow just like it’s vacuum-tube powered brother, but it used 5% of the power!

In 1959 – The Soviet Space Probe Luna 3 took the first photographs of the dark side of the moon. You’re welcome Pink Floyd.

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