1961 – Yuri Gagarin of the USSR made a 108-minute orbital flight in the Vostok 1 spacecraft, becoming the first human in space.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/sts1/gagarin_anniversary.html
1981 – Commander John Young and Pilot Robert Crippen crewed the first launch of a Space Shuttle on mission STS-1. During the mission the space shuttle Columbia used an HP-41 calculator to calculate the exact angle at which they needed to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/sts1/index.html
http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/April/12/
1994 – Immigration Lawyers Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel intentionally posted to more than 6,000 Usenet discussion groups about their green card services. It is considered the first occurrence of commercial spam.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst/XRLnYe0_zK8/l5eFCesyeEcJ
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/04/0412canter-siegel-usenet-spam/
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.