1948 – IBM dedicated its “SSEC” in New York City. The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator handled both data and instructions using electronic circuits made with 13,500 vacuum tubes and 21,000 relays.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/ssec.html
1967 – The first US astronauts died in the line of duty. Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed on the launch pad when a flash fire engulfed their command module during testing for the first Apollo-Saturn mission.
http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/
2006 – Western Union discontinued its Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. The company still handles money transfers.
http://www.livescience.com/6989-era-ends-western-union-stops-sending-telegrams.html
2010 – Apple announced the iPad, a tablet computer running the same operating system as the iPhone.
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/27Apple-Launches-iPad.html
2016 – Google’s DeepMind researchers published a paper in Nature announcing that their machine intelligence AlphaGo had defeated Fan Hui, a three-time European Go champion. The computer won five games of Go without a defeat.
http://www.wired.com/2016/01/in-a-huge-breakthrough-googles-ai-beats-a-top-player-at-the-game-of-go/
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.