In 1920 – The Joseph Horne department store in Pittsburgh ran an advertisement in the Pittsburgh Sun, describing wireless Victrola music being picked up by radio. Amateur Wireless Sets were on sale for $10.

In 1954 – CERN officially came into being. In addition to countless advancements in science, it would go on to foster the invention of the World Wide Web,

In 1994 – Programmers first demonstrated the HotJava prototype browser to executives at Sun Microsystems Inc. It was an attempt to port the Java language to the Web. It worked.

In 1998 – Microsoft’s Internet Explorer passed Netscape Navigator as the Web browser with the greatest market share, according to a report from the International Data Corporation.

In 2008 – SpaceX launched the Falcon 1, first ever private spacecraft to enter orbit.

In 2011 – Amazon shook up the tablet market, announcing the the Amazon Kindle Fire 7-inch tablet for $199.

In 1922 – Scientists at the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory near Washington, DC, demonstrated radar by showing that if a ship passed through a radio wave broadcast between two stations, that ship could be detected.

In 1983 – Richard Stallman announced the GNU project which aimed at the time to develop a free Unix-like operating system.

In 1996 – Kevin Mitnick was indicted on charges he broke into the systems of major software companies, then transferred stolen material to computers at USC via the Internet. Seems prosaic today, but was unheard of at the time.

In 1960 – For the first time, a US presidential debate was televised. Vice President Nixon and Senator Kennedy debated in Chicago and were perceived differently by those who listened on radio versus those who watched on television.

In 1983 – 17-year-old Neal Patrick, of the hacking group 414s testified before the U.S. House of Representatives about computer break-ins and how they might be stopped.

In 1991 – Eight people entered Biosphere 2, an airtight replica of the Earth’s biosphere in Oracle, Arizona. They left exactly two years later in 1993. Results of the experiment are still controversial.