Today in Tech History – March 6, 2018

1937 – Valentina Tereshkova was born in the Yaroslavl region of Russia. She would grow up to become the first woman in space and only woman ever to fly solo in space.

http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/tereshkova.html?

1992 – The first media-hyped computer virus reached fever pitch as the Michelangelo boot sector virus began to affect computers. Worldwide catastrophe did not follow.

http://www.zdnet.com/news/michelangelo-virus-is-it-overhyped-or-a-real-threat/98759?

Safricom launched M-Pesa in Kenya, a service to let users receive, send and store money using a basic mobile phone.

http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/media/vodafone-group-releases/2017/m-pesa-10.html?

2009 – NASA launched the Kepler space observatory, with a mission to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/launch/index.html?

2012 – Google consolidated its various online stores, Android Market, Google Books, Google Music, and Google video, into one store called Google Play.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/google-play-launched-feeling-the-amazon-squeeze/7073?

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