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Ranger 3 Launched
January 26, 1962 Ranger 3 is launched to study the Moon. The space probe was designed to transmit pictures of the lunar surface to Earth stations during a period of 10 minutes of flight prior to impacting on the Moon. Due to a series of malfunctions, the spacecraft missed the Moon by 22,000 miles. Ranger 3 Launched is original…
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Mars Polar Lander Launched
January 3, 1999 The Mars Polar Lander is launched. The mission ultimately ended in failure during an attempted landing on Mars’ surface. Attempts to re-establish communication with the lander failed after the lander entered Mars’ atmosphere. It has been concluded that the most likely cause of the failure was a software error, causing the lander…
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Relay I Launched
December 13, 1962 NASA launches the active repeater communication satellite Relay I from Cape Canaveral. One of the earliest communication satellites to be launched, Relay I’s mission was primarily experimental, but it nonetheless was used for some notable events. On November 22, 1963 Relay I was the first satellite to broadcast television from the United…
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World Wide Web Launched
May 17, 1991 The first server “web server” in history is set up by Tim Berners-Lee on a NeXTcube at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. The launch of this first server is considered the public release of the World Wide Web. World Wide Web Launched is original content of This Day…
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Skylab Launched
May 14, 1973 The United States launches Skylab One, its first manned space station. It is the last launch of the Saturn V rocket, and the the largest payload ever launched into space at the time. Skylab will fall back into the Earth’s atmosphere in July 1979. Skylab Launched is original content of This Day…
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Gmail Launched
April 1, 2004 The now ubiquitous Gmail service is launched as an invitation-only beta service. At first met with skepticism due to it being launched on April Fool’s Day, the ease of use and speed that Gmail offered for a web-based e-mail service quickly won converts. The fact that Gmail was invitiation-only for a long…
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Space Station Mir is Launched
February 20, 1986 The Soviet Union launches the core module of the Mir space station. The core module will provide living quarters for the cosmonauts, including a galley, cooking elements, storage, individual crew cabins and personal hygiene area. Five additional modules will be launched between March 1987 and April 1996. Space Station Mir is Launched…
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Bitcoin Launched
January 9, 2009 Through a posting to The Cryptography Mailing List, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto releases the first version of the Bitcoin software and launches the network of the decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. Six days earlier, Nakamoto had generated the first block of 50 bitcoins, now known as the Genesis Block. Bitcoin has slowly but steadily gained momentum as…
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Relay I Launched
December 13, 1962 NASA launches the active repeater communication satellite Relay I from Cape Canaveral. One of the earliest communication satellites to be launched, Relay I’s mission was primarily experimental, but it nonetheless was used for some notable events. On November 22, 1963 Relay I was the first satellite to broadcast television from the United…
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IMDb Launched
October 17, 1990 Colin Needham, an English movie fan, launches the “rec.arts.movies movie database”, which would later be known as the Internet Movie Database, or IMDb. An engineer working for HP at the time, by 1996 Needham quit his job to work on IMDb full-time. The IMDb is one of the most visited sites on…