1960
IBM sends out a press release on its IBM 7030, otherwise known are the Stretch supercomputer. “The $10-million-and-up class computers are the world’s fastest and most powerful. They were similar to the STRETCH computer which IBM completed for the Atomic Energy Commission at Los Alamos, New Mexico. IBM will now contract with business firms and government agencies to build STRETCH type computers. They can complete 100 billion computations in a day. The new machines are seventy-five times faster than the large-scale IBM 704 computer”
1983
Tandy introduces the TRS-80 Model 4 computer, featuring a 4MHz Zilog Z80A processor, 16kB RAM, a cassette interface, a keyboard, and an 80×24 text 12-inch monochrome monitor. Price: US$1000 or US$2000 with 64 kB RAM and two 180kB 5.25-inch floppy drives
1999
eBay, Inc., announces an agreement to acquire Butterfield & Butterfield, an auction house best known for antiques and fine art. The terms of the agreement include US$260 million to be paid in eBay stock.
Last release of the Nemesis, an operating system designed by the University of Cambridge, the University of Glasgow, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, and Citrix Systems is made public.
Red Hat Linux 6.0 (”Hedwig”) is released.
The thirteenth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, CIH/Chernobyl Virus erases disk drives and hard drives and throughout Asia and Europe. Turkey and South Korea report three hundred thousand downed systems. The virus originated in Asia during the previous summer. Mikko Hermanni Hypponen of Data Fellows, Ltd., will report to the Reuters news service that some people calling his service were in tears. One woman had just completed an entire book of poetry before the virus erased it completely. This is the first known virus to target the flash BIOS.
2001
US Senators Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl introduce the Media Marketing Accountability Act (H.R. 2246 or S. 792), government legislation intended to give the Federal Trade Commission authority to prosecute those in the entertainment industry who market adult-rated products to children. The bill will ultimately not pass into law, due to concerns over its constitutionality.
2002
Federally recognized US Indian tribes become eligible to register under the .gov top level domain.
JavaScript 2.0 (draft 4) is released.
2008
AOL Purchases FleaFlicker – a pay Fantasy Football site.
After 4 months in jail with no charge, Saudi blogger Fouad al-Farhan was freed after an online campaign was launched.
2009
An Oklahoma City man threatened on Twitter to turn a tax protest into a massacre. Because of that, the FBI arrested Daniel Knight Hayden (aka “CitizenQuasar”). This is the first federal prosecution based on posts made via social networking.
Qualcomm and Broadcom ender their patent litigation, where Qualcomm will pay Broadcom $891 million.
2013
European scientists determine the Earth’s core has a temperature of 6,000 degrees Celsius. This was 1,000 degrees hotter than previous calculations.
A sensor array is developed which is sensative to touch and pressure. This can pave the way to new prosthetic which can feel and gauge grip.
AT&T gets into the home security and monitoring service.
Betaworks (owners of DIGG) purchase Instapaper
2014
After years of speculation, copies of E.T. and other Atari games were dug up in a landfill in New Mexico.