Today In Tech History
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Today In Tech History
Confession time — I’m a history nerd. Well, I’m a nerd about lots of different things, but primarily, I’m a history nerd. I love Wikipedia, I devour old maps, and I can’t put down history books. And, one of the aspects of history that continually fascinates me — and goes quite nicely with the overall theme of this site — is the history of science and technology. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce what I hope will be a regularly-occurring feature I like to call “Today In Tech History.”
Ideally, each day I choose to publish this feature will fall on the anniversary of a significant milestone in the development of the technology that makes our lives easier. If this isn’t the case, I can always fall back on my one of my other favorite things to talk about — cats with stuff on them!
Luckily, today — February 3 — is a day rife with historical and technological anniversaries. Not only does today mark the 92nd anniversary of the opening of the Twin Peaks Tunnel (1918) in San Francisco — still one of the longest streetcar/light rail tunnels in the world — but it’s also the 44th anniversary of the first controlled landing on the moon. In 1966, the Soviet Union landed the unmanned Luna 9 module on safely on the moon’s surface, which represented a big step up from merely crashing rockets into the moon, which was the practice up until then.
However, as everyone knows, the U.S. still managed to beat the Soviets to the moon, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. Or did they?
In not-so-cool news, today was also the day, in 1913, that the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, which allowed the federal government to collect income taxes. When you’re done booing and hissing, I suggest you check out this article from Lifehacker that tells about a couple of red flags for eager IRS auditors come tax time. Freelancers, get those 1099s organized!
We’ll try to make this a semi-regular feature, though it will surely vary depending on the coolness of this day in history. Stay tuned!
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