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Seabed Arms Control Treaty

Bell Labs, NY: From a rib of the B, Ritchie develops the C language

The Network Working Group (NWG) under S. Crocker, finishes the first ARPANET host-to-host protocol: Network Control Protocol (NCP)

Grumman and Boeing receive contract NAS9-11160 to study a two-stage-to-orbit shuttle with liquid hydrogen tanks.

Egyptian President Nasser dies

The Soviet probe Luna 16 successfully completed its mission and brought back 101g of lunar soil.

Black September. Yasir Arafat hatches a plan to oust the Hashemites from Jordan, a key ally of the United States and an unofficial ally of Israel. The Syrians move troops into the area, prompting an Israeli air force response to block the Syrian soldiers, while

4:08 AM Italian time: Apollo 13: Haise calls Mission Control Center: “Okay, Houston; we’ve had a problem.”

Launch of Apollo 13. Target: the Fra Mauro Hills on the Moon. It will never get there. Two days later, they will have a serious accident with the Service Module. But it will still be “a very successful failure.” Apollo 13 (Saturn V SA-508): James

USRR. The design bureaus headed by Chelomei and Mishin were forcibly put to work together, by order of Ustinov. Thus the Salyut was born, a combination of the Almaz and the Soyuz onboard systems.

Hawking-Penrose Singularity Theorem: With the assumptions of 1) sufficiently smooth space-time, 2) impossible time travel, 3) sufficient matter and radiation in the Universe, 4) general relativity, 5) mass density always prevails over matter pressure (strong energetic condition); then the Universe was born from a singularity.

The first GTOs and Triacs are introduced to the market

The world’s population living in extreme poverty, which has been increasing since 1820 in absolute terms (not percentage), is beginning to decline, even as the total world population continues to grow, and by a significant amount. The world’s population living in extreme poverty, after peaking

American mathematician Stephen Cook, while completing his PhD in Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley, discovers the SAT (Satisfiability) for NP-Complete (Non-deterministic, Polynomially time-bounded) problems: solving any NP-complete problem is equivalent to solving any instance of SAT (by the year 2000, over

Bell Labs, NY: From an offshoot of the BCPL, used in the Multics project, Thompson develops the B language (predecessor of C)

West Germany. Prime Minister Willy Brandt. This is the first Social Democratic government in postwar Germany, following two decades of conservative Konrad Adenauer. Brandt, for the first time, accepts the Older Neisse River border as Germany’s easternmost border, thus putting an end to Germany’s claim

Comet Bennett is discovered by South African amateur astronomer John Bennett. The comet approaches Earth while the Apollo 13 mission is en route to the Moon. Just as the astronauts begin maneuvering to turn the Command Module toward the comet for a photo, the oxygen

7:38 PM (Italian time): Apollo 12: Pete Conrad walks to Surveyor 3 and removes the camera and other objects to bring them back to Earth for analysis after more than two years on the Moon.

In the Kilby vs. Noyce case, pitting Texas Instruments against Fairchild Semiconductors over the first patent on integrated circuits, which began in 1959, after Fairchild’s final appeal of the court’s ruling, the court ultimately overturned the verdict and awarded the patent to Fairchild. Texas appealed

ARPANET Project. The first IMP (Interface Message Processor, now called Router), built by BBN, arrives at UCLA. It’s the size of a large refrigerator, housed in a sturdy, dark gray iron cabinet, as per military specifications. BBN did a great job delivering on time and

ARPANET Project. Host-to-IMP standards are ready, based on responses to RFC1 (Request for Comments) distributed to interested parties by Larry Roberts, project manager for the project.

Judith Love Cohen worked in the aerospace industry from 1952 to 1990, including working on the guidance system for the Minuteman missile and then the Abort-Guidance System in the Apollo Lunar Module. The AGS played a key role in the safe return of Apollo 13

James Fergason discovers the twisted nematic (TN) effect; a fundamental discovery since all the LCD monitors we are familiar with are based on the principle of rotating the polarization plane.

Xinjiang, Western China. In a major battle, the Soviets annihilate an entire Chinese battalion near the border. In this climate, China develops the need to establish contact with the United States.

Quarantine at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston finally ends for the three Apollo 11 astronauts.

7:18 PM Italian time, Sunday: Collins presses the button to release the LM

9:31’50” The timetable is ticking. Rocco Petrone, almost silent, his voice broken by emotion, pronounces: “go” without taking his eyes off the monitor. That monster Saturn V begins to emit tongues of fire and clouds of smoke. Slowly the Saturn moves, rising, silently. Then suddenly,

9:31:50 AM (Florida East Coast time) The Saturn V liftoff. Arthur Clarke, author of A Space Odyssey, recalls thinking, “At the launch, I cried for the first time in twenty years and prayed for the first time in forty years. ” Walter Cronkite, on the

9:31:50 AM (Florida East Coast Time) The Apollo 11 Saturn V ignites its engines and a few seconds later lifts off from Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral: 111m high, 2938t: the most powerful carrier rocket in history; more than a million people are present to

Around 9:30 a.m. (Florida East Coast time), Mike Collins, aboard the Saturn V, later recalled thinking: “You’re used to seeing swarms of people, crowds of engineers crowding around the launch pad and the rocket. Then suddenly they all disappear. And you think, ‘Good God, maybe

NASA is concerned that the Soviet Luna 15 unmanned probe to the Moon might interfere with Apollo 11’s radio or course. For this reason, Frank Borman, commander of Apollo 8 and just back from an eight-day tour in the USSR, telephones Mstislav V. Keldish, head

In July 1969 a II and III N-1 were erected on the ramps at Baikonur.

Soccer War between El Salvador and Honduras. The two countries met in early June in the 1970 World Cup qualifiers, in a series of three matches. When El Salvador won the decisive match 3-2 in extra time, the fans clashed in the stands. Diplomatic relations

Apollo 10 (Saturn V SA-505): Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan complete the first dress rehearsal for the Lunar Landing with the Command Module Charlie Brown and the Lunar Module Snoopy: they come within just 14.3 km of the lunar surface; the Saturn V

NASA approves the first mission to use a flyby: Mariner in 1974

The USAF dismantles its astronaut team. From this point on, the American military will rely solely on robotic missions, breaking the Von Braun Paradigm, which instead entrusts space exploration to humans first and leaves robots in a supporting role.

After the success of Apollo 9 it seems clear that the first attempt to land on the Moon can be made with Apollo 11

The Soviets launch the first N-1, the rocket with the goal of carrying at least one man to the Moon; since scientists did not have time to design engines the size of the five of the Saturn V, the N-1 (Number 1) is equipped with

The Soviet UR-500/Proton launch vehicle carrying a Lunokhod rover explodes 40 seconds after launch.

NASA presents various plans for the future of space colonization to the U.S. Congress: with $9 billion a year, NASA could land humans on Mars, establish permanent bases on the Moon and in lunar orbit, a 50-person Earth-orbiting station, and a reusable shuttle to support

California. Fairchild Semiconductors, with 12,000 employees, is fragmented. It was founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore (the man behind Moore’s Law), who had also left the company owned by William Shockley, one of the three inventors of the transistor. Noyce and Moore leave and

The first laser-guided bombs are used in Vietnam

France conducts its first thermonuclear explosion; “Canopus,” 2.6 million tons, at Fangataufa, Polynesia.

The Soviet Zond 5 probe, returning from the Moon with its cargo of bacteria, plants, flies, worms, and turtles, reentered the atmosphere with a severe deceleration of 16 g, and the capsule reached temperatures of several thousand degrees. The deceleration would have killed the cosmonauts

9:42 p.m. An immense Soviet Proton rocket lifts off from Baikonur. The capsule is loaded with bacteria, plants, flies, worms, and turtles. It will circumnavigate the Moon in the next two days. For the first time. The Soviets are still fully in the race to

Nicolae Ceausescu condemns the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia with unprecedented statements

The 1968 uprisings, which spread throughout the West, took a violent form, particularly in Italy, Germany, and Japan. According to scholar Jared Diamond, this may have been due to the new generation’s rejection of the culture of their elders, who had supported the Nazi-Fascist regimes

Apollo 6 (SA-502): Unmanned Saturn V mission. Unlike the previous mission, several things went wrong: The first stage (SI-C) developed longitudinal vibrations (Pogo Effect) at 125 seconds for 10 seconds; after 4.5 minutes, engine 2 shut down, and a second later, engine 3 did too.

Lyndon Johnson announces he will not run for president again

Yuri Gagarin dies in a plane crash: his plane is grazed (10 or 20 meters away according to witnesses) by another jet at supersonic speed, which does not see him due to bad weather. Witnesses hear two bangs, one the sonic boom of the first

Paris. French students occupy the University of Paris X Nanterre. The beginning of 1968.

The American seismometer and hydrophone system (AEDS) identified a significant event in the North Pacific, along the Eastern Date Line between Kamchatka, Hawaii, and Alaska. It was identified as the implosion of the Soviet submarine K-129.

Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka. The Soviet Golf-class submarine K-129 (PL-574 for the Russians) embarks on a routine mission in the Pacific. It suffers an accident and sinks. It is then secretly recovered by the CIA during Operation Azorian. The public will soon learn of this thanks to

Barnard, in Cape Town, South Africa, performs the first heart transplant.

Draper Lab releases version 120 of the SUNBURST program, which will go on the Apollo Guidance Computer (designed by Albert Hopkins’ team) on Apollo 5. The version that will go to the Moon on Apollo 11 will be called LUMINARY (an intermediate version was instead

US astronauts die during ground simulation, Russian Komarov dies in Soyuz I landing

Soviet Venus exploration program. It consisted of four types of missions. Atmospheric probes: Venera 4, 5, 6 (1967–1969). Ground probes (simple): Venera 7, 8 (1970, 1972). Landers: Venera 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Vega 1, 2 (1975, 1978, 1985). Radar mapping: Venera 15, 16

Dave Wilkinson and Bruce Partridge use an ingenious electronic device invented by Robert Dicke to measure the possible temperature differences in the Universe from one direction to another. They demonstrate that, if such differences exist, they must be less than 0.1%. The background radiation is

Middle East. Six-Day War. The Israeli Air Force annihilates the Egyptian Air Force, most of which is still on the ground, in a surprise attack. The army then moves south, conquering the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, north, taking the Golan Heights (June 9-10), and

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) publishes a comprehensive review of the alleged hallucinogenic potential of smoked banana peels and banana juice. The result is that there is no hallucinogenic substance. The urban legend had spread in the United States several years earlier, especially

At 10:04 UTC, before the astonished eyes of those watching the preparations from the beach, the San Marco 2 satellite, Italy’s second satellite, took flight from the Italian launch base off Malindi—the only one in the world in the middle of the ocean. The first

Military dictatorships in Greece.

Soviet Yankee-class nuclear submarines begin patrolling the American coast

The Soviets launch 36 military satellites with plutonium nuclear reactors into orbit.

H3N2 flu, the Hong Kong flu, spreads around the world

First soft moon landings by Americans and Soviets

Nevada. Area 51. The SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, designed and manufactured by Lockheed’s Skunk Works group, is tested. A total of 32 will be built, and it will not be completely retired until 1999. Twelve will be lost in accidents, but none will be shot

Lunar Orbiter 1’s motion compensator has anomalies, resulting in blurry, virtually unusable photos.

Leuven, Belgium. Cosmologist Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître dies: a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, and mathematician who made important contributions to cosmology and astrophysics. He was the first to argue that the recession of galaxies is evidence of an expanding universe and to connect

Gemini 9A: Second attempt with Cernan and Stafford: Successful launch of the backup Agena target (the first was destroyed a few months earlier; the backup cannot perform in-orbit maneuvers); two-hour spacewalk

Luna 10 became the first artificial satellite of the Moon in March 1966. It did so just in time for the opening of the CPSU Congress. For the occasion, it broadcast the music of the Internationale live, with the sound of static in the background.

China. During the Cultural Revolution, after the arrest of future president Deng Xiaoping, his son was also arrested. Red Guards abused and tortured him, eventually throwing him from the roof of a building at Peking University. Deng Pufang broke his back, but was denied hospitalization,

China. During the Cultural Revolution, future president Deng Xiaoping was arrested, accused of being a “capitalist vagabond.” In 1973, he returned to the Central Committee thanks to Mao’s personal intervention.

Sergio Leone is the director of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Carl Sagan publishes the article “On the nature of Mars Canals” in the journal Nature

NASA’s Surveyor mission program: 5 successes and 2 failures. Special mention goes to Surveyor 3, which would later be joined on the moon by Apollo 12, with Pete Conrad breaking off a piece to bring back to Earth. It can now be visited at the

North Vietnamese attack on the American base in Danang

US troops in Vietnam number 200,000

New York World’s Fair. Olivetti presents its new mechanical typewriter, the fruit of years of investment. Then, in a secluded room, it also presents the Programma 101, essentially the first electronic personal computer. It costs $3,200, compared to over $100,000 for a comparable IBM computer.

India. A group of Indian (from India…) and American climbers attempted to carry six detectors, powered by plutonium batteries, to Nanda Devi, 7,816 meters high, to monitor Chinese atomic explosions. The mission failed due to a blizzard. The climbers left their equipment behind. When they