Heavy metal band Metallica sues Napster for enabling thievery and copyright infringement.
By Daniela Hernandez
The millionth entry in the English language Wikipedia is created.
By Matt Simon
The Kyoto Protocol goes into effect. But without the participation of the United States, it's not very effective.
By Tony Long
Several major websites are brought down by one of the largest denial-of-service attacks ever staged.
By Tony Long
Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States in the first such ceremony to be widely streamed live over the web.
By Amy Zimmerman
NASA successfully launches the New Horizons probe, beginning a 10-year mission to Pluto and other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a little-studied band of debris from the formation of the Solar System.
By Matt Simon
Just one of the most successful game show contestants ever. The software engineer wins 74 straight games on Jeopardy!, and walks off with $2.5 million.
By Tony Long
The building that will replace the fallen World Trade Center towers is fraught with symbolism -- and reinforced as hell.
By Tony Long
2004: SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately financed craft to leave Earth’s atmosphere and reach the edge of space. With self-taught civilian test pilot Mike Melvill at the controls, SpaceShipOne was released by its carrier craft and fired its hybrid rocket motors at an altitude of 47,000 feet over California’s Mojave Desert. As Melvill steered the […]
By Tony Long
2004: Google unveils Gmail. It will change webmail … and a few other things as well. Seven years ago, if we wanted to talk to somebody halfway around the world, we’d open up Outlook, Eudora or some other bulky piece of software on our desktops and type an e-mail. Most of us had webmail, which […]
By Michael Calore
2005: Technology further erodes the notion of private life with the appearance of YouTube, which makes its debut on this day. The video-sharing site, founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, has, in half-a-dozen years, become one of the most-visited websites worldwide, trailing only Facebook, Google (YouTube’s parent company) and Google’s Gmail. With […]
By Tony Long
2005: Samuel Alderson, inventor of the automotive crash-test dummy, dies. His creation saved countless lives … and amused millions along the way. Alderson graduated from high school at age 15, but the realities of the Great Depression repeatedly interrupted his college education: He needed to help his father run the family’s sheet-metal business in Southern […]
By Randy Alfred
2004: Some college dudes unveil a website only Harvard University people can use. Seven years later it is worth $50 billion, and for hundreds of millions of people the site now called Facebook is so integral to daily life that, for all intents and purposes, it is the internet. Trying to remember a time before […]
By John C Abell
2008: Marie Smith Jones, a chief of the Eyak Indian tribe in Alaska, dies. With her dies the Eyak language. Chief Marie, 89, was the last person to speak this tribal tongue, which she learned from her parents as a little girl. She was also the last full-blooded Eyak. Following her elder sister’s death in […]
By Tony Long
2001: Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens its doors to tourists after a $27 million effort to keep it from tilting so much it might fall over. Construction began on the tower in 1173. It’s the freestanding bell tower, or campanile, of the cathedral next door. The structures, along with a separate baptistery, make a […]
By Randy Alfred
By Tony Long and Doug Cornelius 2006: Pluto, once the ninth planet from the sun, is downgraded to a mere “dwarf planet.” Our solar system loses a favorite kid brother and now has, officially, only eight planets. Pluto was discovered by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh on Feb. 18, 1930. Comparing photographs taken of the […]
By WIRED Staff
2003: Apple opens the iTunes Music Store and starts to revolutionize the music-recording industry, one song at a time. Between the mid-1980s and late 1990s, the media were undergoing a massive conversion from analog to digital. The music industry hated it. Much to the chagrin of the Recording Industry Association of America, internet users quickly […]
By Brian X. Chen
2005: Steve Fossett completes the first nonstop, unrefueled, solo airplane flight around the world. Fossett — who enjoyed well-earned reputations as a sailor, aviator and adventurer — set 116 records in five sports. As of June 2007, 60 of them still stood. Among his accomplishments, Fossett set circumnavigation records in a balloon (2002) and a […]
2001: When the Baltimore Ravens and the New York Giants face off in Tampa Bay, Florida, for Super Bowl XXXV, officials debut a new video technology that has nothing to do with instant replay: facial-recognition surveillance cameras pointed at tens of thousands of fans entering the game. The idea: catch known con artists or terrorists. […]
By Ryan Singel
2001: Inventor Dean Kamen unveils the Segway Personal Transporter, a two-wheeled, self-balancing scooter, on Good Morning America. The Segway PT made its debut after months of hype and rampant press speculation during which it was known only by its code name, “Ginger,” or sometimes just “It.” Kamen’s reputation as a brilliant inventor and businessmen opened […]
By Dylan Tweney
2002: The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is officially dedicated in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. It is a conscious attempt, even down to its Latin name, to recreate the Royal Library of Alexandria, the largest library in the ancient world. The library, which sits facing the Mediterranean Sea not far from the site of its illustrious […]
By Tony Long
2002: A large fireball flashes across the night skies of the Irkutsk region of Siberia. What may have been a comet causes electrical circuits to come alive and leaves residents worrying about radioactivity. Eyewitnesses saw the sky light up. More than a hundred people in the sparsely settled area reported seeing it. At least one […]
By Randy Alfred
2004: Podcasting is born. Podcast (noun): a series of audio (or video) programs delivered through a static URL containing an RSS feed that automatically updates a list of programs on the listener’s computer so that people may download new programs using a desktop application. Programs can be delivered to the listener automatically or when they […]
By Brian X. Chen
2007: Apple puts the iPhone on sale. It sells … fast. Everybody knew it was coming. But nobody, not even Apple, predicted how the iPhone would change the way we look at phones forever. First announced Jan. 9, 2007, by Steve Jobs, the iPhone is considered one of Apple’s worst-kept secrets, but still the most […]
By Brian X. Chen
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