1953-02-28 00:00 UTC
The structure of DNA
February 28, 1953
Watson and Crick settle on the double helix in Cambridge.
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Curated minutes from history.
Held permanently by the registry. Never for sale.
Photo: Science Museum, London / Science and Society Picture Library · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons 
Photo: Jamling Tenzing Norgay · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1953-05-29 05:30 UTCThe summit of Everest
May 29, 1953
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stand on the highest point on Earth.
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Photo: Oren Jack Turner · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1955-04-18 01:15 UTCEinstein dies
April 18, 1955
The physicist dies in Princeton, having declined surgery the day before.
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Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1955-12-01 00:00 UTCRosa Parks stays seated
December 1, 1955
A refusal in Montgomery, Alabama begins a 381-day bus boycott.
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Photo: Andrey Butko · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1957-10-04 19:28 UTCSputnik reaches orbit
October 4, 1957
The first artificial satellite begins transmitting its signal from low Earth orbit.
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Photo: Музей космонавтики / Главархив Москвы · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1957-11-03 02:30 UTCLaika in orbit
November 3, 1957
The first living passenger reaches orbit aboard Sputnik 2 and does not return.
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Photo: cole8888, https://flickr.com/photos/187597251@N05/ (aka Cole · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1958-09-12 00:00 UTCThe integrated circuit works
September 12, 1958
Jack Kilby demonstrates a working circuit built on a single piece of semiconductor.
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Photo: ESO/A. Ghizzi Panizza (www.albertoghizzipanizza.com) · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1960-05-16 00:00 UTCThe first laser
May 16, 1960
Theodore Maiman gets coherent light out of a ruby rod at Hughes Research Laboratories.
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Photo: ТАСС · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1961-04-12 06:07 UTCThe first human in space
April 12, 1961
Yuri Gagarin lifts off from Baikonur for a single orbit of the planet.
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Photo: Image courtesy by Olga Arkhipova · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1962-10-27 00:00 UTCOne vote against
October 27, 1962
Vasili Arkhipov refuses to authorise a nuclear torpedo aboard B-59 at the height of the Cuban missile crisis.
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Photo: This file comes from the website of the President of the Rus · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1963-06-16 09:29 UTCThe first woman in space
June 16, 1963
Valentina Tereshkova lifts off aboard Vostok 6.
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Photo: National Park Service · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1963-08-28 00:00 UTCI have a dream
August 28, 1963
Martin Luther King Jr. speaks from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
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Photo: Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1963-11-22 18:30 UTCKennedy is pronounced dead
November 22, 1963
Dallas time 12:30. The announcement follows from Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Not for saleOpen record- 1963-11-23 17:16 UTC
Doctor Who begins
November 23, 1963
The first episode airs on the BBC the day after Kennedy is killed.
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Seventy-three million watching
February 9, 1964
The Beatles play The Ed Sullivan Show and American music changes key.
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Photo: IPPA photographer · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1967-12-03 00:00 UTCA borrowed heart
December 3, 1967
Christiaan Barnard performs the first human-to-human heart transplant in Cape Town.
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Photo: NASA/Bill Anders · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1968-12-24 16:40 UTCEarthrise
December 24, 1968
Apollo 8 rounds the Moon and Bill Anders photographs the Earth coming up over the limb.
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Photo: Neil A. Armstrong · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1969-07-20 20:17 UTCEagle has landed
July 20, 1969
The lunar module touches down in the Sea of Tranquility.
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Photo: Arnold Skolnick · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1969-08-15 00:00 UTCWoodstock opens
August 15, 1969
Half a million people arrive at a dairy farm in Bethel, New York.
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Photo: NASA · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1970-04-14 03:07 UTCHouston, we have had a problem
April 14, 1970
An oxygen tank ruptures on Apollo 13 two hundred thousand miles from home.
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Photo: Andreu Veà, WiWiW.org · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1971-10-29 22:00 UTCThe first email
October 29, 1971
Ray Tomlinson sends a message between two machines standing side by side.
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Photo: Harrison Schmitt / Apollo 17 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1972-12-07 10:39 UTCThe Blue Marble
December 7, 1972
The crew of Apollo 17 photographs the whole lit face of the Earth.
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Photo: McKay Savage from London, UK · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1973-04-03 00:00 UTCA call from a sidewalk
April 3, 1973
Martin Cooper calls a rival lab from a handheld phone on Sixth Avenue.
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Microsoft is founded
April 4, 1975
Two programmers in Albuquerque bet that software, not hardware, is the business.
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Photo: NASA · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1976-07-20 11:53 UTCViking 1 touches Mars
July 20, 1976
The first successful landing on Mars sends back a picture of its own footpad.
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Photo: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1977-09-05 00:00 UTCVoyager 1 departs
September 5, 1977
The probe leaves Earth on a trajectory that will carry it out of the solar system.
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Photo: NASA · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1981-04-12 12:00 UTCColumbia lifts off
April 12, 1981
The first Space Shuttle flight launches twenty years to the day after Gagarin.
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Photo: Queery-54 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1983-09-26 00:14 UTCStanislav Petrov waits
September 26, 1983
A Soviet duty officer judges a missile-attack alert to be a false alarm, and is right.
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Photo: Courtesy of NOAA/Institute for Exploration/University of Rho · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1985-09-01 00:00 UTCThe wreck is found
September 1, 1985
Robert Ballard's team locates Titanic on the seabed after seventy-three years.
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Photo: Kennedy Space Center · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1986-01-28 16:39 UTCChallenger
January 28, 1986
The shuttle breaks apart seventy-three seconds after launch with seven aboard.
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Photo: IAEA Imagebank · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1986-04-26 01:23 UTCReactor four
April 26, 1986
A test at the Chernobyl plant ends in the worst nuclear accident on record.
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Photo: Jiří Tondl (Blow up) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1989-06-04 00:00 UTCTiananmen Square
June 4, 1989
The protests in Beijing are cleared by force; the number of dead has never been established.
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Photo: Unknown photographer, Reproduction by Lear 21 at English Wik · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1989-11-09 18:53 UTCThe border opens
November 9, 1989
A misread statement at a press conference sends Berliners to the Wall.
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Photo: ŠJů (cs:ŠJů) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1989-11-17 00:00 UTCPrague, Narodni trida
November 17, 1989
A student march is broken up and the Velvet Revolution begins.
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Photo: NASA · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1990-04-24 12:33 UTCHubble is released
April 24, 1990
The telescope leaves the shuttle payload bay and begins thirty years of looking outward.
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Photo: Liamd967 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1991-08-06 00:00 UTCThe web goes public
August 6, 1991
Tim Berners-Lee posts a short summary of the World Wide Web project to Usenet.
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The red flag comes down
December 25, 1991
Gorbachev resigns and the Soviet Union ceases to exist.
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Photo: Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1994-05-10 00:00 UTCMandela is sworn in
May 10, 1994
South Africa inaugurates its first president elected by all its citizens.
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Photo: Toni Barros from São Paulo, Brasil · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1996-07-05 00:00 UTCDolly is born
July 5, 1996
A lamb cloned from an adult cell is born at the Roslin Institute.
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Photo: James the photographer · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1997-05-11 00:00 UTCDeep Blue wins
May 11, 1997
A machine takes a match from a reigning world chess champion for the first time.
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Photo: Ehud Kenan · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons 1998-09-04 00:00 UTCGoogle is incorporated
September 4, 1998
Two Stanford students file the paperwork for a search company.
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Photo: NASA · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons 1998-11-20 06:40 UTCThe first module
November 20, 1998
Zarya launches from Baikonur and the International Space Station begins.
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