1953-02-28 00:00 UTC
The structure of DNA
February 28, 1953
Watson and Crick settle on the double helix in Cambridge.
Not for saleOpen record
Curated minutes from history.
These minutes are held permanently by the registry. They carry a date, a source, and nothing 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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record - 1964-02-09 00:00 UTC
Seventy-three million watching
February 9, 1964
The Beatles play The Ed Sullivan Show and American music changes key.
Not for saleOpen record 
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record- 1975-04-04 00:00 UTC
Microsoft is founded
April 4, 1975
Two programmers in Albuquerque bet that software, not hardware, is the business.
Not for saleOpen record 
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record- 1991-12-25 19:00 UTC
The red flag comes down
December 25, 1991
Gorbachev resigns and the Soviet Union ceases to exist.
Not for saleOpen record 
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record
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.
Not for saleOpen record