Events
1956 - Videotape is first demonstrated at the NARTB (now NAB) convention
1958 - The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.
1970 - One of Apollo 13's oxygen tanks explodes, causing a cancelled moon mission.
1981 - The first operational space shuttle, Columbia, lands at Edwards Air Force Base after its first test flight.
2003 - Human Genome Project successfully completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.
Births
1629 - Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician
1927 - Alan MacDiarmid, New Zealand chemist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1792 - Maximilian Hell, Slovakian astronomer
1935 - Amalie Emmy Noether, German mathematician
1964 - Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva, Russian/Dutch mathematician
1964 - Rachel Carson, American environmentalist
1994 - Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Pakistani scientist and scholar