Science & Discovery in the 20th century

841 sourced entries, 1900 CE to 1999 CE, oldest first. Also see Science & Discovery across every century or everything else in the 20th century.

• 1900March 14 – Botanist Hugo de Vries rediscovers Mendel's laws of heredity.source
• 1900March 23 – Karl Landsteiner first reports his discovery of an accurate means for classifying a system of blood type, which will universally be referred to as the ABO blood group system and for which he will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930.source
• 1900October 19 – Max Planck first states Planck's law of black-body radiation to a meeting of the German Physical Society in Berlin, marking the birth of modern quantum mechanics. He restates it on December 14.source
• 1900December 14 – History of quantum mechanics: Max Planck presents his groundbreaking paper on quantum theory to the German Physical Society in Berlin.source
• 1900December 17 – The Prix Guzman, first and only prize ever offered for communication with extraterrestrial life, is announced in Paris. A prize of 100,000 francs is provided, except for communication with Mars, which is considered too easy.source
• 1901March 1 – The 1901 Census of India is taken, the fourth, and first reliable, census of the British Raj.source
• 1901August 5 – Peter O'Connor sets the first International Association of Athletics Federations recognised long jump world record, of 24 ft 11¾ ins (7.61m). The record will stand for 20 years.source
• 1901October 4 – The American yacht Columbia defeats the British Shamrock in the America's Cup yachting race in New York.source
• 1901The okapi is observed for the first time by Europeans (previously known only to African natives).source
• 1901New Zealand inventor Ernest Godward invents the spiral hairpin.source
• 1902May 22 – The White Star Liner SS Ionic is launched by Harland and Wolff in Belfast.source
• 1902September 1 – The first science fiction film, the silent A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans La Lune), is premièred at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris, France, by actor/producer Georges Méliès, and proves an immediate success.source
• 1903June 27 – American socialite Aida de Acosta, 19, becomes the first woman to fly a powered aircraft solo when she pilots Santos-Dumont's motorized dirigible, "No. 9", from Paris to Château de Bagatelle in France.source
• 1904January 25 – Halford Mackinder presents a paper on "The Geographical Pivot of History" to the Royal Geographical Society of London in which he formulates the Heartland Theory, originating the study of geopolitics.source
• 1904September 26 – New Zealand dolphin Pelorus Jack is individually protected by Order in Council under the Sea Fisheries Act.source
• 1904December 3 – Charles Dillon Perrine discovers Jupiter's largest irregular satellite, later called Himalia, at California's Lick Observatory.source
• 1905January 6 – The Lick Observatory announces the discovery on 3 December 1904 of a sixth moon of Jupiter, made by their astronomer Charles D. Perrine.source
• 1905March 13 – Mata Hari introduces her exotic dance act in the Musée Guimet, Paris.source
• 1905March 18 – Albert Einstein submits his paper "On a heuristic viewpoint concerning the production and transformation of light", in which he explains the photoelectric effect using the notion of light quanta, for publication.source
• 1905April 20 – The largest ocean liner in the world at this time, the German SS Amerika is launched.source
• 1905April 30 – Albert Einstein completes his doctoral dissertation, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions (submitted July 30 to the University of Zurich).source
• 1905May 11 – Albert Einstein submits for publication his paper "Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen" ("On the Motion of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid, as Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat"), based on his doctoral research, delineating a stochastic model of Brownian motion.source
• 1905June 30 – Albert Einstein submits for publication his paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", establishing his theory of special relativity.source
• 1905August 30 – A solar eclipse takes place, with greatest visibility in North Africa.source
• 1905September 27 – Albert Einstein submits for publication his paper "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", in which he puts forward the idea of mass–energy equivalence by publishing the equation E = mc 2 (published November 21).source
• 1906February 7 – is launched, sparking a naval race between Britain and Germany.source
• 1906June 7 – Cunard liner is launched in Glasgow, as the world's largest ship.source
• 1906September 20 – The RMS Mauretania is launched on the River Tyne, becoming the world's largest ship.source
• 1907The Diamond Sūtra, a woodblock printed Buddhist scripture dated 868, is discovered by Aurel Stein in the Mogao Caves in China; it is "the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book".source
• 1907November 16 – British Cunard Line passenger liner RMS Mauretania, the world's largest and fastest at this date, sets out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York.source
• 1907The Moine Thrust Belt in Scotland is identified, one of the first to be discovered anywhere.source
• 1908January 3 – A total solar eclipse is visible in the Pacific Ocean and is the 46th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 130.source
• 1908March 29 – French aviator Henri Farman makes the world's first flight with a passenger, Léon Delagrange.source
• 1908Clifford W. Beers's memoir of psychiatric abuse, A Mind That Found Itself, was published.source
• 1908June 28 – An annular solar eclipse is visible from Central America, North America, Atlantic Ocean and Africa and is the 33rd solar eclipse of Solar Saros 135.source
• 1908June 30 (June 17 OS) – The Tunguska event near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, Russian Empire, is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment, at an altitude of 5 – 10 above the Earth's surface.source
• 1908July 8 – French aviator Léon Delagrange makes the world's first flight with a female passenger, his partner and fellow sculptor Thérèse Peltier.source
• 1908November 25 – The Christian Science Monitor newspaper is first published, in the United States.source
• 1908December 23 – A hybrid solar eclipse is visible from Atlantic Ocean and is the 23rd solar eclipse of Solar Saros 140.source
• 1909February 5 – Leo Baekeland announces the creation of bakelite hard thermosetting plastic.source
• 1909May 19 – Russian ballet is brought to the Western world when the Ballets Russes opens a tour produced by Sergei Diaghilev at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, with 55 dancers, including Vaslav Nijinsky.source
• 1910January 12 – Great January Comet of 1910 first observed (perihelion: January 17).source
• 1910April 10 – Halley's Comet becomes visible with the naked eye (perihelion: April 20); Earth passes through its tail about May 19 (its next visit will be in 1986).source
• 1910October 20 – The hull of White Star ocean liner is launched, at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast.source
• 1910Infrared photographs are first published by Professor Robert Williams Wood, in the Royal Photographic Society's journal.source
• 1911February 17 – The first "quasi-official" airmail flight occurs, when Fred J. Wiseman carries three letters between Petaluma and Santa Rosa, California.source
• 1911February 18 – The first official air mail flight, second overall, takes place in British India from Allahabad to Naini when Henri Pequet carries 6,500 letters a distance of 13 km.source
• 1911April 8 – Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity; he presents his findings on April 28.source
• 1911May 31 – The hull of the is launched in Belfast, on the same day starts her sea trials.source
• 1911June 14 – departs Southampton, England, for her maiden voyage. On June 15, she arrives in Queenstown, Ireland, to discharge and take up passengers.source
• 1911June 28 – The Nakhla meteorite falls in the Abu Hummus region of Egypt, providing evidence of water on Mars.source
• 1911New Zealand-born British physicist Ernest Rutherford deduces the existence of a compact atomic nucleus from experiments involving Rutherford scattering, proposing the Rutherford model of the atom.source
• 1912January 6 – German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presents his theory of continental drift.source
• 1912April 1 – A partial lunar eclipse takes place, the first of two lunar eclipses this year. It is the 61st lunar eclipse of the 111th Saros cycle, which started with a penumbral lunar eclipse on June 10, 830 AD and will conclude with another penumbral lunar eclipse on July 19, 2092.source
• 1912April 10 – White Star liner departs from Southampton, England, with more than 2,200 passengers and crew on her maiden voyage, bound for New York.source
• 1912April 17 – A hybrid solar eclipse is the 30th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 137.source
• 1912May 23 – The Hamburg America Line's is launched in Hamburg and is the world's largest ship.source
• 1912September 28 – W. C. Handy publishes "The Memphis Blues" in the United States.source
• 1912Edgar Rice Burroughs' character Tarzan first appears in Tarzan of the Apes, in American pulp magazine The All-Story.source
• 1912Sax Rohmer's character Fu Manchu first appears in the first story of The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu in English pulp magazine The Story-Teller.source
• 1912November 11 – William Lawrence Bragg presents his derivation of Bragg's law for the angles for coherent and incoherent scattering from a crystal lattice, creating the field of x-ray crystallography, and making possible the eventual imaging of the double helix of DNA.source
• 1912December 18 – Piltdown Man, thought to be the fossilized skull of a hitherto unknown form of early human, is presented to the Geological Society of London (it is revealed to be a hoax in 1953).source
• 1912Casimir Funk identifies vitamins.source
• 1912The Scoville Unit (used to measure the heat of peppers) is devised and tested by Wilbur Scoville.source
• 1913August 2 – The first known ascent of Mount Olympus in Greece is made by Swiss mountaineers Daniel Baud-Bovy and Frédéric Boissonnas guided by Christos Kakkalos.source
• 1913French physicist Georges Sagnac shows that light propagates at a speed independent of the speed of its source.source
• 1914February 26 – The ocean liner that will become HMHS Britannic, sister to the , is launched at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast.source
• 1914Watchmaker Glycine Watch SA is founded by Eugène Meylan in Switzerland.source
• 1915January 5 – Joseph E. Carberry sets an altitude record of 11,690 ft m, carrying Capt. Benjamin Delahauf Foulois as a passenger, in a fixed-wing aircraft.source
• 1915January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction".source
• 1915March 19 – Pluto is photographed for the first time, but is not recognised for what it is.source
• 1915November 25 – Albert Einstein presents part of his theory of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.source
• 1916The toggle light switch is invented, by William J. Newton and Morris Goldberg.source
• 1916Gustav Holst composes The Planets, Opus 32.source
• 1916Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale is collected posthumously and published.source
• 1916Louis Enricht claims he has a substitute for gasoline.source
• 1917May 13–October 13 (at monthly intervals) – 10-year-old Lúcia Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto report experiencing a series of Marian apparitions near Fátima, Portugal, which become known as Our Lady of Fátima.source
• 1918June 8 – V603 Aquilae, the brightest nova observed since Kepler's of 1604, is discovered.source
• 1918July 14 – The film The Glorious Adventure is released in the United States, featuring Mammy Lou, who becomes one of the oldest people ever to star in a film, at a claimed age of 114.source
• 1919May 29 – Eddington experiment: Einstein's theory of general relativity is tested by Arthur Eddington's observation of the "bending of light" during a total solar eclipse in Príncipe, and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil (confirmed November 19).source
• 1919July 2–6 – British airship R34 makes the first transatlantic flight by dirigible, and the first westbound flight, from RAF East Fortune, Scotland, to Mineola, New York.source
• 1919July 28 – The International Astronomical Union is founded in Paris, France.source
• 1920January 13 – The New York Times ridicules American rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard, which it will rescind following the launch of Apollo 11 in 1969.source
• 1920March 18 – Greece begins using the Gregorian calendar.source
• 1920March 26 – American fiction writer F. Scott Fitzgerald makes his name with publication of This Side of Paradise.source
• 1920May 7 – Mexican Revolution: Venustiano Carranza leaves Mexico City in a large train.source
• 1921January 25 – Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci is righted in Taranto Harbour.source
• 1921May 5 – Chanel No. 5 perfume launched by Coco Chanel.source
• 1921July 27 – Researchers at the University of Toronto, led by biochemist Frederick Banting, announce the discovery of the hormone insulin.source
• 1922February 14 – Baragoola, the last of the Binngarra class Manly ferries, is launched at Balmain, New South Wales.source
• 1922March 4 – The silent horror film Nosferatu is premièred at the Berlin Zoological Garden in Germany.source
• 1922April 12 – The United Kingdom's Prince of Wales arrives in Yokohama aboard HMS Renown and rides by train to Tokyo, starting a one-month visit to Japan.source
• 1922September 17 – Dutch cyclist Piet Moeskops becomes world champion sprinter.source
• 1923February 5 – Australian cricketer Bill Ponsford makes 429 runs to break the world record for the highest first-class cricket score for the first time in his third match at this level, at Melbourne Cricket Ground, giving the Victoria cricket team an innings total of 1,059.source
• 1923April 12 – The Kandersteg International Scout Centre comes into existence in Switzerland.source
• 1924October 12–15 – Zeppelin LZ-126 makes a transatlantic delivery flight from Friedrichshafen, Germany, to Lakehurst, New Jersey.source
• 1924October – The skull of the Taung Child is discovered in South Africa.source
• 1924December 30 – American astronomer Edwin Hubble announces that Andromeda, previously believed to be a nebula, is actually another galaxy, and that the Milky Way is only one of many such galaxies in the universe.source
• 1925July 29 – Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Pascual Jordan published their Umdeutung paper, reporting a breakthrough in quantum physics, in Zeitschrift für Physik in Germany.source
• 1926March 16 – Robert H. Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.source
• 1926May 12 – Roald Amundsen and his crew fly over the North Pole, in the airship Norge.source
• 1927January 10 – Fritz Lang's futuristic film Metropolis is released in Germany.source
• 1927February – Werner Heisenberg formulates his famous uncertainty principle, while employed as a lecturer at Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen.source
• 1927March 29 – Henry Segrave breaks the land speed record, driving the Sunbeam 1000 hp at Daytona Beach, Florida.source
• 1927May 20–21 – Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo, nonstop transatlantic airplane flight, from New York City to Paris, France, in his single-engined aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis.source
• 1927June 4–6 – Clarence Chamberlin and Charles Albert Levine take off from Roosevelt Field, New York, and fly to Eisleben, Germany, in the Wright-Bellanca WB-2 Columbia aircraft Miss Columbia, two weeks after Charles Lindbergh's historic solo flight.source
• 1927June 29 – Solar eclipse of June 29, 1927: A total eclipse of the sun takes place over Wales, northern England, southern Scotland, Norway, northern Sweden, northmost Finland, and the northmost extremes of Russia.source
• 1927July 1 – The Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration (FDIA) is established as a United States federal agency.source
• 1927October – Niels Bohr presents his theoretical principle of complementarity at the Fifth Solvay Conference on Physics.source
• 1927December 17 – Australian cricketer Bill Ponsford makes 437 runs to break his own world record for the highest first-class cricket score at Melbourne Cricket Ground.source
• 1928January – British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly demonstrating that DNA is the genetic material.source
• 1928March 21 – Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for his first transatlantic flight.source
• 1928April 19 – Publication of the original Oxford English Dictionary is completed after 70 years with issue of the last section ("wise – wyze") in Oxford.source
• 1928May 15 – The animated short Plane Crazy is released by Disney Studios in Los Angeles, featuring the first appearances of Mickey and Minnie Mouse (in a non-distributed film).source
• 1928June 17 – 18 – Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to make a successful transatlantic flight, as a passenger in a Fokker F.VIIb/3m piloted by Wilmer Stultz, from Newfoundland to Wales.source
• 1929July 27 – The Red Crescent is adopted as an additional emblem of the League of Red Cross Societies.source
• 1929October 18 – On appeal from the Supreme Court of Canada on behalf of "The Famous Five" Canadian women in the landmark case of Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General), the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the United Kingdom announces that women are "persons" under the British North America Acts, and thus eligible for appointment to the Senate of Canada.source
• 1929November 1 – An annular solar eclipse is seen over the Atlantic Ocean and Africa.source
• 1929November 29 – Bernt Balchen, U.S. Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Captain Ashley McKinley and Harold June become the first to fly over the South Pole.source
• 1930January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will be on January 1, 2257, at .source
• 1930February 18 – While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh confirms the existence of Pluto, a celestial body considered a planet until redefined as a dwarf planet in 2006.source
• 1930April 17 – Neoprene is invented by DuPont.source
• 1930May 24 – Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Australia, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).source
• 1930July 11 – Australian cricketer Don Bradman scores a world record 309 runs in one day, on his way to the highest individual Test innings of 334, during a Test match against England.source
• 1930July 29 – British airship R100 sets out for a successful 78-hour passage to Canada.source
• 1930December 24 – In London, inventor Harry Grindell Matthews demonstrates his device to project pictures on clouds.source
• 1930Bernhard Schmidt invents the Schmidt camera.source
• 1931January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics.source
• 1931January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa.source
• 1931November 26 – Heavy hydrogen, later named deuterium, is discovered by American chemist Harold Urey.source
• 1932March 1 – Japan installs Puyi as puppet emperor of Manchukuo.source
• 1932March 20 – The Graf Zeppelin airship begins a regular route between Germany and South America.source
• 1932April 14 – John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, at the Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cambridge (England), focus a proton beam on lithium and split its nucleus ("splitting the atom").source
• 1932May 10 – James Chadwick, working at the Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cambridge, reports the existence of the neutron.source
• 1932May 25 – Goofy makes his appearance in the Disney animated short Mickey's Revue.source
• 1932August 1 – The second International Polar Year, an international scientific collaboration, begins.source
• 1932August 2 – The first positron is discovered by Carl D. Anderson.source
• 1932August 18 – Auguste Piccard reaches an altitude of 16197 m ft with a hot air balloon.source
• 1932August 31 – A total solar eclipse is visible from northern Canada through northeastern Vermont, New Hampshire, southwestern Maine and the Capes of Massachusetts.source
• 1932November 30 – The Polish Cipher Bureau breaks the German Enigma cipher.source
• 1932British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane publishes The Causes of Evolution, unifying the findings of Mendelian genetics with those of evolutionary science.source
• 1932Zero-length springs are invented, revolutionizing seismometers and gravimeters.source
• 1932Walter B. Pitkin publishes Life Begins at Forty in the United States.source
• 1933May 5 – The detection by Karl Jansky of radio waves from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is reported in The New York Times. The discovery leads to the birth of radio astronomy.source
• 1933July 22 – Wiley Post becomes the first person to fly solo around the world, landing at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, after traveling eastbound 15596 mi km in 7 days 18 hours 45 minutes.source
• 1933October 17 – Scientist Albert Einstein arrives from Europe in the United States, where he settles permanently as a refugee from Nazi Germany and takes up a position at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.source
• 1934October 20–November 5 – The MacRobertson Air Race is flown from RAF Mildenhall in England to Melbourne, Australia, to celebrate the centenary of the state of Victoria. The overall winner is the British de Havilland DH.88 Comet G-ACSS Grosvenor House, flown by C. W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black.source
• 1934The sonoluminescence effect is discovered, at the University of Cologne.source
• 1935January 12 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to successfully complete a solo flight from Hawaii to California, a distance of 2408 mi.source
• 1935February 26 – Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrates the use of radar to detect aircraft, at Daventry in the UK.source
• 1936February 4 – Radium E (bismuth-210) becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.source
• 1936May 28 - Alan Turing submits "On Computable Numbers", proving the undecidability of the Halting problem and the decision problem for logic. Computer scientist Avi Wigderson called this paper "easily the most influential math paper in history".source
• 1936June 19 – The total solar eclipse of June 19, 1936 is visible in Greece, Turkey, Russia and Japan. It is part of Solar Saros 126; Gamma is a value of 0.53889.source
• 1936July 4 – First publication recognizing stress as a biological condition.source
• 1936October 19 – H. R. Ekins, reporter for the New York World-Telegram, wins a race to travel around the world on commercial airline flights, beating Dorothy Kilgallen of the New York Journal and Leo Kieran of The New York Times. The flight takes 18½ days.source
• 1936Nestlé introduce the white chocolate Milkybar (called Galak in Continental Europe and elsewhere).source
• 1937June 8 – The first total solar eclipse to exceed 7 minutes of totality, in over 800 years, is visible in the Pacific and Peru.source
• 1937December 4 – The Dandy comic is first published in Scotland; it continued until 2012 as a physical publication, then online until 2013.source
• 1938April 18 – Superman first appears in Action Comics #1 (cover date June). The date is established in court documents released during the legal battle over the rights to Superman (on April 18, 2018, DC Comics released Action Comics #1000).source
• 1938July 14 – Howard Hughes sets a new record, by completing a 91-hour airplane flight around the world.source
• 1938July 18 – Wrong Way Corrigan takes off from New York, ostensibly heading for California. He lands in Ireland instead.source
• 1938October 27 – DuPont announces a name for its new synthetic yarn: "nylon".source
• 1938December 17 – Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of uranium, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear power, which marks the beginning of the Atomic Age.source
• 1938Herbert E. Ives and G. R. Stilwell execute the Ives–Stilwell experiment, showing that ions radiate at frequencies affected by their motion.source
• 1939January 1 – The Protection of Young Persons Act, passed on April 30, 1938, the Working Hours Regulations.source
• 1939January 6 – Otto Hahn's discoveries in the field of nuclear fission are published in Naturwissenschaften.source
• 1939January 7 – French physicist Marguerite Perey identifies francium, the last chemical element first discovered in nature.source
• 1939January 14 – Norway claims Queen Maud Land in Antarctica.source
• 1939July 27 – The first recorded snow falls in Auckland, New Zealand, since records began in 1853.source
• 1939November 1–2 – WWII: Physicist Hans Ferdinand Mayer writes the Oslo Report on German weapons systems, and passes it to the British Secret Intelligence Service.source
• 1939Kirlian photography is invented by Semyon Kirlian.source
• 1940February 27 – The radioactive isotope carbon-14 is discovered by Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben at the University of California, Berkeley.source
• 1940Plutonium is first synthesized in the laboratory, by a team led by Glenn T. Seaborg and Edwin McMillan, at the University of California, Berkeley.source
• 1940In Korea, the Hunminjeongeum (1446) is discovered, explaining the basis of the Hangul alphabet.source
• 1941January 1 – Thailand's Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram decrees January 1 as the official start of the Thai solar calendar new year (thus the previous year that began April 1 had only 9 months).source
• 1941January 4 – The short subject Elmer's Pet Rabbit is released, marking the second appearance of Bugs Bunny, and also the first to have his name on a title card.source
• 1941February 23 – Glenn T. Seaborg and associates isolate and discover plutonium, at the University of California, Berkeley.source
• 1941May 10 – Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland, claiming to be on a peace mission.source
• 1941May 15 – Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak begins, as the New York Yankees' center fielder goes 1 for 4 against Chicago White Sox pitcher Eddie Smith in baseball.source
• 1941June 20 – Walt Disney's live-action/animated feature The Reluctant Dragon is released.source
• 1941July 19 – The Tom and Jerry cartoon short The Midnight Snack is released; it is the second appearance for the duo, and the first in which they are officially named.source
• 1941The word "Teenager" is first recorded in print as a singular conjoined noun, in Popular Science magazine (U.S.)source
• 1941October 21 – Comic book superheroine Wonder Woman, created by William Moulton Marston and H. G. Peter, makes her first appearance in All Star Comics #8, "Introducing Wonder Woman", in the US (cover date December 1941).source
• 1941October 23 – Walt Disney's fourth animated film Dumbo is released in the United States.source
• 1941A task force of 6 aircraft carriers, commanded by Japanese Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, leaves Hitokapu Bay for Pearl Harbor, under strict radio silence.source
• 1942March 4 – WWII: Operation K – The Japanese launch an unsuccessful attack carried out by two Kawanishi H8K ("Emily") flying boats at Pearl Harbor. This is the longest distance ever undertaken by a two-plane bombing mission, and one of the longest bombing sorties ever planned without fighter escort.source
• 1942German scientists under Ernst Steinhoff at Peenemünde Army Research Center test a 12-ton rocket (known later as the V-2 rocket) with a one-ton warhead.source
• 1942The United States Eighth Air Force inauspiciously flies its first mission in Europe, using borrowed British planes, and bombs targets in the Netherlands, such as De Kooy Airfield, attached to the Den Helder Naval Base. Three of six aircraft return; For this mission, Captain Charles C. Kegelman is the first member of the Force to be awarded the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross.source
• 1942August 20 – Plutonium is isolated for the first time, at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago.source
• 1942October 3 – The first A-4 rocket is successfully launched from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. The rocket flies 147 kilometers and reaches an altitude of 84.5 kilometers, becoming the first man-made object to reach space.source
• 1942December 2 – Manhattan Project: Below the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction (a coded message, "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world" is then sent to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt).source
• 1942The battleship is launched at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.source
• 1943August 4 – WWII: The aircraft carrier is launched at Newport News, Virginia.source
• 1944January 25 – A total solar eclipse is visible in Pacific Ocean, South America, Atlantic Ocean and Africa, the 48th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 130.source
• 1944British Royal Air Force Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade's bomber is hit over Germany, and he has to bail out without a parachute from a height of over 4,000 m 0. Tree branches interrupt his fall and he lands safely on deep snow.source
• 1944June 20 – WWII: A V-2 rocket becomes the first man-made object to cross the Kármán line and reach the edge of space.source
• 1944July 20 – The annular solar eclipse of July 20, 1944 is visible in Africa, Indian Ocean, Asia, Pacific Ocean and Australia, and is the 35th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 135.source
• 1944The first V-2 rocket attack on London takes place, launched from The Hague.source
• 1944The first V-2 rocket attack on Antwerp takes place.source
• 1945February 21 – The last V-2 rocket is launched from Peenemünde.source
• 1945Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg is evacuated at about this date.source
• 1945Numerous RAF Lancasters land in Germany to repatriate British prisoners of war. Some 4,500 ex-POWs are flown back to Great Britain over the next 24 hours.source
• 1945August 7 – U.S. President Harry Truman announces the successful atomic bombing of Hiroshima, while he is returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser , in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.source
• 1945October – Arthur C. Clarke puts forward the idea of a geosynchronous communications satellite, in a Wireless World magazine article.source
• 1945November 15 – Harry S. Truman, Clement Attlee and Mackenzie King share nuclear information with the U.N. and call for a United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.source
• 1945November 16 – The United States controversially imports 88 German scientists to help in the production of rocket technology.source
• 1945A team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (led by Charles D. Coryell) discovers chemical element 61, the only one still missing between 1 and 96 on the periodic table, which they will name promethium. Found by analysis of fission products of irradiated uranium fuel, its discovery is not made public until 1947.source
• 1946January 10 – Project Diana bounces radar waves off the Moon, measuring the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon, and proves that communication is possible between Earth and outer space, effectively opening the Space Age.source
• 1946May 10 – The first V-2 rocket to be successfully launched in the United States is fired from White Sands Missile Range.source
• 1946July 1 – Nuclear testing: Operation Crossroads, a series of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in Micronesia, is initiated by the detonation of Able at an altitude of 520 feet (158 m).source
• 1946The 20 mm M61 Vulcan Gatling gun contract is released.source
• 1946The Magic 8 Ball is invented by Albert C. Carter and Abe Bookman.source
• 1947February 20 – The U.S. Army Ordnance Corps Hermes program V-2 rocket Blossom I is launched into space, carrying plant material and fruitflies, the first living things to enter space.source
• 1947February 21 – Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", his Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America in New York City.source
• 1947April 7 – The largest recorded sunspot group appears on the solar surface.source
• 1947April 18 – The British Royal Navy detonates 6,800 tons of explosives, in an attempt to demolish the fortified island of Heligoland, Germany, in another of the largest man-made non-nuclear explosions in history.source
• 1947June 24 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. Over 800 copycat sightings are reported throughout the US in the coming following weeks.source
• 1947June – The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is introduced.source
• 1947July 8 – Roswell UFO incident: A supposedly downed extraterrestrial spacecraft is reportedly found near Roswell, New Mexico.source
• 1947July 9 – 'Flying disc' photographs published in Phoenixsource
• 1947July 11 – The ship Exodus leaves France for Palestine, with 4,500 Jewish Holocaust survivor refugees on board.source
• 1947November 2 – In Long Beach, California, United States, designer and airplane pilot Howard Hughes carries out the one and only flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules ("Spruce Goose"), the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built and flown. This flight only lasts 8 minutes.source
• 1948February 16 – Miranda, innermost of the large moons of Uranus, is discovered by Gerard Kuiper.source
• 1948April 1 – Physicists Ralph Asher Alpher and George Gamow publish the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper, about the Big Bang.source
• 1948May 9 – Solar eclipse of May 9, 1948: An annular solar eclipse is visible in Japan and South Korea, and is the 32nd solar eclipse of Solar Saros 137. This eclipse is very short, lasting just 0.3 seconds. The path width is just about 200 meters wide (approximately 218 yards).source
• 1948May 29 – The Casimir effect is predicted by Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir.source
• 1948June 3 – The Palomar Observatory telescope is finished in California.source
• 1948June 11 – The first monkey astronaut, Albert I, is launched into space from White Sands, New Mexico.source
• 1948June 26 – The Berlin Airlift begins.source
• 1948July–October – Claude E. Shannon publishes "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in Bell System Technical Journal (US), regarded as a foundation of information theory and all modern digital communications, which also leads to the adoption of the term bit.source
• 1948August 14 – 1948 Ashes series: Australian batsman Don Bradman, playing his last Test cricket match, against England at The Oval, is bowled by Eric Hollies for a duck (leaving his career Test batting average at 99.94); however, "The Invincibles" win the match by an innings and 149 runs, and The Ashes 4–0.source
• 1948October 5 – The International Union for the Protection of Nature (later known as the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN) is established in Fontainebleau, France.source
• 1948October 10 – The R-1 missile on test becomes the first Soviet launch to enter space.source
• 1948November 16 – Operation Magic Carpet to transport Jews from Yemen to Israel begins.source
• 1948November 20 – Geoffrey B. Orbell rediscovers the Takahē, last seen 50 years previously, near Lake Te Anau, New Zealand.source
• 1948December 6 – Richard Nixon displays microfilm from the "Pumpkin Papers" to the press.source
• 1948Charles Warrell creates the first I-Spy books in the United Kingdom.source
• 1948The last recorded sighting is made of the Caspian tiger, in Kazakh SSR.source
• 1949March 28 – English astronomer Fred Hoyle coins the term Big Bang (although describing the model as "unsatisfactory") during a BBC Third Programme radio broadcast.source
• 1949May 1 – Nereid, a moon of Neptune, is discovered by Gerard Kuiper.source
• 1949June 14 – Albert II, a rhesus monkey aboard U.S. Hermes project V-2 rocket Blossom IVB, becomes the first primate to enter space. He is killed on impact at return.source
• 1949July 27 – The de Havilland Comet, the world's first jet-powered airliner, makes its first flight, in England.source
• 1949November 12 – The Volkswagen Type 2 panel van is unveiled in Germany.source
• 1949D. R. Kaprekar discovers the convergence property of the number 6174.source
• 1950April 14 – Influential British adventure comic Eagle is launched.source
• 1950May 14 – The Huntsville Times runs the headline "Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon."source
• 1950October 2 – The comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz is first published in seven U.S. newspapers.source
• 1950October – Turing test published.source
• 1950November 10 – A U.S. Air Force B-50 Superfortress bomber, experiencing an in-flight emergency, jettisons and detonates a Mark 4 nuclear bomb over Quebec, Canada (the device lacks its plutonium core).source
• 1950Canadians Harry Wasylyk, Larry Hansen and Frank Plomp introduce the plastic bin bag, for garbage collection.source
• 1951July 22 – Soviet space dogs Dezik and Tsygan become the first to enter space, in a 15-minute sub-orbital spaceflight in an R-1 rocket, being safely parachuted back to earth.source
• 1951September 26–28 – A blue sun is seen over Europe: the effect is due to ash coming from the Canadian forest fires 4 months previously.source
• 1951December 20 – The World Meteorological Organization becomes a specialized agency of the United Nations.source
• 1952March 22 – Wernher von Braun publishes the first in his series of articles titled Man Will Conquer Space Soon!, including ideas for crewed flights to Mars and the Moon.source
• 1952May 3 – U.S. lieutenant colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict land a plane at the geographic North Pole.source
• 1952August 26 – A British passenger jet makes a return crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in the same day.source
• 1952November 20 – The first official passenger flight over the North Pole is made, from Los Angeles to Copenhagen.source
• 1952Supramar launches the first commercial high-speed craft, a hydrofoil.source
• 1953January 14 – The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon.source
• 1953February 28 – James Watson and Francis Crick of Britain's University of Cambridge announce their discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule.source
• 1953April 25 – Francis Crick and James Watson publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid", their description of the double helix structure of DNA.source
• 1953September 4 – The discovery of REM sleep is first published, by researchers Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman.source
• 1953October 10 – Roland (Monty) Burton wins the 1953 London to Christchurch air race, in under 23 hours flying time.source
• 1954January 21 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the , is launched in Groton, Connecticut, by First Lady of the United States Mamie Eisenhower.source
• 1954March 9 – American journalists Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly produce a 30-minute See It Now documentary, entitled A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy.source
• 1954April 7 – Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech, during a news conference.source
• 1954April 12 – Bill Haley & His Comets record "Rock Around the Clock" in their first session for American Decca in New York City; it is released on May 20 as a B-side, but only in 1955 becomes a #1 hit, helping to initiate the rock and roll craze.source
• 1954April 14 – A Soviet spy ring in Australia is unveiled.source
• 1954April 26 – Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is released in Japan.source
• 1954July 1 – The United States officially begins using the international unit of the nautical mile, equal to 6,076.11549 ft. or 1,852 meters.source
• 1954September 14 – The Soviet Union carries out the Totskoye nuclear exercise.source
• 1954October 18 – The comic strip Hi and Lois, by Mort Walker and Dik Browne, is launched in the United States.source
• 1955March 20 – The movie adaptation of Evan Hunter's novel Blackboard Jungle premieres in the United States, featuring the famous single "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets. Teenagers jump from their seats to dance to the song.source
• 1955July 7 – The New Zealand Special Air Service is formed.source
• 1955September 16 – A Soviet Navy Zulu-class submarine becomes the first to launch a ballistic missile.source
• 1955November 19 – C. Northcote Parkinson first propounds 'Parkinson's law', in The Economist.source
• 1955December 22 – American cytogeneticist Joe Hin Tjio discovers the correct number of human chromosomes, forty-six.source
• 1956April 14 – Videotape is first demonstrated at the 1956 NARTB (modern-day NAB) convention in Chicago, United States, by Ampex. It is the demonstration of the first practical and commercially successful videotape format known as 2" Quadruplex.source
• 1956May 9 – Manaslu, eighth highest mountain in the world (in the Nepalese Himalayas) is first ascended, by a Japanese team.source
• 1956June 5 – The text of Nikita Khrushchev's February attack on Stalin's reputation, "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", is first published in the West, in The New York Times.source
• 1956July 4 – An American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft makes its first flight over the Soviet Union.source
• 1956July 31 – Cricket: Jim Laker sets an extraordinary record at Old Trafford in the fourth Test between England and Australia, taking 19 wickets in a first class match (the previous best was 17).source
• 1956October 31 – A United States Navy team becomes the third group to reach the South Pole (arriving by air), and commences construction of the first permanent Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.source
• 1957February 16 – Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal opens at cinemas in Sweden.source
• 1957April 30 – The solar eclipse of April 30, 1957, a non-central annular solar eclipse that does not have a northern path limit, takes place. This is the last of 57 umbral solar eclipses of Solar Saros 118.source
• 1957April – IBM sells the first compiler for the Fortran scientific programming language.source
• 1957May 15 – Stanley Matthews plays his final international game, ending an English record international career of almost 23 years.source
• 1957July 1 – The International Geophysical Year begins.source
• 1957July 1 – Hugh Everett III publishes the first scientifically founded many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.source
• 1957July 16 – United States Marine Major John Glenn flies an F8U supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds, setting a new transcontinental speed record.source
• 1957July 23 – Asghar Khan becomes the first native Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Air Force and the world's youngest Air Vice Marshal at 36 years old.source
• 1957July 29 – The International Atomic Energy Agency is established.source
• 1957October 1 – The Africanized bee is accidentally released in Brazil.source
• 1957October 4 – Space Age – Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.source
• 1957October 9 – The Jodrell Bank radio telescope in Cheshire, England, is controlled from its control room for the first time.source
• 1957October 11 – The orbit of the last stage of the R-7 Semyorka rocket (carrying Sputnik I) is first successfully calculated on an IBM 704 computer at the MIT Computation Center as part of Operation Moonwatch, Cambridge, Massachusetts.source
• 1957November 3 – Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2, with the first animal to orbit the Earth, a dog named Laika, on board. There is no technology available to return her to Earth.source
• 1957November 13 – Gordon Gould invents the laser.source
• 1957December 6 – The first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite fails, when the Vanguard rocket blows up on the launch pad.source
• 1957Three new neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces are released: Folio (designed by Konrad Bauer and Walter Baum), Neue Haas Grotesk (designed by Max Miedinger) and Univers (designed by Adrian Frutiger); all will be influential in the International Typographic Style of graphic design.source
• 1958January 4 – Sputnik 1 (launched on October 4, 1957) falls towards Earth from its orbit and burns up.source
• 1958February 2 – The Falcons aerobatic team of the Pakistan Air Force led by Wg Cdr Mitty Masud set a world record performing a 16 aircraft diamond loop in F-86 Sabres. 30,000 people are in attendance including President Iskandar Ali Mirza, General Ayub Khan, Air Marshal Asghar Khan, Air Commodore Nur Khan, C-in-C Turkish Air Force Hamdullah Suphi Göker, Chief of the Iraqi Air Force Abdul Kadhim Abaddi, Chief of the Imperial Iranian Air Force and Chief Guest King Zahir Shah in whose honor the performance has been organized.source
• 1958March 17 – The United States launches the Vanguard 1 satellite.source
• 1958April 13 – The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 (launched November 3, 1957) disintegrates during reentry from orbit.source
• 1958May 1 – U.S. space scientist James van Allen announces the discovery of Earth's magnetosphere.source
• 1958May 15 – The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3.source
• 1958May 18 – A U.S. Lockheed F-104 Starfighter sets a world speed record of 1404.19 mi/h km/h.source
• 1958August 6 – Australian athlete Herb Elliott clips almost 3 seconds off the world record for the mile run at Santry Stadium, Dublin, recording a time of 3 minutes 54.5 seconds.source
• 1958August 17 – The first Thor-Able rocket is launched, carrying Pioneer 0, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 17. The launch fails due to a first stage malfunction.source
• 1958September 30 – The U.S.S.R. performs a nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya.source
• 1958October 1 – NASA starts operations and replaces the NACA in the United States.source
• 1958October 4 – The British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) uses one of its new de Havilland Comet 4s, G-APDB, to make the first commercial transatlantic flight by a jet airliner, from London to New York International Airport, Anderson Field via Gander.source
• 1958October 11 – Pioneer 1, the second and most successful of the 3 project Able space probes, becomes the first spacecraft launched by the newly formed NASA.source
• 1958December 15 – Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes of Bell Laboratories publish a paper in Physical Review Letters setting out the principles of the optical laser.source
• 1958December 18 – The Bell XV-3 Tiltrotor makes the first true mid-air transition from vertical helicopter-type flight to fully level fixed-wing flight.source
• 1958December 18 – The United States launches SCORE, the world's first communications satellite.source
• 1958December 19 – A message from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower is broadcast from the SCORE satellite.source
• 1958Denatonium, the bitterest substance known, is discovered. It is used as an aversive agent in products such as bleach to reduce the risk of children drinking them.source
• 1959January 2 – Soviet lunar probe Luna 1 is the first human-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reaches the vicinity of Earth's Moon, where it was intended to crash-land, but instead becomes the first spacecraft to go into heliocentric orbit.source
• 1959February 6 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.source
• 1959February 17 – Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, is launched to measure cloud cover for the United States Navy.source
• 1959March 3 – Lunar probe Pioneer 4 becomes the first American object to escape dominance by Earth's gravity.source
• 1959April 9 – NASA announces its selection of seven military pilots to become the first U.S. astronauts, later known as the 'Mercury Seven'.source
• 1959May 28 – Jupiter AM-18 rocket launches two primates, Miss Baker and Miss Able, into space from Cape Canaveral in the United States along with living microorganisms and plant seeds. Successful recovery makes them the first living beings to return safely to Earth after space flight.source
• 1959June 9 – The USS George Washington is launched as the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles.source
• 1959July 7 – At 14:28 UT Venus occults the star Regulus. The rare event (which will next occur on October 1, 2044) is used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of Venus' atmosphere.source
• 1959July 17 – The first skull of Australopithecus is discovered by Louis Leakey and his wife Mary in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania.source
• 1959July 25 – The British SR.N1 hovercraft crosses the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over 2 hours, on the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot's first crossing by heavier-than-air craft.source
• 1959August 14 – Explorer 6 sends the first picture of Earth from orbit.source
• 1959September 14 – Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 becomes the first human-made object to crash on the Moon.source
• 1959October 7 – The Soviet probe Luna 3 sends back the first ever images of the far side of the Moon.source
• 1959October 13 – The United States launches research satellite Explorer 7.source
• 1959The current (as of 2024) design of the Japanese 10 yen coin is put into circulation.source
• 1960January 22 – Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descend into the Mariana Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste, reaching a depth of 10,911 m ft, and become the first human beings to reach the lowest spot on Earth.source
• 1960April 1 – The United States launches the first weather satellite, TIROS-1.source
• 1960May 15 – The satellite Sputnik 4 is launched into orbit by the Soviet Union.source
• 1960Sputnik program: The satellite Sputnik 5 is launched, with the dogs Belka and Strelka (the Russian for "Squirrel" and "Little Arrow"), 40 mice, two rats and a variety of plants. This satellite returns to Earth the next day and all animals are recovered safely.source
• 1960September 8 – In Huntsville, Alabama, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (which had been activated by NASA on July 1).source
• 1960December 1 – A Soviet satellite containing live animals (dogs Pcholka and Mushka) and plants is launched into orbit. Due to a malfunction, it burns up during re-entry.source
• 1960December 13 – The U.S. Navy's Commander Leroy Heath (pilot) and Lieutenant Larry Monroe (bombardier/navigator) establish a world flight-altitude record of 91,450 ft m, with payload, in an A-5 Vigilante bomber carrying 1000 kg lb, and better the previous world record by over 4 mi km.source
• 1961January 31 – Ham, a 37-pound (17-kg) male chimpanzee, is rocketed into space aboard Mercury-Redstone 2, in a test of the Project Mercury spacecraft, designed to carry United States astronauts into space.source
• 1961February 1 – The United States tests its first Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile.source
• 1961February 12 – The USSR launches Venera 1 towards Venus.source
• 1961February 14 – Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized in Berkeley, California.source
• 1961February 15 – The total solar eclipse of February 15, 1961, visible in the southern part of Europe, occurs.source
• 1961March 8 – The first U.S. Polaris submarines arrive at Holy Loch in Scotland.source
• 1961April 12 – Vostok 1: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space, orbiting the Earth once before parachuting to the ground.source
• 1961May 5 – Mercury program: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space, aboard Mercury-Redstone 3.source
• 1961May 15 – J. Heinrich Matthaei alone performs the Poly-U-Experiment, and is the first person to recognize and understand the genetic code. This is the birthdate of modern genetics.source
• 1961May 19 – Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (however, the probe lost contact with Earth a month earlier, and does not send back any data).source
• 1961May 25 – Apollo program: U.S. President Kennedy announces, before a special joint session of Congress, that the United States "should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth".source
• 1961June 16 – Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects to the West at Paris–Le Bourget Airport while on tour with the Kirov Ballet.source
• 1961July 5 – The first Israeli rocket, Shavit 2, is launched.source
• 1961July 19 – Trans World Airlines becomes the first airline to show regularly scheduled movies during its flights, presenting By Love Possessed to 1st-class passengers.source
• 1961July 21 – Mercury program: Gus Grissom, piloting the Mercury-Redstone 4 spacecraft Liberty Bell 7, becomes the second American to go into space (sub-orbital). After splashdown, the hatch prematurely opens, and the spacecraft sinks (it is recovered in 1999).source
• 1961August 6 – Vostok 2: Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov becomes the second human to orbit the Earth, and the first to be in outer space for more than one day.source
• 1961August 7 – Vostok 2 lands in the Soviet Union.source
• 1961August 11 – An annular solar eclipse is visible from the Southern Ocean.source
• 1961September 19 – American couple Barney and Betty Hill claim that they saw a UFO as they returned from a trip to Canada through New Hampshire where they live. They later claim that they were abducted by aliens, among the first claimants of such an abduction.source
• 1961November 9 – Robert White records a world air speed record of 6587 km/h, in an X-15.source
• 1962January 26 – U.S. spacecraft Ranger 3 is launched to study the Moon; it later misses the Moon by 22,000 mi km.source
• 1962February 4 – First successful winter ascent of the Matterhorn's north face, by Hilti von Allmen and Paul Etter, is completed.source
• 1962February 4–5 – During a new moon and solar eclipse, an extremely rare grand conjunction of the classical planets occurs (it includes all five of the naked-eye planets plus the Sun and Moon), all of them within 16° of one another on the ecliptic. The total solar eclipse of February 5, 1962 is visible in Asia, Australia and the Pacific Ocean, and is the 49th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 130.source
• 1962February 10 – Captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, in Berlin.source
• 1962February 20 – Project Mercury: Aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes.source
• 1962April 21 – The Century 21 Exposition World's Fair opens in Seattle, United States. This is also the Opening Day of the Seattle Space Needle.source
• 1962May 6 – A test of a W47 warhead fired from a Polaris missile – the only time a nuclear missile has been test fired with its warhead detonated – occurs near Palmyra Atoll south of Hawaii.source
• 1962May 24 – Project Mercury: Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth 3 times, in the U.S. Aurora 7 space capsule.source
• 1962July 10 – AT&T's Telstar, the world's first commercial communications satellite, is launched into orbit and activated the next day.source
• 1962July 14 – Norma Nolan of Argentina is crowned Miss Universe 1962.source
• 1962July 17 – Nuclear testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation, at the Nevada Test Site.source
• 1962July 22 – Mariner program: The U.S. Mariner 1 spacecraft flies erratically several minutes after launch and has to be destroyed.source
• 1962July 31 – Solar eclipse of July 31, 1962: An annular solar eclipse is visible in South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa and the Indian Ocean, and is the 36th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 135.source
• 1962August 13 – First successful ascent of the Matterhorn's west face, by Renato Daguin and Giovanni Ottin.source
• 1962August 18 – Norway launches its 1st sounding rocket, Ferdinand 1, from Andøya Space Center and becomes a space nation.source
• 1962August 27 – NASA launches the Mariner 2 space probe.source
• 1962September 12 – President John F. Kennedy, in his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech at Rice University, reaffirms that the U.S. will put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.source
• 1962September 29 – The Canadian Alouette 1, the first satellite built outside the United States and the Soviet Union, is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.source
• 1962October 3 – Project Mercury: Mercury-Atlas 8 – U.S. astronaut Walter Schirra orbits the Earth six times, in the Sigma 7 space capsule.source
• 1962November 1 – The Soviet Union begins dismantling its missiles in Cuba.source
• 1962December 14 – U.S. spacecraft Mariner 2 passes by Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to transmit data from another planet.source
• 1963January 9 – A total penumbral lunar eclipse is visible in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia, and is the 56th lunar eclipse of Lunar Saros 114. Gamma has a value of −1.01282. It occurs on the night between Wednesday, January 9 and Thursday, January 10, 1963.source
• 1963January 17 – A last quarter moon occurs between the penumbral lunar eclipse and the annular solar eclipse, only 12 hours, 29 minutes after apogee.source
• 1963January 25 – A large annular solar eclipse covers 99.5% of the Sun and a narrow path (at most 19.6 km (12.2 mi)). It is visible in Chile, Argentina, South Africa and Madagascar, and is the 26th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 140. Gamma has a value of -0.48984.source
• 1963May 2 – Berthold Seliger launches near Cuxhaven a 3-stage rocket with a maximum flight altitude of more than (the only sounding rocket developed in Germany).source
• 1963May 15 – Project Mercury: NASA launches Gordon Cooper on Mercury-Atlas 9, the last Mercury mission (on June 12 NASA Administrator James E. Webb tells Congress the program is complete).source
• 1963May 23 – Fidel Castro visits the Soviet Union.source
• 1963June 13 – The cancellation of Mercury-Atlas 10 effectively ends the United States' crewed spaceflight Project Mercury.source
• 1963June 16 – Vostok 6 carries Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman into space.source
• 1963June 19 – Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, returns to Earth, landing in the Soviet Union.source
• 1963July 19 – American test pilot Joe Walker, flying the X-15, reaches an altitude of 65.8 miles (105.9 kilometers), making it a sub-orbital spaceflight by recognized international standards.source
• 1963July 26 – NASA launches Syncom 2, the world's first geostationary (synchronous) satellite.source
• 1963August 22 – American test pilot Joe Walker again achieves a sub-orbital spaceflight according to international standards, this time by piloting the X-15 to an altitude of 67.0 miles (107.8 kilometers).source
• 1963November 1 – Arecibo Observatory, a radio telescope, officially begins operation in Puerto Rico.source
• 1963December 5 – The Seliger Forschungs-und-Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH demonstrates rockets for military use to military representatives of non-NATO-countries near Cuxhaven. Although these rockets land via parachute at the end of their flight and no allied laws are violated, the Soviet Union protests this action.source
• 1963Harvey Ball invents the ubiquitous smiley face symbol.source
• 1963David H. Frisch and J.H. Smith prove that the radioactive decay of mesons is slowed by their motion (see Einstein's special relativity and general relativity).source
• 1964January 29 – Ranger 6 is launched by the US space agency NASA, on a mission to carry television cameras and crash-land on the Moon.source
• 1964January 29 – The Soviet Union launches two scientific satellites, Elektron I and II, from a single rocket.source
• 1964March 20 – The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.source
• 1964April 8 – The U.S. Gemini 1 is launched, the first unmanned test of the 2-man spacecraft.source
• 1964April 17 – Jerrie Mock completes the first around-the-world airplane flight by a woman. Her solo flight in the Spirit of Columbus, which took 29 1/2 days, took off and landed at the Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio.source
• 1964July 31 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the Moon (images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from Earth-bound telescopes).source
• 1964August 20 – The International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (Intelsat) began to work.source
• 1964October 12 – The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits. The flight is cut short and lands again on October 13 after 16 orbits.source
• 1964November 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 3 spacecraft is launched from Cape Kennedy but fails.source
• 1964November 28 – Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965.source
• 1964Farrington Daniels becomes an early advocate of solar energy in his book Direct Use of the Sun's Energy, published by Yale University Press in the United States.source
• 1964Spring – First recognition of cosmic microwave background radiation as a detectable phenomenon.source
• 1965February 4 – Trofim Lysenko is removed from his post as director of the Institute of Genetics at the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union. Lysenkoist theories are now treated as pseudoscience.source
• 1965February 15 – The maple leaf is adopted as the flag of Canada, replacing the Canadian Red Ensign flag.source
• 1965March 18 – Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov leaves his Voskhod 2 spacecraft for 12 minutes, becoming the first person to walk in space.source
• 1965March 23 – Gemini 3: NASA launches the United States' first 2-person crew (Gus Grissom, John Young) into Earth orbit.source
• 1965April 3 – The world's first space nuclear power reactor, SNAP-10A, is launched by the United States from Vandenberg AFB, California. The reactor operates for 43 days and remains in low Earth orbit.source
• 1965April 6 – The Intelsat I ("Early Bird") communications satellite is launched. It becomes operational May 2 and is placed in commercial service in June.source
• 1965June 3 – Launch of Gemini 4, a 4 day mission during which Ed White performs the first space walk by an American astronaut.source
• 1965July 14 – U.S. spacecraft Mariner 4 flies by Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to return images from the Red Planet.source
• 1965August 21 – NASA launches Gemini 5 (Gordon Cooper, Pete Conrad) on the first 1-week space flight, as well as the first test of fuel cells for electrical power on such a mission.source
• 1965September 18 – Comet Ikeya–Seki is first sighted by Japanese astronomers.source
• 1965September 27 – The largest tanker ship at this time, Tokyo Maru, is launched in Yokohama, Japan.source
• 1965October 21 – Comet Ikeya–Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 km mi from the sun.source
• 1965October 29 – An 80-kiloton nuclear device is detonated at Amchitka Island, Alaska, as part of the Vela Uniform program, code-named Project Long Shot.source
• 1965November 15 – U.S. racer Craig Breedlove sets a new land speed record of 600.601 mi/h km/h.source
• 1965November 16 – Venera program: The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe from Baikonur, Kazakhstan toward Venus (on March 1, 1966, it becomes the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet).source
• 1965November 26 – At the Hammaguir launch facility in the Sahara Desert, France launches a Diamant A rocket with its first satellite, Astérix-1 on board, becoming the third country to enter outer space.source
• 1965November 29 – The Canadian satellite Alouette 2 is launched.source
• 1965December 15 – Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 perform the first controlled rendezvous in Earth orbit.source
• 1965December 21 – The Soviet Union announces that it has shipped rockets to North Vietnam.source
• 1965December 21 – The United Nations adopts the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.source
• 1966February 3 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.source
• 1966March 1 – Soviet space probe Venera 3 crashes on Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.source
• 1966March 16 – NASA spacecraft Gemini 8 (David Scott, Neil Armstrong) conducts the first docking in space, with an Agena target vehicle.source
• 1966March 31 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10, which becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.source
• 1966April 3 – Luna 10 is the first manmade object to enter lunar orbit.source
• 1966April 30 – Regular hovercraft service begins over the English Channel (discontinued in 2000).source
• 1966May 4 – May 1966 lunar eclipse: A penumbral lunar eclipse takes place, the 64th lunar eclipse of Lunar Saros 111.source
• 1966May 25 – Explorer program: Satellite Explorer 32 (Atmosphere Explorer-B) is launched from the United States.source
• 1966May 28 – Boat ride It's a Small World opens at Disneyland.source
• 1966June 2 – Surveyor program: Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on another world.source
• 1966June 5 – Gemini 9A: Gene Cernan completes the second U.S. spacewalk (2 hours, 7 minutes).source
• 1966July 18 – Gemini 10 (John Young, Michael Collins) is launched from the United States. After docking with an Agena target vehicle, the astronauts set a world altitude record of 474 miles (763 km).source
• 1966July 24 – U.N. Secretary General U Thant visits Moscow.source
• 1966August 10 – Lunar Orbiter 1, the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the Moon, is launched.source
• 1966September 12 – Gemini 11 (Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr., Richard F. Gordon Jr) is launched from the United States. The crew performed the first direct-ascent (first orbit) rendezvous with an Agena Target Vehicle, docking with it.source
• 1966November 6 – Lunar Orbiter 2 is launched.source
• 1966November 12 – A total solar eclipse occurs, the 20th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 142.source
• 1966November 15 - Gemini 12 (James A. Lovell, Buzz Aldrin) splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean, 600 km mi east of the Bahamas.source
• 1966November 17 – A spectacular Leonid meteor shower passes over Arizona, at the rate of 2,300 a minute for 20 minutes.source
• 1966Long-term potentiation (LTP), the putative cellular mechanism of learning and memory, is first observed by Terje Lømo in Oslo, Norway.source
• 1967January 15 – Louis Leakey announces the discovery of pre-human fossils in Kenya; he names the species Kenyapithecus africanus.source
• 1967January 27 – Apollo 1: U.S. astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee are killed when fire breaks out in their Apollo spacecraft during a launch pad test.source
• 1967February 5 – Italy's first guided missile cruiser, the Vittorio Veneto, is launched.source
• 1967February 5 – NASA launches Lunar Orbiter 3.source
• 1967February 11 – Burgess Ice Rise, lying off the west coast of Alexander Island, Antarctica, is first mapped by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).source
• 1967February 13 – American researchers discover the Madrid Codices by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Library of Spain.source
• 1967February 25 – Britain's second Polaris missile submarine, HMS Renown, is launched.source
• 1967February 26 – A Soviet nuclear test is conducted at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, Eastern Kazakhstan.source
• 1967March 29 – The first French nuclear submarine, Le Redoutable, is launched.source
• 1967April 20 – The Surveyor 3 probe lands on the Moon.source
• 1967April 29 – Fidel Castro announces that all intellectual property belongs to the people and that Cuba intends to translate and publish technical literature without compensation.source
• 1967May 18 – NASA announces the crew for the Apollo 7 space mission (the first in the Apollo series with a crew): Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele, and R. Walter Cunningham.source
• 1967June 12 – Venera program: Venera 4 is launched by the Soviet Union (the first space probe to analyze another planet's atmosphere and successfully return data).source
• 1967June 14 – Mariner program: Mariner 5 is launched toward Venus.source
• 1967June 25 – 400 million viewers watch Our World, the first live, international, satellite television production. It features the live debut of The Beatles' song "All You Need Is Love".source
• 1967October 18 – The Venera 4 probe descends through the Venusian atmosphere.source
• 1967October 19 – The Mariner 5 probe flies by Venus.source
• 1967October 20 – Patterson–Gimlin film: Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin's famous film of an unidentified animate cryptid, thought to be Bigfoot or Sasquatch, is recorded at Bluff Creek, California.source
• 1967November 9 – Apollo program: NASA launches the first Saturn V rocket, successfully carrying the Apollo 4 test spacecraft from Cape Kennedy into Earth orbit.source
• 1967November 13 – The first of its many UFO sightings is made at Pudasjärvi, Finland.source
• 1967November 28 – The first pulsar to be discovered by Earth observers is found in the constellation of Vulpecula by astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish, and is given the name PSR B1919+21.source
• 1967December 11 – Supersonic airliner Concorde is unveiled in Toulouse, France.source
• 1967December 19 – The Rescue Agreement setting forth rights and obligations in outer space is voted into consensus by the United Nations General Assembly.source
• 1967December 26 – The Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour receives its world première on BBC Television in the UK.source
• 1968April 4 – Apollo program: Apollo-Saturn mission 502 (Apollo 6) is launched, as the second and last uncrewed test-flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle.source
• 1968September 21 – The Soviet Zond 5 uncrewed lunar flyby mission returns to Earth, with its first-of-a-kind biological payload intact.source
• 1968October 11 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo mission (Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, Walter Cunningham). Mission goals include the first live television broadcast from orbit and simulating lunar module rendezvous and docking, using the S-IVB rocket stage as a test target.source
• 1968October 18 – U.S. athlete Bob Beamon breaks the long jump world record by 55 cm / 21 ins at the Olympics in Mexico City. His record stands for 23 years, and remains the second longest jump in history.source
• 1968December 24 – Apollo program: The crewed U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole, as well as having traveled further away from Earth than any people in history. Anders photographs Earthrise. The crew also give a reading from the Book of Genesis.source
• 1969January 16 – First successful docking of two crewed spacecraft in orbit and the first transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another (by a space walk) between Soviet craft Soyuz 5 and Soyuz 4.source
• 1969January 18 – Failure of Soyuz 5's service module to separate correctly causes a near-fatal re-entry (not publicly acknowledged until 1997) but the module makes a hard landing in the Ural Mountains.source
• 1969February 24 – The Mariner 6 Mars probe is launched from the United States.source
• 1969March 3 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 9 (James McDivitt, Rusty Schweickart, David Scott) to test the lunar module.source
• 1969March 13 – Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.source
• 1969March 18 – An annular solar eclipse is visible in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and is the 49th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 129.source
• 1969May 16 – Venera program: Soviet space probe Venera 5 lands on Venus.source
• 1969May 17 – Venera program: Soviet space probe Venera 6 begins to descend into Venus's atmosphere, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure.source
• 1969May 18 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 (Gene Cernan, Tom Stafford, John Young) is launched. It is to be a full rehearsal for the Moon landing, stopping 15 kilometers short of actually reaching the lunar surface.source
• 1969May 22 – Apollo program: Apollo 10's lunar module flies to within 15,400 m of the Moon's surface.source
• 1969May 26 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth, after a successful 8-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming first crewed Moon landing.source
• 1969July 16 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 (Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins) lifts off from Cape Kennedy in Florida towards the first crewed landing on the Moon.source
• 1969July 20 – Apollo program Moon landing: At 3:17 pm ET (20:17 UTC) Apollo 11's Lunar Module Eagle lands on the Moon's surface. At 10:56 pm ET (02:56 UTC July 21), an estimated 650 million people worldwide, the largest television audience for a live broadcast at this time, watch in awe as Neil Armstrong takes his first historic steps on the surface.source
• 1969July 24 – The Soviet Union returns British lecturer Gerald Brooke to the United Kingdom freed from a Soviet prison in exchange for their spies Peter and Helen Kroger (Morris and Lona Cohen).source
• 1969July 24 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 returns from the first successful Moon landing and the astronauts are placed in biological isolation for several days in case they may have brought back lunar germs. The airless lunar environment is later determined to rule out microscopic life.source
• 1969August 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 km).source
• 1969September 11 – An annular solar eclipse is visible in Pacific Ocean and South America, and is the 41st solar eclipse of Solar Saros 134.source
• 1969September 23 – China carries out an underground nuclear bomb test.source
• 1969October 17 – Willard S. Boyle and George Smith invent the CCD at Bell Laboratories (30 years later, this technology is widely used in digital cameras).source
• 1969November 14 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean), the second crewed mission to the Moon.source
• 1969November 19 – Professional footballer Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.source
• 1969November 19 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"), becoming the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.source
• 1969November 24 – Apollo program: The Apollo 12 spacecraft splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second crewed mission to the Moon.source
• 1969December 2 – The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its first passenger flight. It carries 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, from Seattle to New York City.source
• 1970February 11 – Ohsumi, Japan's first satellite, is launched on a Lambda-4 rocket.source
• 1970March 31 – NASA's Explorer 1, the first American satellite and Explorer program spacecraft, reenters Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.source
• 1970April 11 – Apollo program: Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert) is launched from the United States toward the Moon.source
• 1970April 13 – An oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission and return in four days.source
• 1970April 15 - The Apollo 13 crew sets the record for the farthest humans have traveled, 400,171 mi km, which would stand until the Artemis II lunar flyby in 2026.source
• 1970April 17 – Apollo 13 splashes down safely in the Pacific.source
• 1970April 24 – China's first satellite (Dong Fang Hong 1) is launched into orbit using a Long March-1 Rocket (CZ-1).source
• 1970May 26 – The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 becomes the first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2.source
• 1970June 1 – Soyuz 9, a two-man spacecraft, is launched from the Soviet Union for an orbital flight of nearly 18 days, an endurance record at this time.source
• 1970August 17 – Venera program: Venera 7 is launched from the Soviet Union toward Venus. It later becomes the first spacecraft to transmit data from the surface of another planet successfully.source
• 1970August 31 – Solar eclipse of August 31, 1970: An annular solar eclipse is visible in Oceania, and is the 14th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 144.source
• 1970September 20 – Luna 16 lands on the Moon and lifts off the next day with samples, landing back on Earth September 24.source
• 1970October 3 – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is formed in the United States and the Weather Bureau is renamed to National Weather Service as part of NOAA.source
• 1970October 20 – The Soviet Union launches the Zond 8 lunar probe.source
• 1970November 9 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 17 for the moon.source
• 1970November 17 – Luna programme: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world, and is released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.source
• 1970December 2 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency is established.source
• 1970December 15 – The USSR's Venera 7 becomes the first spacecraft to land successfully on Venus and transmit data back to Earth.source
• 1970December 20 – An Egyptian delegation leaves for Moscow to ask for economic and military aid.source
• 1971January 31 – Apollo program: Apollo 14 (carrying astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell) lifts off on the third successful lunar landing mission.source
• 1971February 5 – Apollo 14 lands on the Moon.source
• 1971February 9 – Apollo program: Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third human Moon landing.source
• 1971February 10 – A total lunar eclipse is visible from Pacific, Americas, Europe and Africa, and is the 50th lunar eclipse of Lunar Saros 123.source
• 1971February 25 – A partial solar eclipse is visible from Europe, Africa and Asia, and is the 18th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 149.source
• 1971February 26 – Secretary General U Thant signs the United Nations proclamation of the March equinox (March 21) as Earth Day.source
• 1971February 28 – Evel Knievel sets a world record and jumps 19 cars on a motorbike in Ontario, California.source
• 1971May 19 – Mars probe program: Mars 2 is launched by the Soviet Union.source
• 1971May 30 – Mariner program: Mariner 9 is launched toward Mars.source
• 1971June 6 – Soyuz program: Soyuz 11 (Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev) is launched.source
• 1971June 30 – After a successful mission aboard Salyut 1, the world's first human-occupied space station, the crew of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft die after their air supply leaks out through a faulty valve.source
• 1971June – Massachusetts passes its Chapter 766 laws enacting special education.source
• 1971July 25–30 – Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli records two Debussy works in Munich for Deutsche Grammophon, his fifth recording.source
• 1971July 26 – Apollo 15 (carrying astronauts David Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin) is launched.source
• 1971July 29 – The United Kingdom opts out of the Space Race with the cancellation of its Black Arrow launch vehicle.source
• 1971July 31 – Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin become the first to ride in the Lunar Roving Vehicle, a day after landing on the Moon.source
• 1971August 6 – A total lunar eclipse lasting 1 hour, 40 minutes, and 4 seconds is observed, visible from South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, and is the 38th lunar eclipse of Lunar Saros 128.source
• 1971August 7 – Apollo 15 returns to Earth.source
• 1971October 1 – Walt Disney World opens in Orlando, Florida.source
• 1971October 14 – Greenpeace is founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.source
• 1971October 28 – The United Kingdom becomes the sixth nation successfully to launch a satellite into orbit using its own launch vehicle, the Prospero (X-3) experimental communications satellite, using a Black Arrow carrier rocket from Woomera, South Australia.source
• 1971November 6 – Operation Grommet: The U.S. tests a thermonuclear warhead at Amchitka Island in Alaska, code-named Project Cannikin. At around 5 megatons, it is the largest ever U.S. underground detonation.source
• 1971November 13 – Mariner program: Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to enter Mars orbit successfully.source
• 1971December 2 – The Soviet Mars 3 lander reaches the surface of Mars, transmits for a few seconds and then goes silent. It is the first spacecraft to reach the planet.source
• 1972January 4 – The first scientific hand-held calculator (HP-35) is introduced (price $395).source
• 1972February 4 – Mariner 9 sends pictures as it orbits Mars.source
• 1972February 21 – The Soviet uncrewed spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon.source
• 1972March 2 – The Pioneer 10 spacecraft is launched from Cape Kennedy, to be the first man-made spacecraft to leave the Solar System.source
• 1972March 27 – The Soviet Union launches Venera 8, which will make the first soft landing on Venus.source
• 1972April 16 – Apollo 16 (John Young, Ken Mattingly, Charlie Duke) is launched. During the mission, the astronauts, driving the Lunar Roving Vehicle, achieve a lunar rover speed record of 17 km/h.source
• 1972June 8 – Seven men and three women hijack a plane from Czechoslovakia to West Germany.source
• 1972July 11 – Curtis Mayfield releases the soundtrack to the 1972 film, Super Fly.source
• 1972July 22 - The Soviet probe Venera 8 lands on the surface of Venus and transmits data for 50 minutes about the planet's surface temperature and atmospheric pressure.source
• 1972July 23 – The United States launches Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.source
• 1972August 10 – 1972 Great Daylight Fireball: A brilliant meteor is seen in the western U.S. and Canada as an Apollo asteroid skips off the Earth's atmosphere.source
• 1972October 1 – The first publication reporting the production of a recombinant DNA molecule, by Paul Berg and colleagues, marks the birth of modern molecular biology methodology.source
• 1972October 25 – Belgian Eddy Merckx sets a new world hour record in cycling in Mexico City.source
• 1972December 7 – Apollo 17 (Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans, Harrison Schmitt), the last crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit until the Artemis II lunar flyby in 2026, is launched to the Moon and The Blue Marble photograph of the Earth is taken. The mission also includes five mice.source
• 1972December 11 – Apollo 17 lands on the Moon.source
• 1972December 14 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan becomes the last person to walk on the Moon until 2028 at the earliest, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) of Apollo 17.source
• 1972December 15 – The United Nations Environment Programme is established as a specialized agency of the United Nations.source
• 1972December 19 – Apollo program: Apollo 17 returns to Earth, concluding the program of lunar exploration.source
• 1973March 18 – Comet Kohoutek is discovered.source
• 1973April 4 — The original World Trade Center is officially dedicated.source
• 1973April 5 – Pioneer 11 is launched on a mission to study the Solar System.source
• 1973May 14 – Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.source
• 1973May 25 – Skylab 2 (Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz, Joseph Kerwin) is launched on a mission to repair damage to the recently launched Skylab space station.source
• 1973June 30 – A very long total solar eclipse occurs. During the entire second millennium, only seven total solar eclipses exceeded seven minutes of totality.source
• 1973July 25 – The Soviet Mars 5 space probe is launched.source
• 1973July 28 – Skylab 3 (Owen Garriott, Jack Lousma, Alan Bean) is launched, to conduct various medical and scientific experiments aboard Skylab.source
• 1973August 5 – Mars 6, also known as 3MP No. 50P, is launched by the Soviet Union to explore Mars.source
• 1973September 27 – Soviet space program: Soyuz 12 (Vasily Lazarev, Oleg Makarov), the first Soviet crewed flight since the Soyuz 11 tragedy in 1971, is launched.source
• 1973November 3 – Mariner program: NASA launches Mariner 10 toward Mercury (on March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet).source
• 1973November 16 – Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 (Gerald Carr, William Pogue, Edward Gibson) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on an 84-day mission.source
• 1973December 3 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.source
• 1973December 18 – Soviet space program: Soyuz 13 (Pyotr Klimuk, Valentin Lebedev) is launched.source
• 1974February 8 – After a record 84 days in orbit, the crew of Skylab 4 returns to Earth.source
• 1974November 16 – Arecibo message: The radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory on Puerto Rico sends an interstellar radio message towards Messier 13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules. The message will reach its destination around the year 27,000.source
• 1974November 18 – The International Energy Agency is founded.source
• 1974November 22 – The United Nations General Assembly grants the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status.source
• 1974November 24 – A skeleton from the hominid species Australopithecus afarensis is discovered and named Lucy.source
• 1974December 17 – The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) becomes a specialized agency of the United Nations.source
• 1974Skittles was created and released by a British company in the United Kingdom.source
• 1974Rubik's Cube puzzle is invented by Hungarian architecture professor Ernő Rubik.source
• 1975January 2 – The Federal Rules of Evidence are approved by the United States Congress.source
• 1975April 5 – The Soviet crewed space mission (Soyuz 18a) ends in failure during its ascent into orbit when a critical malfunction occurs in the second and third stages of the booster rocket during staging at an altitude of 192 km, resulting in the cosmonauts and their Soyuz spacecraft having to be ripped free from the vehicle. Both cosmonauts (Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov) survive.source
• 1975May 25 – Bobby Unser wins the Indianapolis 500 for a second time in a rain-shorted 174 lap, 700 km mi race.source
• 1975July 17 – Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: A crewed American Apollo spacecraft and the crewed Soviet Soyuz spacecraft for the Soyuz 19 mission dock in orbit, marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the 2 nations.source
• 1975August 20 – Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.source
• 1975September 30 – (US time) Home Box Office becomes the first pay television network to deliver a continuous signal via satellite by broadcasting the "Thrilla in Manila" boxing match live.source
• 1975Benoit Mandelbrot coins the mathematical term fractal.source
• 1976April 1 – The Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect is first reported by British astronomer Patrick Moore.source
• 1976May 4 – The first LAGEOS (Laser Geodynamics Satellite) is launched.source
• 1976May 13 – The Atari video arcade game Breakout is released.source
• 1976July 20 – Viking program: The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars.source
• 1976July 31 – NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1.source
• 1976August 7 – Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.source
• 1976September 3 – Viking program: The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars, taking the first close-up color photographs of the planet's surface.source
• 1976September 17 – The space shuttle Enterprise is rolled out of a hangar in Palmdale, California, United States.source
• 1976October 19 – The Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 19 years in the United States.source
• 1977February 7 – The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 24 (Viktor Gorbatko, Yury Glazkov) to dock with the Salyut 5 space station.source
• 1977March 10 – The rings of Uranus are discovered.source
• 1977April 18 – An annular solar eclipse was visible in Africa, and was the 29th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 138.source
• 1977May 23 – Scientists report using bacteria in a lab to make insulin via gene splicing.source
• 1977May 25 - Star Wars is released in the United States by director George Lucas, It immediately became a major pop culture phenomenon, and became a major box office hit for the next 6 years.source
• 1977August 12 – The NASA Space Shuttle, named Enterprise, makes its first test free-flight from the back of a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.source
• 1977August 15 – The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the Wow! signal for a notation made by a volunteer on the project.source
• 1977August 17 – The Soviet icebreaker Arktika becomes the first surface ship to reach the North Pole.source
• 1977August 20 – Voyager program: The United States launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.source
• 1977September 5 – Voyager program: Voyager 1 is launched after a brief delay.source
• 1977October 1 – Energy Research and Development Administration combines with the Federal Energy Administration to form United States Department of Energy.source
• 1977October 7 – Pelé plays his final professional football game, as a member of the New York Cosmos.source
• 1977October 26 – Space Shuttle program: Last test taxi flight of Space Shuttle Enterprise, over California.source
• 1977November 1 – 2060 Chiron, first of the outer Solar System asteroids known as Centaurs, is discovered by Charlie Kowal.source
• 1978January 24 – Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 burns up in Earth's atmosphere, scattering radioactive debris over Canada's Northwest Territories.source
• 1978February 27 – The first global positioning satellite, the Rockwell International-built Navstar 1, is launched by the United States.source
• 1978March 2 – Soyuz 28 (Aleksei Gubarev, Vladimír Remek) is launched on a rendezvous with Salyut 6, with the first cosmonaut from a country other than the US or USSR (Czechoslovak Vladimír Remek).source
• 1978March 3 – The New York Post publishes an article about David Rorvik's book The Cloning of Man, about a supposed cloning of a human being.source
• 1978April 22 – Izhar Cohen & the Alphabeta win the Eurovision Song Contest 1978 for Israel with their song A-Ba-Ni-Bi.source
• 1978June 21 – 1978 Iranian Chinook shootdown: Iranian helicopters stray into Soviet airspace and are shot down.source
• 1978June 22 – Charon, a satellite of Pluto, is discovered.source
• 1978August 17 – Double Eagle II becomes the first balloon to successfully cross the Atlantic Ocean, flying from Presque Isle, Maine, to Miserey, France.source
• 1978October 10 – A massive short circuit in Seasat's electrical system ends the satellite's scientific mission.source
• 1978Myriodontium keratinophilum is first isolated in Italy during the screening of soil microbes.source
• 1979February 7 – Pluto moves inside Neptune's orbit for the first time since either was known to science.source
• 1979February 26 – A total solar eclipse, the last visible from the continental United States until 2017, arcs over northwestern conterminous US and central Canada ending in Greenland. A partial solar eclipse is visible over almost all of North America and Central America including the eastern half of Alaska and the western half of the UK.source
• 1979March 4 – The U.S. Voyager 1 spaceprobe photos reveal Jupiter's rings.source
• 1979March 5 – Voyager 1 makes its closest approach to Jupiter at 277000 km mi.source
• 1979March 7 – The largest Magnetar (Soft gamma repeater) event is recorded.source
• 1979March 25 – The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the Kennedy Space Center, to be prepared for its first launch.source
• 1979April 22 – The Albert Einstein Memorial is unveiled at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.source
• 1979June 12 – Bryan Allen flies the man-powered Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel.source
• 1979June 15 – The ecological horror-thriller Prophecy is released in the United States by Paramount Pictures.source
• 1979July 11 – NASA's first orbiting space station, Skylab, begins falling back Earth as its orbit decays after more than six years.source
• 1979September 1 – The U.S. Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes the planet at a distance of 21000 km mi.source
• 1979November 9 – Nuclear false alarm: the NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland, detect an apparent massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert is cancelled.source
• 1979December 24 – The first European Ariane rocket is launched.source
• 1980January 27 – Canadian Caper: Six United States diplomats, posing as Canadians, manage to escape from Tehran, Iran, as they board a flight to Zürich, Switzerland, on Swissair.source
• 1980February 16 – A total solar eclipse is seen in North Africa and West Asia. It was the 50th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 130.source
• 1980March 1 – The Voyager 1 probe confirms the existence of Janus, a moon of Saturn.source
• 1980May 22 – Namco's Pac-Man, the highest-earning arcade game of all time, is released in Japan.source
• 1980October 16 – The most recent atmospheric nuclear weapons test to date was conducted by China.source
• 1980November 10–12 – Voyager program: The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn, when it flies within 77,000 mi km of the planet's cloud-tops and sends the first high-resolution images of the world back to scientists on Earth.source
• 1981April 12 – The Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Columbia, with NASA astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen, launches on the STS-1 mission, returning to Earth on April 14. It is the first time a crewed reusable spacecraft has returned from orbit.source
• 1981June 27 – The E-mu Emulator sampler keyboard with floppy disk operation is unveiled at NAMM international Sound & Music Expo, Chicago. Production Model Serial Number 001 is issued to Stevie Wonder.source
• 1981August 27 – North Korea fires a surface-to-air missile at a U.S. SR-71 Blackbird spy plane flying in South Korean and international airspace. The missile misses and the airplane is unharmed.source
• 1981October 10 – The Ministry for Education of Japan issues the jōyō kanji.source
• 1981October 30 – Venera program: Venera 13 is launched to Venus.source
• 1981November 4 – Venera program: Venera 14 is launched to Venus.source
• 1981November 22 – The Edmonton Eskimos (14–1–1) barely stave off defeat and win a record 4th consecutive Grey Cup in the Canadian Football League, at the 69th Grey Cup at Montreal's Olympic Stadium, defeating the Ottawa Rough Riders (5–11–0) with a score of 26–23 in the final three seconds, after being down 20–1 at halftime.source
• 1981Polybius, an urban legend game, is said to have been released in Portland, Oregon; there is no evidence for its existence.source
• 1982March 10 – Syzygy: All 9 planets recognized at this time align on the same side of the Sun.source
• 1982June 11 – E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is released in the United States; directed by Steven Spielberg, this will become the biggest box-office hit for the next 11 years.source
• 1982July 6 – A lunar eclipse (umbral duration 236 min and total duration 106 min, the longest of the 20th century) occurs.source
• 1982September 19 – The first emoticons are posted by Scott Fahlman.source
• 1982Ciabatta bread is invented by a baker in Verona, Italy.source
• 1983January 25 – IRAS is launched from Vandenberg AFB, to conduct the world's first all-sky infrared survey from space.source
• 1983April 4 – The Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on its maiden voyage: STS-6.source
• 1983May 6 – Stern magazine publishes the "Hitler Diaries" (which are later found to be forgeries).source
• 1983June 13 – Pioneer 10 passes the orbit of Neptune, becoming the first human-made object to leave the vicinity of the major planets of the Solar System.source
• 1983June 18 – Sally Ride becomes the first female American astronaut in space when she launches on board Challenger's STS-7 mission together with four male crewmates.source
• 1983July 7 – Ten-year-old American girl Samantha Smith accepts her invitation from Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov and begins her visit to the USSR with her parents.source
• 1983September 26 – The Australian yacht Australia II wins the America's Cup, the first successful challenge to the New York Yacht Club's 132-year defence of the sailing trophy.source
• 1983September 26 – The Soyuz T-10-1 mission ends in a pad abort at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, when a pad fire occurs at the base of the Soyuz U rocket during the launch countdown. The escape tower system, attached to the top of the capsule containing the crew and Soyuz spacecraft, fires immediately, pulling the crew safe from the vehicle a few seconds before the rocket explodes, destroying the launch complex.source
• 1983September 27 – The GNU Project is announced publicly on the net.unix-wizards and net.usoft newsgroups.source
• 1983October 4 – British entrepreneur Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 mph (1,019.468 km/h), driving Thrust2 at the Black Rock Desert, Nevada.source
• 1983October 21 – At the 17th General Conference on Weights and Measures, the metre is defined in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.source
• 1983November 13 – The first United States cruise missiles arrive at RAF Greenham Common in the UK amid protests from peace campaigners.source
• 1984February 3 – STS-41-B: Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on the 10th Space Shuttle mission.source
• 1984February 7 – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.source
• 1984April 2 – Indian Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma is launched into space, aboard the Soyuz T-11.source
• 1984May 11 – A transit of Earth from Mars takes place.source
• 1984May 12 – The Louisiana World Exposition, also known as the 1984 World's Fair, opens.source
• 1984July 25 – Salyut 7: cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.source
• 1984August 30 – STS-41-D: the Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.source
• 1984September 5 – STS-41-D: the Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage at Edwards Air Force Base in California.source
• 1984September 14 – Joe Kittinger begins his attempt to become the first person to fly a gas balloon solo across the Atlantic Ocean.source
• 1984October 5 – STS-41-G: Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.source
• 1984October 11 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.source
• 1985January 7 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.source
• 1985February 5 – Australia cancels its involvement in U.S.-led MX missile tests.source
• 1985March – The GNU Manifesto, written by Richard Stallman, is first published.source
• 1985April 19 – The Soviet Union performs a nuclear weapon test in eastern Kazakhstan.source
• 1985May 16 – Scientists of the British Antarctic Survey announce the discovery of the ozone hole.source
• 1985June 24 – STS-51-G: Space Shuttle Discovery completes its mission, best remembered for having Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a payload specialist.source
• 1985July 19 – New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe is selected as the first person to go into space under the Teacher in Space Project, and designated to ride aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.source
• 1985October 3 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight.source
• 1985November 12 – A total solar eclipse occurs over Antarctica at 14:11:22 UTC.source
• 1985December 1 – The Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable are released for sale to the public in the US.source
• 1986January 24 – The Voyager 2 space probe makes its first encounter with Uranus.source
• 1986February 9 – Halley's Comet reaches its perihelion, the closest point to the Sun, during its second visit to the Solar System in the 20th century (the first was in 1910).source
• 1986February 11 – Human rights activist Natan Sharansky is released by Soviet authorities and leaves the country for Israel.source
• 1986February 15 – The Beechcraft Starship makes its maiden flight.source
• 1986February 19 – The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station.source
• 1986March 8 – The Japanese Suisei probe flies by Halley's Comet, studying its UV hydrogen corona and solar wind.source
• 1986March 13 – In a Black Sea incident, American cruiser USS Yorktown and the destroyer USS Caron, claiming the right of innocent passage, enter the Soviet territorial waters near the southern Crimean Peninsula.source
• 1986April 13 – The first child born to a non-related surrogate mother is born.source
• 1986April 18 – Titan 34D-9 explodes just after launch while carrying the final KH-9 satellite.source
• 1986May 12 – NBC unveils its current peacock logo at the finale of its 60th anniversary special.source
• 1986July 2 – Walt Disney Pictures releases the company's 26th animated film, The Great Mouse Detective.source
• 1986August 6 – Metroid is released by Nintendo for the Famicom Disk System.source
• 1986August 31 – The cargo ship Khian Sea departs from the docks of Philadelphia, carrying 14,000 tons of toxic waste. It wanders the seas for the next 16 months trying to find a place to dump its cargo. The waste is later dumped in Haiti.source
• 1986October 3 – A hybrid solar eclipse was visible off the coast of Iceland, and was the 53rd solar eclipse of Solar Saros 124.source
• 1986December 14 – Rutan Voyager, an experimental aircraft designed by Burt Rutan and piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, begins its flight around the world from Edwards Air Force Base in the United States.source
• 1986December 31 – Soviet submarine Krasnoyarsk (K-173) is commissioned.source
• 1987February 23 – SN 1987A, the first "naked-eye" supernova since 1604, is observed.source
• 1987March 1 – The first Starbucks outside of the US is opened in Vancouver, Canada.source
• 1987March 18 – Woodstock of physics: A marathon session of the American Physical Society's meeting features 51 presentations concerning the science of high-temperature superconductors.source
• 1987March 29 – A hybrid solar eclipse is the second hybrid solar eclipse in less than one year, the first being on October 3, 1986. It is annular visible in southern Argentina, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Sudan (part of the path of annularity crossed today's South Sudan), Ethiopia, Djibouti and northern Somalia and totally visible in Atlantic Ocean, lasting just 7.57 seconds.source
• 1987May 28 – Eighteen-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evades Soviet air defenses and lands a private plane on Red Square in Moscow. He is immediately detained (released on August 3, 1988).source
• 1987June 8 – The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act is passed, the first of its kind in the world.source
• 1987June 19 – Edwards v. Aguillard: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that a Louisiana law requiring that creation science be taught in public schools whenever evolution is taught is unconstitutional.source
• 1987June 30 – Canada introduces a one-dollar coin, nicknamed the "Loonie".source
• 1987August 4 – The World Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland Commission, publishes its report, Our Common Future.source
• 1987August 16 – The followers of the Harmonic Convergence claim it is observed around the world.source
• 1988February 12 – The 1988 Black Sea bumping incident: Soviet frigate Bezzavetnyy intentionally rams USS Yorktown in Soviet territorial waters while Yorktown claims innocent passage. The accompanying US destroyer escapes damage.source
• 1988June 23 – NASA scientist James Hansen testifies to the U.S. Senate that human-made global warming has begun, becoming one of the first environmentalists to warn of the problem.source
• 1988September 29 – STS-26: NASA resumes Space Shuttle flights, grounded after the Challenger disaster, with Space Shuttle Discovery.source
• 1988November 2 – The Morris worm, the first computer worm distributed via the Internet, written by Robert Tappan Morris, is launched from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S.source
• 1988November 15 – In the Soviet Union, the uncrewed Shuttle Buran is launched by an Energia rocket on its maiden orbital spaceflight (the first and last space flight for the shuttle).source
• 1989February 14 – The first of 24 Global Positioning System satellites is placed into orbit.source
• 1989March 12 – Tim Berners-Lee produces the proposal document that will become the blueprint for the World Wide Web.source
• 1989March 22 – Asteroid 4581 Asclepius approaches the Earth at a distance of 700000 km mi.source
• 1989March 23 – Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce that they have achieved cold fusion at the University of Utah.source
• 1989July 12 – Lotte World, a major recreation complex in Seoul, South Korea, is opened to the public, containing the world's largest indoor amusement park.source
• 1989July 31 – Nintendo releases the Game Boy portable video game system in North America.source
• 1989August 8 – STS-28: Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.source
• 1989August 9 – The asteroid 4769 Castalia is the first directly imaged by radar from Arecibo Observatory.source
• 1989August 25 – Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to Neptune and its largest moon Triton.source
• 1989October 9 – An official news agency in the Soviet Union reports the landing of a UFO in Voronezh.source
• 1989October 18 – NASA launches the uncrewed Galileo orbiter on a mission to study the planet Jupiter, via Atlantis mission STS-34.source
• 1989October 21 – The Commonwealth Heads of Government issue the Langkawi Declaration on the Environment, making environmental sustainability one of the Commonwealth of Nations's main priorities.source
• 1989November 10 – Gaby Kennard becomes the first Australian woman to fly solo around the world.source
• 1989December 2 – The Solar Maximum Mission scientific research satellite, launched in 1980, crashes back to earth.source
• 1990February 9 – The ADtranz low floor tram, the world's first completely low-floor tram, is introduced in Bremen.source
• 1990February 14 – The Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth is sent back from the Voyager 1 probe after completing its primary mission, from around 5.6 billion kilometers (3.5 billion miles) away.source
• 1990April 9 – Comet Austin makes its closest approach to the sun.source
• 1990April 22 – Earth Day 20 is celebrated by millions worldwide.source
• 1990April 24 – STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.source
• 1990May 15 – Portrait of Dr. Gachet by Vincent van Gogh is sold for a record $82.5 million.source
• 1990May 29 – Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Ottawa for a 29-hour visit.source
• 1990August 12 – "Sue", the best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimen ever found, is discovered near Faith, South Dakota, United States, by Sue Hendrickson.source
• 1990November 2 – British Satellite Broadcasting and Sky Television plc merge to form BSkyB as a result of massive losses.source
• 1990November 9 – Universal Pictures releases Child's Play 2source
• 1990November 12 – Tim Berners-Lee publishes a more formal proposal for the World Wide Web.source
• 1990November 15 – President Bush signed new Clean Air Act, focused on urban pollution and cancer-causing emissions from industrial sources.source
• 1990November 15 – STS-38: Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on a classified U.S. military mission.source
• 1990November 21 – Nintendo releases the Super Famicom in Japan alongside its launch games Super Mario World and F-Zero.source
• 1990December 20 – Tim Berners-Lee completes the test for the first webpage at CERN.source
• 1990December 25 – Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is commissioned.source
• 1991February 6 – A Boeing KC-135E Stratotanker is involved in an accident over Saudi Arabia when two engines on the left wing detach from the aircraft. The pilots manage to execute an emergency landing saving all four crew members on board. The aircraft is later repaired and returned to service.source
• 1991April 5 – Space Shuttle Atlantis leaves an observatory in Earth's orbit to study gamma rays before returning on April 11. It is followed by Space Shuttle Discovery, which studies instruments related to the Strategic Defense Initiative from April 29 to May 6. Space Shuttle Columbia carries the Spacelab into orbit on June 5.source
• 1991April 10 – A South Atlantic tropical cyclone develops in the Southern Hemisphere off the coast of Angola, the first of its kind to be documented by weather satellites.source
• 1991June 4 – A large solar flare triggers an unusually large aurora as far south as Pennsylvania.source
• 1991June 23 – Sonic the Hedgehog is released by Sega for the Sega Genesis to compete with Nintendo's Mario franchise.source
• 1991July 11 – A solar eclipse of record totality occurs in the Northern hemisphere and is witnessed by hundreds of millions of people in Hawaii, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.source
• 1991October 15 – The Oh-My-God particle, the highest energy cosmic ray ever recorded, is detected.source
• 1991October 29 – NASA's Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.source
• 1992January 9 – First confirmed detection of exoplanets with announcement of the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12, by radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail working in the United States.source
• 1992March 22 – STS-45: Space Shuttle Atlantis takes off from Cape Canaveral carrying instruments designed to study global warming.source
• 1992May 7 – STS-49: Space Shuttle Endeavour makes its maiden flight, as a replacement for Space Shuttle Challenger.source
• 1992May 9 – The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is adopted in New York.source
• 1992June 3–14 – The Earth Summit is held in Rio de Janeiro.source
• 1992July 10 – The Giotto spacecraft flies past Comet 26P/Grigg–Skjellerup, gathering measurements about the comet.source
• 1992July 26 – Iraq agrees to allow UN weapons inspectors to search the Iraqi Agricultural Ministry building in Baghdad. When inspectors arrive on July 28 and 29, they find nothing and voice suspicions that Iraqi records have been removed.source
• 1993March 8 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. The Moon appears to be 14% bigger and 30% brighter than the year's other full moons. The next time these two events coincided was in 2008.source
• 1993June 11 – Jurassic Park releases in cinemas in the United States.source
• 1993June 24 – UK mathematician Andrew Wiles wins worldwide fame after presenting his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, a problem that had been unsolved for more than three centuries.source
• 1993August 5 – The discovery of the Tel Dan Stele, the first archaeological confirmation of the existence of the Davidic line, announced.source
• 1993August 21 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Observer orbiter 3 days before the spacecraft is scheduled to enter orbit around Mars.source
• 1993September 17 – The last Russian military personnel leave Poland.source
• 1993September 26 – The first mission in Biosphere 2 ends after two years.source
• 1993September 26 – PoSAT-1 (the first Portuguese satellite) is launched on board French rocket Ariane 4.source
• 1993October 5 – China performs a nuclear test, ending a worldwide de facto moratorium.source
• 1993November 12 – London Convention: Marine dumping of radioactive waste is outlawed.source
• 1993December 2 – STS-61: NASA launches the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to repair an optical flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope.source
• 1993December 20 – The first corrected images from the Hubble Space Telescope are taken.source
• 1993December 21 – Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki's VeggieTales is first released.source
• 1994January 8 – Soyuz TM-18: Valeri Polyakov begins his 437.7-day orbit of the Earth, eventually setting the world record for days spent in orbit.source
• 1994March 31 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.source
• 1994July 16–22 – Fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 impact the planet Jupiter.source
• 1994December 3 – Sony releases the PlayStation video game system in Japan; it will sell over 100 million units worldwide by the time it is discontinued in 2006.source
• 1995January 9 – Valeri Polyakov completes 366 days in space while aboard the Mir space station, breaking a duration record.source
• 1995January 25 – Norwegian rocket incident: A rocket launched from the space exploration centre at Andøya, Norway, is briefly interpreted by the Russians as an incoming attack.source
• 1995March 14 – Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American to ride into space aboard a Russian launch vehicle (the Soyuz TM-21), lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.source
• 1995March 22 – Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returns after setting a record for 438 days in outer space.source
• 1995June 6 – U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard breaks NASA's space endurance record of 14 days, 1 hour and 16 minutes, aboard the Russian space station Mir.source
• 1995June 13 – French President Jacques Chirac announces the resumption of nuclear tests in French Polynesia.source
• 1995June 29 – STS-71: Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian Mir space station for the first time.source
• 1995October 6 – Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announce the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first confirmed extrasolar planet orbiting an ordinary main-sequence star.source
• 1995October 24 – A total solar eclipse is visible from Iran, India, Thailand and Southeast Asia.source
• 1995November 1 – The last signal is received from NASA's Pioneer 11 spacecraft.source
• 1995December 7 – NASA's Galileo probe enters Jupiter's atmosphere.source
• 1995December 31 – Final Calvin and Hobbes comic published by Bill Watterson.source
• 1996January 31 – An amateur astronomer from southern Japan discovers Comet Hyakutake; it will pass very close to the Earth in March.source
• 1996February 9 – The element copernicium is created by fusing a 208 Pb nucleus with a 70 Zn nucleus, forming 278 Cn. Given the placeholder name "ununbium", the element is not named until 2010.source
• 1996February 15 – The UK government publishes the Scott Report.source
• 1996June 4 – The space rocket Ariane 5 explodes forty seconds in its maiden flight, after takeoff in French Guiana. The project costs European governments $7,500,000,000 over eleven years.source
• 1996July 1 – German orthography reform of 1996 agreed internationally.source
• 1996August 1 – Sarah Balabagan returns to the Philippines.source
• 1996August 6 – NASA announces that the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, may contain evidence of primitive lifeforms; further tests are inconclusive.source
• 1996August 13 – Data sent back by the Galileo space probe indicates there may be water on one of Jupiter's moons.source
• 1996November 7 – NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor.source
• 1996November 19 – Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) established.source
• 1996November 19 – STS-80: Space Shuttle Columbia conducts the longest mission of the Space Shuttle program.source
• 1997January 17 – A Delta II rocket carrying a military GPS payload explodes, shortly after liftoff from Cape Canaveral.source
• 1997February 13 – STS-82: Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope is started by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery.source
• 1997March 22 – The Comet Hale–Bopp makes its closest approach to Earth.source
• 1997April 21 – A Pegasus rocket carries the remains of 24 people into earth orbit, in the first space burial by Celestis company.source
• 1997June 25 – An uncrewed spacecraft Progress M-34 collides with the Russian space station Mir.source
• 1997July 4 – NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.source
• 1997July 10 – In London, scientists report their DNA analysis findings from a Neanderthal skeleton, which support the out of Africa theory of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.source
• 1997October 15 – NASA launches the Cassini–Huygens probe to Saturn.source
• 1997October 15 – Andy Green sets the first supersonic land speed record for the ThrustSSC team, led by Richard Noble of the UK. ThrustSSC goes through the flying mile course at Black Rock Desert, Nevada at an average speed of 1,227.985 km/h (763.035 mph).source
• 1997November 27 – NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission is launched, the start of the satellite component of the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System.source
• 1998January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles.source
• 1998February 6 – Washington National Airport is officially renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.source
• 1998March 2 – Data sent from the Galileo probe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.source
• 1998March 5 – NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket fueling station.source
• 1998March 13 – The High-Z Supernova Search Team becomes the first team to publish evidence that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.source
• 1998May 19 – The Galaxy IV communications satellite fails, leaving 80–90% of the US's pagers without service.source
• 1998May 30 – A second nuclear test, codenamed Chagai-II, is conducted and supervised by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC).source
• 1998July 5 – Japan launches the probe Nozomi to Mars, joining the United States and Russia as an outer space-exploring nation.source
• 1998November 17 – Voyager 1 overtakes Pioneer 10 as the most distant man-made object from the Solar System, at a distance of 69.419 AU km.source
• 1998November 20 – A Russian Proton rocket is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying the first segment of the International Space Station, the 21-ton Zarya Module.source
• 1998December 4 – The Space Shuttle Endeavour launches the first U.S.-built component to the International Space Station, the 25,600 lb kg Unity module on STS-88. It docks with Zarya two days later.source
• 1998December 31 – The first leap second since June 30, 1997, occurs.source
• 1999January 3 – The Mars Polar Lander is launched by NASA.source
• 1999February 11 – Pluto moves along its eccentric orbit further from the Sun than Neptune. It had been nearer than Neptune since 1979, and will become again in 2231.source
• 1999May 27 – Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-96, the first shuttle mission to dock with the International Space Station.source
• 1999June 25 – Bosnia and Herzegovina gets a new national anthem.source
• 1999July 20 – Mercury program: Liberty Bell 7 – piloted by Gus Grissom in 1961 – is raised from the Atlantic Ocean.source
• 1999July 23 – NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is launched.source
• 1999August 11 – A total solar eclipse is seen in Europe and Asia.source
• 1999September 9 – Sega releases the Dreamcast in North America, marking the launch of its final home video game console.source
• 1999September 23 – NASA permanently loses contact with the Mars Climate Orbiter during orbital insertion around Mars, resulting in the spacecraft's loss and the failure of the mission.source
• 1999November 20 – China launches the first Shenzhou spacecraft.source
• 1999December 3 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander, moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.source
• 1999December 9 – The hormone Ghrelin is discovered and named.source
• 1999December 18 – NASA launches the Terra platform into orbit, carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT.source