Fun Friday: April 7

davidn# · ‎04-07-2023

Did you know? April 7 is celebrated as World Health Day, which was established by the World Health Organization to raise awareness about important health issues and promote healthier living around the world. April 7 is also National Beer Day in the United States, which celebrates the day in 1933 when beer became legal again after the end of Prohibition. It is also National No Housework Day in the United States, which encourages people to take a break from their usual household chores and responsibilities.

Here are some important and fun facts that occurred on April 7:

April 7, 1927, was the day that the first long-distance television transmission was made by the American inventor Philo Farnsworth. He transmitted a picture from his lab in San Francisco to a receiver in New York.
The first electric guitar was invented on April 7, 1931, by George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker. It was called the "Frying Pan" and had a circular body made of aluminum.
On April 7, 1954, IBM introduced the IBM 704, the first mass-produced computer with floating-point arithmetic hardware, which greatly improved its ability to perform complex mathematical calculations.
On April 7, 1964, IBM introduced the System/360 mainframe computer, which revolutionized the computer industry by allowing companies to upgrade their systems without having to completely replace them.
The first successful human heart transplant was performed on April 7, 1964, by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa.
On April 7, 1970, the Apollo 13 spacecraft was launched, which became famous for the phrase "Houston, we have a problem" when an oxygen tank exploded, causing a major malfunction.
On this day in 1971, the first email was ever sent by computer engineer Ray Tomlinson. The message he sent was something like "QWERTYUIOP", which he chose simply because those letters were easy to type.
The first-ever cell phone call was made on April 7, 1973, by Motorola engineer Martin Cooper, who called a rival company to boast about his invention.
On April 7, 1979, the first ever spreadsheet program, VisiCalc, was released for the Apple II computer. It became one of the most popular programs of its time and helped make personal computers more useful for businesses.
On April 7, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit by the Space Shuttle Discovery. It has since captured some of the most breathtaking images of our universe.
On April 7, 1994, the first commercially successful web browser, Mosaic, was released. It was developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois.
On April 7, 1994, the world's first e-commerce transaction took place when a man in New Hampshire sold a CD of Sting's "Ten Summoner's Tales" to a friend in Philadelphia using a secure connection over the internet.
April 7, 1999: The first-ever music file-sharing service, Napster, was launched, which became incredibly popular but also led to numerous legal battles over copyright infringement.
On April 7, 2003, Apple introduced the iTunes Music Store, revolutionizing the music industry by allowing customers to purchase and download individual songs instead of having to buy entire albums.
On April 7, 2005, the first ever video was uploaded to YouTube by co-founder Jawed Karim. The video was entitled "Me at the zoo" and showed Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo.
April 7, 2010: Apple released the iPad, revolutionizing the tablet computer market and ushering in a new era of mobile computing.
On April 7, 2015, Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket booster for the first time. This was a major milestone in reusable rocket technology and helped pave the way for future space exploration.
April 7, 2015, also marked the launch of the Apple Watch, which quickly became one of the most popular wearable devices on the market, offering features such as fitness tracking, messaging, and mobile payments.
April 7, 2016, Snapchat released its face swap feature, which allowed users to switch faces with someone else in a photo or video. This feature quickly became a viral sensation and helped cement Snapchat's place as one of the most popular social media apps.
April 7, 2021: NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter made its first successful flight on Mars, becoming the first powered, controlled flight on another planet and opening up new possibilities for exploration and research.

Paul Zimmerman · ‎04-07-2023

Great post! Somehow, I think National Beer Day and No Housework Day go together pretty well... not so sure about World Health Day and National Beer Day, but maybe Guinness has the right idea LOL

Sean Dahlberg · ‎04-07-2023

@davidn# wrote:

On this day in 1971, the first email was ever sent by computer engineer Ray Tomlinson. The message he sent was something like "QWERTYUIOP", which he chose simply because those letters were easy to type.

I always found this one interesting; I wrote something about this a few years ago as I used to do "This Day In History" articles. So bare with me for a minute as I dive in on this one

Ray Tomlinson developed ARPANET's first application for network email by combining the SNDMSG and CPYNET programs, allowing messages to be sent to users on other computers. He was part of the Tenex team and they had just gotten access to the ARPANET, the network of computers which was a main precursor to the Internet. The team quickly created a program called CPYNET which could be used to send files to remote computers, similar to FTP today.

Ray had the idea to combine the message files with CPYNET. He added a command which allowed you to append to a file. He also wired things up such that you could add an @ symbol and a remote machine name to your messages and the machine would automatically connect to that host and append to the right file. And thus, email was born!

And if you're interested, here is a video of when he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJp0NHkBIAY