Today in History- September 30, 1935 – Dedication of Hoover Dam, Boulder City, Nevada. The concrete-arch dam, originally called Boulder Dam, supplied the first U.S. hydroelectric plant to produce over a million kilowatts. Hoover Dam serves Nevada and the Los Angeles area. Hoover Dam was built at the height of the Depression and provided thousands [...]

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Today in History – September 27, 2003 – The first European mission to the moon was launched aboard an Ariane-5 rocket carrying the SMART-1 exploration probe, along with two commercial satellites. It took 15 months to reach lunar orbit, covered over 60 million miles with only 13 gallons of fuel. After being captured by lunar [...]

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In honor of National Manufacturing Week, the Engineering Pathway highlights Manufacturing Engineering Education in September. Check out our Manufacturing Engineering Education Disciplinary Community and related manufacturing engineering educational resources, such as NIST’s Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory (MEL) or the Manufacturing Video Library. Find out How Everyday Things are Made with courseware hosted by Stanford’s Alliance for [...]

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Today in History – September 19, 1982 – Invention of the Smiley Face emoticon by Scott E. Fahlman. A lot of people have asked me about this, so I put together this account, which I am reprinting for the Engineering Pathway educational digital library. Yes, I am the inventor of the sideways “smiley face” (sometimes [...]

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Today in History – September 14, 1959 – In 1959, a spaceship fell out of the lunar sky and hit the ground near the Sea of Serenity. Although the ship itself was shattered, the mission was considered a success, making Luna 2 from the Soviet Union the first manmade object to “land” on the Moon. [...]

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