Today in History – October 14, 1947 - First supersonic flight. The research program that led to this accomplishment started in 1946 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) [now National Aeronautics and Space Administration], the Army Air Forces, and Bell Aircraft Inc. They built two XS-1 experimental research aircraft to conduct pioneering tests at [...]

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Today in History – October 11, 1984 – Astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk. Sullivan became an astronaut in 1979 and has been on three space flights: STS-41G (October 5-13, 1984), STS-31 (April 24-29, 1990) and STS-45 (March 24-April 2, 1992). She [...]

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Today in History- October 9, 1936 – Hoover Dam goes online and begins transmitting electricity to Los Angeles. For over a decade afterwards, the Hoover power plant was the world’s largest hydroelectric installation in the U.S. with an installed capacity of 2.08 million kilowatts, generating more than 4 billion kilowatt-hours a year. Hoover Dam was [...]

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Today in History – October 7, 1952 – the barcode was patented: US Patent 2,612,99. The first barcode using the universal product code (UPC) was  scanned many years later on June 26, 1974 by a cashier at a supermarket checkout counter. A shopper named Clyde Dawson handed a cashier at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, [...]

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Today in History – October 4, 1957 – Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the Earth’s first artificial satellite, into space at the peak of the Cold War. View our Sputnik resources, as well as related resources in Aerospace Engineering. Students can learn about careers in Aerospace Engineering, learn about aircraft dynamics, or simulate gas turbines. Faculty [...]

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