76 years ago today, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell was published for the first time in the UK.

272 years ago today, the British Museum Act was given Royal Ascent by King George II, establishing what has become today the most visited museum on Earth.

Happy 96th Birthday to James Barnor, a for-years-obscure Ghanaian photographer working in London who in that obscurity amassed an astonishingly powerful collection of photographs of the city in the 1950s and 60s, of Ghana spiraling towards independence, and intimate scenes of the African diaspora negotiating post-War England. It was at age 71 that Barnor first began to be recognized for his position across history, and by 90, he had been exhibited in the Tate Modern, […]

142 years ago today, the Orient Express began its inaugural departure from Paris en route to Istanbul.

36 years ago today, in the first modern elections in Poland, Lech Walesa’s Solidarity Party of trade unionists won 160 out of 161 seats in the government, triggering the Revolutions of 1989, and quite simply, the fall of Communism, freeing Eastern Europe to pursue self-government and market capitalism. 

60 years ago today, NASA astronaut Ed White became the first American to walk in space. During the Gemini 4 mission, he opened the hatch and used a hand-held oxygen-jet gun to push himself out of the capsule and propel himself to the end of the 8-meter tether.

58 years ago today, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in America—widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time.

70 years ago today, Namco Limited, maker of the most popular and successful arcade game systems in history was founded. With titles like Pac-Man, Tekken, Ridge-Racer, and Galaga, Namco is broadly considered to have laid the foundations for most video gaming for all time.

47 years ago today, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (TAPS) one of the nation’s largest, was completed.

50 years ago today, the European Space Agency was founded by ten member states: Belgium, Denmark, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, that united two disparate space agencies into the one entity which today has been instrumental in several giant leaps for mankind.