On This Day – July 4th

Every day Test Huddle brings you the key computer related historical events that occurred on this day in history including  births and deaths of notable personalities, software and hardware releases, events, notable news stories and more.

If you would like to add anything to these events, feel free to comment below.

 

1921 – Birth of the a Magnetic Inventorcredit-card

Forrest Parry, the man who invented the magnetic strip for credit cards was born on this day.

 

 

 

 

 

1996 – Birth of a new Mail service

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Hotmail, the first webmail service in the world, is commercially launched on Independence Day in the United States. It was a break from the email service users typically had with Internet service providers.  Hotmail was designed and built by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. In January 1998, they would sell the company to  Microsoft  for US$400 million.

 

 

 

2008 – The €1 Baby returns Home

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A German couple who had put up their baby for sale for €1 on eBay had their baby returned to them on this day. Authorities had taken the baby into state care but returned the baby to the parents agreeing with them that it was a bad joke gone awry.  The auction that went live in May was up for 2 and a half hours before being taken down. It had no bids when it was taken down.

 

images: thepointsguy.com/Wikipedia/eBay

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Ronan Healy

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