Tag: introduction to twentieth century and world war one

Gregory Goodwin Pincus was an American biologist and researcher who co-invented the combined oral contraceptive pill in 1951.

On 18 March 1967, the Torrey Canyon, one of the world's biggest tankers, ran aground between Land's End and the Isles of Scilly, leaking more than 100,000 tonnes of crude oil into the sea. It was the UK's worst oil spill to date, causing major environmental damage with more than 20,000 sea birds contaminated.

On July 1, 1979, Sony Corp. introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2, a 14 ounce, blue-and-silver, portable cassette player with chunky buttons, headphones and a leather case. It even had a second earphone jack so that two people could listen in at once.

The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Construction of the Wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic on 13 August 1961. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin.

Arpanet was the first real network to run on packet switching technology (new at the time). On October 29, 1969, computers at Stanford and UCLA connected for the first time. In effect, they were the first hosts on what would one day become the Internet.

The Chernobyl Power Complex was a nuclear power plant of four reactors built by the USSR in their satellite state of Ukraine in the 1970s and 1980s. This was an important time for the USSR when the nation's economy was starting to struggle thanks to the costs of the Cold War.

The first Mini, or Mark I, was launched in 1959. The Mark I Mini (19591967) was the first version of British Motors Corporation's Mini. It is characterized by its sliding windows, external door hinges and "mustache" grille. In the United Kingdom the Mark I was produced between 1959 and 1967.

The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989. In 1989, political changes in Eastern Europe and civil unrest in Germany put pressure on the East German government to loosen some of its regulations on travel to West Germany.

Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. The first steps by humans on another planetary body were taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969. The astronauts also returned to Earth the first samples from another planetary body.

On June 27, 1954, the world's first nuclear power station to generate electricity for a power grid, the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, started operations in Obninsk, the Soviet Union. The world's first full-scale power station, Calder Hall in England, opened on October 17, 1956.