This week, back in 1904, English engineer John Ambrose Fleming received a patent for the thermionic valve, better known as the vacuum tube.
1969 –NASA launched Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to the surface of the Moon
1973 – Continuing its Skylab program, NASA launched Skylab 4 from Cape Canaveral, Florida with a crew of three astronauts heading to the early space station for an 84-day mission.
1990 – Sir Tim Berners-Lee published a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.
And this week in 1997 – WorldCom and MCI Communications announced a $37 billion merger (the largest merger in US history at the time).