The third millennium actually started at about 21h00 on 31 December 2000, or even more correctly, on 31 December 1995. See the history of the calendar
2000 Final Peanut comic strip published. Largest ever corporate merger as AOL buys Time-Warner for $162 billion. Vladimir Putin elected President of Russia. George W Bush defeats Al Gore to become US President. The Tate Modern opens in London. Summer Olympics is held in Sydney, Australia. Reality TV introduced in the form of Survivor, based on Swedish game show Operation Robinson.
2001 NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lands on asteroid 433 Eros, a first. Dale Earnhardt killed during [more...]

1975 South Vietnam surrenders to North Vietnamese Communists troops. Junko Tabei of Japan becomes first woman to reach Everest summit. Soviet Soyuz 19 docks with Apollo 18. IBM launches the laser printer. Popular Electronics announces Altair, the first “personal computer”.
1976 Viking I lands on Mars. 14-year old Romanian Nadia Comaneci scores 5 perfect 10’s at Montreal Olympics. Konica introduces automatic focus camera. Apple computers founded by Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak. The Eagles become the first group to go platinum, with a million sales of their Greatest Hits LP.
1977 Apple II becomes the first mass-produced home computer. Star Wars debuts. [more...]

1950 Otis invents the passenger lift. Charles Schultz launches “Peanuts“. Mr Potato Head debuts. Diners Club issues the first credit card. Korean war erupts. Danish doctor Christian Hamburger performs the first sex change operation on New Yorker George Jorgensen, who becomes Christine Jorgensen. Yoshuito Nakamats invents the floppy disc (but it is introduced by IBM only in 1970).
1951 First Miss World contest is held at the Lyceum theatre in London, won by Miss Sweden. John Paul Getty becomes the richest man. Zenith Radio Corp introduces cable television. Chrysler introduces power steering. First space flight by living creatures when US sends [more...]

1925 Red double-decker buses enter service in London. In-flight movie offered by German airline. Walter P Chrysler founded vehicle company. Frisbee is invented – by Yale students, using empty plates used to hold pies from the Frisbie Baking Company.
1926 Marion B Skaggs founded Safeway food stores. Scottish engineer John Logie Baird demonstrates a machine that transmits movie pictures using radio technology, calling it a “televisor”, based on a 1884 idea by German Paul Nipkow. (But the mechanical TV system is beaten to general use by Philo Farnsworth’s design of 1928.)
1927 25-year old Charles Lindbergh flies non-stop from New York to [more...]

1900 Escalator invented by Charles Seeberger. Paperclip patented by Norwegian Johann Vaaler. Loudspeaker invented by Horace Short. Charlotte Cooper becomes the first woman to win an Olympic gold, for tennis. Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, in a lecture to the German Physical Society, announces that matter absorbs heat energy and emits light energy discontinuously, giving birth to quantum mechanics.
1901 Edison General Electric Co introduces its Christmas tree lights. The first facelift is performed by Eugene Hollander in Berlin on a Polish aristocrat. First time getaway car is used by 3 bank robbers in Paris. Gustave Whitehead possibly made first flight.
1902 [more...]