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A New Eye on Mars On February 19, 2002, NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft began its primary mission: mapping the surface of Mars in unprecedented detail. After a seven-month journey and months of careful orbital insertion, the space probe fired up its Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) and started revealing the Martian surface in ways humanity…

Seven Minutes of Terror On February 18, 2021, at 3:55 PM EST, a spacecraft traveling at 12,500 miles per hour hit the Martian atmosphere. What followed was NASA’s most ambitious landing sequence ever attempted—dubbed the “seven minutes of terror” because radio signals take that long to travel from Mars to Earth. By the time mission…

The Spark On February 17, 2011, thousands of Libyans took to the streets in what organizers called a “Day of Rage.” Inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, protesters in Benghazi, Tripoli, and other cities demanded an end to Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule. They were met with bullets. The regime’s response was swift and…

A Snowstorm and an Idea On February 16, 1978, in Chicago, two computer hobbyists—Ward Christensen and Randy Suess—launched something that would change how people communicate forever. It was called CBBS: the Computerized Bulletin Board System. It was the first of its kind. The idea had formed during a particularly harsh Chicago winter. A blizzard had…

A Flash in the Morning Sky On February 15, 2013, at 9:20 AM local time, a bright streak appeared over the southern Ural Mountains in Russia. It moved faster than any aircraft, burning brilliant white, trailing thick smoke. For a few seconds, it outshone the sun. Then it exploded. The blast—equivalent to 500 kilotons of…

Me at the Zoo On February 14, 2005, three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—activated a website called YouTube. The domain had been registered two weeks earlier. The idea was simple: make it easy for anyone to upload and share videos. The first video went up on April 23, 2005. It was…

The Diamond in the Sky On February 13, 2004, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced something extraordinary: they had found the largest diamond in the universe. It was 10 billion trillion trillion carats. It was 2,500 miles across. It was a star. The white dwarf BPM 37093, located 50 light-years from Earth in…

50 Seconds in Oslo On February 12, 1994, during the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, four men broke into the National Gallery in Oslo. They left with Norway’s most precious cultural treasure: Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” The entire operation took 50 seconds. It was almost too perfect. While the world watched ski…

The Naming On February 11, 2020, in Geneva, the World Health Organization gave the world a name for something it had been fearing for weeks. The disease caused by the novel coronavirus—first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019—would officially be called COVID-19. The virus itself received the scientific designation SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,…

The First Crack in the Armor On February 10, 1996, in Philadelphia, something happened that had never happened before. A machine defeated a reigning world chess champion in a tournament game under standard time controls. Garry Kasparov, the undisputed king of chess, the man who had held the world title for over a decade, lost…