6 Otherworldly Facts About the Space Race

Astronauts and cosmonauts

Author Bennett Kleinman

September 14, 2023

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As tensions rose on Earth during the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union also vied for celestial supremacy. The space race between the two superpowers began shortly after World War II, and captivated the public until tensions finally eased in the 1970s. With the help of top scientists and talented pilots, Americans, Soviets, and other nations sought to do the seemingly impossible by conquering the final frontier. These decades were marked by scientific achievements and setbacks that make this space-obsessed era one of the most fascinating periods in the 20th century. Here are six facts about the space race.

Fruit Flies Became the First Animal Sent Into Space in 1947

Long before humans reached the stars, fruit flies became the first living organisms to be intentionally blasted into space. Beginning in 1946, the U.S. military conducted a series of experiments in New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range with future space flight in mind. Utilizing V-2 ballistic missiles — which had been seized from Germany by the U.S. after World War II — the government propelled biological samples such as corn and rye seeds as far as 80 miles into the sky — well beyond the 66-mile distance that NASA now considers the limits of outer space. On February 20, 1947, a capsule containing fruit flies was affixed to one of said missiles and launched to a height of 67 miles above the ground. The flies were chosen to test the effects of cosmic radiation on living beings, and were the perfect candidate for a number of reasons, including their small size, minimal weight, and a genetic code analogous to that of humans, containing similar disease-causing genes. As the rocket began its descent, the capsule detached and drifted back down to Earth using a parachute, and the flies remained alive and unaffected.

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Apollo 12 Was Struck by Lightning

In November 1969, just four months after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, the Apollo 12 mission took to the skies. But what was scheduled to be a standard launch experienced near-disaster just 36.5 seconds into the flight, as lightning struck the Saturn V rocket. The unexpected event disrupted the onboard control panels, causing astronaut Dick Gordon to confusedly exclaim, “What the hell was that?” before yet another bolt struck at the 52-second mark. With alarms blaring and equipment malfunctioning, the puzzled astronauts continued to troubleshoot the spacecraft while not fully understanding what had happened. Ultimately, the crew shifted the craft to an auxiliary power supply that allowed the mission to continue as planned. Around three minutes into the flight, astronaut Pete Conrad wondered aloud if they’d been struck by lightning, and by the 11-minute-and-34-second mark, the crew was successfully floating in space. With disaster averted, the Apollo 12 astronauts became the second group of individuals to walk on the moon.

Alan Shepard Played Golf on the Moon

While the harrowing stories of Apollo 12 and Apollo 13 are widely known, the Apollo 14 mission produced one of the more lighthearted moments of the space race. On February 6, 1971, during a live broadcast of the Apollo 14 spacewalk, astronaut Alan Shepard produced a retractable six-iron golf club and took four swings on the moon’s surface. Given his bulky spacesuit, Shepard couldn’t grip the club with both hands and swung it solely with his right, causing him to miss the golf ball and connect directly with the lunar surface on both of his first two swings. Shepard hit the ball with his third swing, though it only traveled 24 yards. With his fourth and final shot, Shepard made flush contact and claimed the ball traveled “miles and miles and miles”; in reality, it only reached a distance of about 40 yards, though it remained airborne for longer than here on Earth given the moon’s lack of gravity. After returning to Earth in 1974, Shepard donated the golf club to the USGA Golf Museum in New Jersey, where it remains a popular artifact.

The First Joint U.S.-Soviet Space Mission Occurred in 1975

Despite a heated rivalry that lasted more than two decades, the United States and U.S.S.R. worked together on a joint space mission in 1975. The space race had been in full swing since at least 1955, when the two global powers announced their intention to launch satellites into orbit. The Soviets made history by sending the first man into space in 1961, and America landed the first man on the moon in 1969. After years of one-upmanship, tensions began easing in 1972 with the signing of a space cooperation agreement. On July 15, 1975, the nations jointly embarked on the Apollo-Soyuz mission, which served as a symbolic end to the decades-long space race. This mission included two separate spaceflights led by American astronaut Tom Stafford and Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who later docked their crafts together in space and exchanged an international handshake. In the 1980s, talk of an International Space Station jointly managed by the United States and Soviet Union began, and assembly of the spacecraft began in 1998.

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Nations Around the World Joined the Space Race

While the history of the space race largely focuses on the United States and Soviet Union, other nations joined the fray in the late 1970s. The first non-American and non-Soviet pilot to reach outer space was Czech cosmonaut Vladimír Remek, who studied flight in Moscow. On March 2, 1978, Remek took off aboard the Soviet’s Soyuz 28 spacecraft and headed for the Salyut 6 space station, where he and his co-pilot conducted research for eight days before returning to Earth. Upon his return, Remek was heralded as a hero by his native Czechoslovakia (now Czechia and Slovakia), paving the way for other nations to send humans into space shortly thereafter. Later that year, Polish pilot Mirosław Hermaszewski and East Germany’s Sigmund Jähn both boarded Soyuz missions of their own. In 1980, the Soyuz program also sent the first pilots from Latin America (Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez of Cuba) and Southeast Asia (Phạm Tuân of Vietnam) into outer space.

Nobody Has Walked on the Moon Since 1972

If you were alive at the time, it’s hard to forget where you were when humans first walked on the moon. While those vivid memories remain, it’s actually been more than 50 years since someone last set foot on the lunar surface. In 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first of the 12 people (all Americans) who have set foot on the moon. The final moon walk to date occurred just three years later as part of the Apollo 17 mission, with astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt. They landed their spacecraft in the Taurus-Littrow valley, a narrow lunar opening deeper than the Grand Canyon. The pair explored the region for seven hours a day over the course of three straight days, and even suffered a minor accident in the process after Cernan accidentally dropped a hammer on their lunar rover. The astronauts also discovered orange soil as evidence of lunar volcanic activity, which proved to be one of the most important discoveries of any Apollo mission. Before leaving, they left behind a plaque that reads, “Here man completed his first explorations of the moon.” Nobody has returned to the moon since.

6 Facts About Ancient Navigation

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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

September 7, 2023

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Thousands of years ago, the oceans seemed a lot wider, even unnavigable. Before mariners developed tried-and-true navigation techniques, sailing the seas involved a lot of guesswork — or, if you want it to sound cooler, “dead reckoning.”

Slowly, our ancestors moved beyond their initial stabs in the dark. Some looked to the sky, using their new knowledge about the cosmos to help them better understand life on Earth. Others took a keen interest in the seas, learning to intuitively navigate the vast expanses based on their currents and swells.

Nowadays, we have a relatively easy time getting around — thanks, GPS! — but it took a long time to get here. How were Polynesians able to cross thousands of miles of open ocean more than 3,000 years ago? Which seafaring society might have successfully used crystals to find their way? What persistent navigation myth just won’t die? Read on and get your sea legs with these six facts.

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Polynesians Were Pioneers of the Open Ocean

In the early days of ocean navigation, explorers stayed pretty close to the shoreline and used visible landmarks to mark their position. However, Polynesians, the first developers of open ocean exploration, set off from New Guinea and moved eastward in about 1500 BCE. After first traveling to the adjacent Solomon Islands, they gradually journeyed farther and farther east. Their vessel of choice was a double canoe with two hulls connected by crossbeams, kind of like a catamaran.

Venturing out into the open ocean, these explorers eventually reached Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Tahiti. They then traveled more than 2,600 miles north to Hawaii — longer than the distance across the U.S. from Portland, Maine, to Seattle, Washington. By roughly 1,000 or possibly 1,200 CE, the descendants of those early explorers populated the entire Polynesian Triangle, the three corners of which are Hawaii, Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island), and New Zealand.

The Polynesians didn’t have any navigational instruments that we know of, so how did they do it? Although their navigation techniques were passed down orally, historians think they navigated using stars, ocean swells, the sun, the moon, and migratory birds. Some Pacific Islanders navigated simply by using the waves themselves. In 1976, a group of Polynesian canoeing enthusiasts made the Tahiti-Hawaii trip using no navigational instruments and a traditional voyaging canoe — a feat that’s since been repeated several times.

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Some Early Nautical Charts Were Made From Shells and Sticks

A nautical chart provides not only topographical information, but also details about the behavior of the sea, such as how tidal patterns interact. Today, we can easily read this data on screens and paper, but ancient Micronesian navigators called ri-metos recorded their knowledge using elaborate “stick charts” made from palm strips, coconut strips, and cowrie shells.

As you might imagine, these charts weren’t especially portable, so they were designed to be memorized before a voyage. The charts didn’t follow any kind of uniform style, and some of them were only designed to be read by the person who created them, so they can be hard for modern viewers to interpret. We do know, though, that some charts depicted general ocean patterns, while others contained precise piloting instructions.

Early Magnetic Compasses Bore Little Resemblance to Their Modern Counterparts

Today, magnetic compasses are so ubiquitous that we just call them “compasses.” They contain a magnetized needle that naturally lines up with the Earth’s magnetic field, so the ends point to magnetic north and magnetic south (moving targets that are fairly close to true north and true south, but that can lead to errors when traveling very far north or very far south).

Scientists don’t know for sure who made the first compass, but they believe the first compasses to be used for navigation came from 11th- or 12th-century China. The first European usage of a compass was recorded at the end of the 12th century. These early prototypes used lodestones (pieces of naturally-occurring magnetic ore) or needles magnetized with lodestones that were then attached to sticks or corks so they could float in water.

At first, magnetic compasses were used primarily as backup navigation aids, but as engineers got more savvy, compasses became more reliable. By the 13th century, the compass’s design had graduated to a magnetized needle mounted on a pin at the bottom of a bowl. In time, a directional card with the 32 principal points of direction began to be mounted beneath the needle. The design of the card itself evolved, too: The north point was first marked by a spearhead and a “T” for the Latin word Tramontana, meaning “the north wind.” Around 1490, these symbols were replaced with a fleur-de-lis, which is still commonly seen on compasses today.

Astrolabes Weren’t Just Used for Navigation

The concept of an astrolabe, a device used to measure the positions of celestial bodies, dates back to ancient Greece in the third or second century BCE — although its exact origin is unclear. By the ninth century CE, astrolabes were highly developed and utilized in Arabic cultures. The devices made their way back to Europe in the 12th century, and the mariner’s astrolabe was a standard piece of navigational equipment by the end of the 15th century, just in time for the Age of Exploration.

Astrolabes are used to determine the locations of celestial bodies relative to the user. A disk called a “mater” holds a series of smaller rotating and sliding disks — one with Earth’s latitude lines and another with well-known constellations and stars. A straight “rule,” or bar, spins around that, and a sight helps determine the altitude of the sun or another star that can then be used as an anchor point. Astrolabes often came with specific plates that corresponded to the different latitudes of certain large cities, because the sky’s geography is affected by one’s latitude.

While these devices were very useful for navigation, it wasn’t their only claim to fame: In the Islamic world, they helped determine prayer times and the direction of Mecca. During the Middle Ages in Europe, they were consulted to help with decision-making, much like modern horoscopes. And more mundanely, they could also be used for making topographical surveys.

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Vikings May Have Used Crystals to Navigate

The Vikings, a group of seafaring Scandinavian warriors, were also skilled ocean navigators. They began to populate Iceland — around 500 miles from their native Norway — in about 900 CE, even eventually reaching North America. The specifics of their navigation techniques are somewhat mysterious, but recent research indicates they may have used crystals.

Because they sailed their longships in the far North Atlantic, Viking travelers benefitted from up to 24 hours of continuous daylight, but they encountered a lot of fog, too. Ancient Norse literature mentions “sunstones,” stones that helped their holders find the sun — and scientists now think these may have really existed. In 2011, researchers used calcite crystals to pinpoint the location of the sun within 1 degree. It’s not magic, although it sounds like it: Through polarization, crystals can show sunlight patterns that can’t be seen with the naked eye.

Another study from 2014 suggests these crystals may have been used in conjunction with a sun compass. Researchers simulated 3,600 trips between Norway and Greenland at the spring equinox and summer solstice, two dates marked on a disc believed to be a component of a sun compass. They found that by checking the crystals every few hours, the computer-generated voyages successfully reached Greenland 92% of the time.

That study hasn’t been replicated in the real world yet, but it offers some clues to how Viking navigators were able to navigate without the use of magnetic compasses or astrolabes.

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Navigators Knew the Earth Was Round Earlier Than You Might Think

There’s a persistent myth that Christopher Columbus “proved” the Earth was round in the 15th century during his voyage from Europe to the Americas, but he was many centuries too late. In fact, formally educated people knew the world wasn’t flat starting way back in the third century BCE, while scientists and mathematicians may have known as early as the sixth century BCE. Columbus’ surprise landing in the Americas had nothing to do with thinking the Earth was flat — he just thought the global circumference to be smaller than it is and believed he’d end up in Asia. This tenacious myth comes from a highly embellished 1828 biography of Columbus written by Washington Irving, better known for fictional works such as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”

Like the aforementioned scientists and scholars, mariners were aware of the world’s roundness very early on. Sailors observed that when viewing distant ships, the tops of sails and masts were visible before the decks and hulls of the vessels to which they were attached. And as they traveled to different points of the Earth, they also noted being able to see different constellations. Celestial navigation would have been pretty difficult otherwise.

The Strangest Unexplained Phenomena in History

Mary Celeste ship

Author Michael Nordine

August 24, 2023

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Everyone loves a good mystery, especially when it’s real. Of the countless happenings that have confounded us through the years, decades, and centuries, some mysteries have endured longer than others. Here are four unexplained phenomena throughout history that we may never fully understand, but will always be fascinated by.

Medieval Dancing Plagues

There have been several outbreaks of choreomania, the technical term for dancing mania, none of which has ever been conclusively explained. Among the most famous is the one that took place in Strasbourg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire and now part of France, where a “dancing plague” lasted for weeks in 1518. First on the dance floor (read: city square) was one Frau Troffea, who danced until she collapsed from exhaustion one extremely hot day in July; after recovering her strength, she resumed her rug-cutting. She and the 30 or so others who joined in over the next week in a variety of public locations seemed unable to stop, as though their movements were involuntary. The “plague” lasted until early September, by which time at least 400 people had joined in. Many were injured, and some didn’t live to tell the tale.

This wasn’t the only dance plague to occur in medieval and early modern Europe. Similar events took place throughout the Holy Roman Empire as well as in Germany, Switzerland, and France, though none were documented as thoroughly as the one in Strasbourg — it even inspired a recent novel. No one is sure, all these centuries later, why any of this happened in the first place. Many contemporary explanations were religious and/or superstitious in nature, whereas more modern theories suggest that a mold called ergot might have been responsible. As with many phenomena from ages past, we may never know the full story.

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Australia’s Missing Prime Minister

We may not know the full circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but at least we know that he was assassinated. Australians have received no such closure in the matter of Harold Holt, who served as the country’s 17th prime minister from 1966 until his disappearance and presumed death the following year — presumed, not confirmed, because no one has ever been able to definitively say what happened to him. Holt, an avid outdoorsman, swimmer, and spearfisher, went swimming in the sea near Portsea, Victoria, shortly after noon on December 17, 1967, and disappeared shortly thereafter. According to a witness named Marjorie Gillespie, with whom Holt happened to be having an affair, the rough waves took him “like a leaf being taken out… so quick and final.”

While the simplest and most likely explanation is that Holt drowned, his body was never recovered despite extensive search-and-rescue efforts. The enormity of a world leader disappearing in this fashion is difficult to overstate, and a number of theories had already emerged by the time his funeral was held days later. Some of these were relatively plausible, such as the possibility that Holt had either taken his own life or faked his death, while others were less so — some thought he had been assassinated by either the CIA or North Vietnamese, and in 1983 a British journalist named Anthony Grey even accused Holt of being a lifelong spy for China in his book The Prime Minister Was a Spy. Said tome was widely discredited, but that doesn’t mean no one believed it.

The “Wow!” Signal

People have speculated about intelligent life elsewhere in the universe for thousands of years. That interest reached new heights in the 20th century, when emerging technologies gave rise to the space race, science fiction movies, and radio telescopes designed to detect signals from cosmic sources. On August 15, 1977, one of them picked up something so strong it made Jerry R. Ehman of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) simply write, “Wow!” on the computer printout when he saw it a few days later.

Detected by the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University, the signal sequence lasted a full 72 seconds and had all the signs of emanating from extraterrestrial sources — including the fact that it appeared to originate from the Sagittarius constellation. It was by far the most powerful signal Big Ear ever received in its 35-year existence, but it was also a one-off. Subsequent attempts to detect it again were all unsuccessful, as were efforts to determine what exactly caused it. According to Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, “Nobody has ever found another explanation for what that might have been. It’s like you hear chains rattling in your attic and you think, ‘My god, ghosts are real.’ But then you never hear them again, so what do you think?”

The Mary Celeste

On November 7, 1872, the Mary Celeste set sail from New York en route to Genoa with 10 souls onboard: Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife Sarah Elizabeth Cobb, their 2-year-old daughter Sophia, and seven crewmen. Less than a month later, on December 4, the ship was discovered adrift near the Azores Islands with no one on it. This, despite the fact that the Mary Celeste was still seaworthy with its cargo intact and its inhabitants’ belongings undisturbed. The lifeboat was missing, and neither Briggs nor anyone else who left on that fateful voyage was ever seen again.

A hearing held to determine whether the crew of Dei Gratia, the brigantine that discovered Mary Celeste, were entitled to a salvage reward ultimately ruled out such nefarious possibilities as mutiny and piracy. There are countless other theories as to what happened aboard the ship (are you sensing a trend here?), some more natural than others: Suggestions include a waterspout, earthquake, or other event that caused Briggs to fear that the alcohol his ship was carrying would explode. (As ever, some attribute the situation to a giant squid, kraken, or other sea beast.) Though it’s unlikely we’ll ever know what happened, the sea’s status as a cruel mistress remains unquestioned.

5 Ways Albert Einstein Changed the World

Physicist Albert Einstein

Author Darren Orf

August 15, 2023

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German-born physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was so influential, his very name has become synonymous with genius. While working as a patent clerk in 1905 at the age of 26, Einstein submitted four papers to the German journal Annalen der Physik that changed humanity’s perception of time, gravity, and light. Today, historians mark the year as Einstein’s annus mirabilis, or “miracle year” — and he was just getting started.

Much of Einstein’s work is famously dense. Few people other than physicists need to fully comprehend the mind-bending ideas behind the general theory of relativity and Einstein’s other theories, but these discoveries form the bedrock of technologies the rest of us enjoy every day. Here are five ways Einstein’s ideas changed the world, and continue to provide a roadmap for humanity’s future.

GPS Would Be Impossible Without the General Theory of Relativity

Some 10,900 nautical miles above our heads, 31 satellites orbit Earth as part of the Global Positioning System (GPS) — but if it wasn’t for Einstein, those satellites would be little more than space junk. The very foundation of GPS is accurate timekeeping, as satellites need to keep time to correctly log the distance from a ground-based receiver (such as your smartphone). GPS satellites are so precise, the atomic clocks on board are accurate to within three-billionths of a second, a feat impossible without Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity. The special theory of relativity states that time flows differently depending on velocity. Because satellites travel at 8,700 miles per hour, they “lose” 7 microseconds per day compared to Earth-based receivers. Additionally, Einstein’s general theory of relativity — an idea published in 1915 that basically elaborates on his previous theory by throwing gravity in the mix — similarly states that distance from a source of mass, in this case the Earth, also affects the flow of time. This means that technically speaking, your head ages slightly faster than your feet because your feet are closer to the Earth (on time scales that are ultimately negligible). Today, GPS takes into account this “time dilation,” so satellites always know where you are when you open Google Maps.

The Explanation of Photoelectric Effect Helped Make Modern Solar Power Possible

It probably comes as no surprise that Einstein won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921, but what many people don’t realize is that the award wasn’t honoring the wunderkind’s groundbreaking general theory of relativity, but rather his revolutionary yet often overlooked explanation of the photoelectric effect. The initial discovery of the photoelectric effect came in 1887 from German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (yes, that Hertz), who noticed that when ultraviolet light hit a metal plate, it created sparks. What was puzzling was that different metals required different frequencies to produce the same effect. Then, in 1905, 26-year-old Einstein solved this conundrum by introducing a new conception of light, which he published in his first paper submitted to Annalen der Physik. He argued that light wasn’t just a wave, as some scientists suggested, but also a stream of particles, later known to science as “photons.” Einstein posited that these photons contained a fixed amount of energy depending on their frequency, and his theory — though derided for years — successfully explained the photoelectric phenomenon. Though solar cells predated Einstein’s discovery by dozens of years, it wasn’t until Einstein’s theory that scientists understood why they worked, which helped make solar panels even more efficient.

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Lasers Were Developed Thanks to Einstein’s Quantum Theory of Radiation

Lasers (an acronym for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”) scan your groceries at the supermarket, make self-driving cars possible, and form the backbone of optical communication. And yes, we can thank Einstein for this one, too. In 1917, Einstein published a paper detailing his quantum theory of radiation. The theory basically states that atoms can be stimulated to change energy levels when hit with a specific frequency. If that excited atom is hit with another photon of the same frequency, it’ll produce two coherent photons (traveling in the same direction) while the atom’s electron returns to its ground state. This means you can artificially create a sudden burst of coherent light as atoms discharge in a chain reaction, otherwise known as “stimulated emission of radiation” (the “ser” in “laser”). It wasn’t until after World War II that scientists found a use for Einstein’s discovery; the laser was developed by using mirrors to create light amplification.

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The E=MC² Equation Formed the Scientific Basis for the Nuclear Bomb

The final discovery of Einstein’s “miracle year” was the concept that light and energy are equivalent, and that their relationship can be explained with the elegantly simple equation E=MC², meaning energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Describing mass as essentially super-dense energy, Einstein’s equation shows how even small amounts of mass at atomic levels can produce a tremendous amount of energy when multiplied by the speed of light squared — and you probably see where this is going.

This process explains how a neutron fired from a uranium atom splits it into smaller atoms while releasing a tremendous amount of energy. It’s known as nuclear fission, and when the process is controlled, it provides low-emission nuclear energy. When released in an uncontrolled state, it can be used to produce an atomic bomb. Einstein himself never worked on the Manhattan Project, the secret government program to make the first nuclear bomb, but he rubber-stamped the idea in a 1939 letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt that argued for the U.S. to make the bomb before Nazi Germany. Einstein later regarded that letter as the “one great mistake in my life.”

The E=MC² Equation Could Point to the Future of Energy

As previously described, nuclear fission works by breaking apart an element such as a heavy uranium-235 atom into two smaller atoms (krypton and barium). However, something interesting also occurs: If two light nuclei (i.e., hydrogen) can overcome electrostatic repulsion, they fuse together to form a heavy helium-4 atom — sort of like fission but in reverse. Similarly, following the E=MC² equation, this process produces a tremendous amount of energy and heat. This is known as nuclear fusion, and it’s the atomic science that is the energy-producing engine of stars.

On paper, nuclear fusion could provide the answer to humanity’s expanding energy needs. There’s no enriched material involved; nuclear proliferation with fusion reactors isn’t a worry; a meltdown is scientifically impossible; there’s no radioactive material produced as a byproduct; it’s completely carbon-free; and fusing atoms together releases 4 million times more energy than the chemical process of burning coal. There’s just one catch: Building a fusion reactor is immensely complicated. That’s never stopped people before, though. An international coalition of scientists and agencies is hard at work creating the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, which is set to go online in 2025.

20th-Century Inventions That Changed the World

Glider being launched

Author Adam Levine

August 2, 2023

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In many ways, the 20th century was defined by groundbreaking scientific discoveries and revolutionary new technologies. When the century began, the industrialized world was still using the steam engine, and as it came to a close, the digital age had ushered in transformational new inventions. From the airplane and the era of high-speed travel to the personal computer and our modern information age, the innovations of this era fundamentally changed the fabric of people’s everyday lives. Here are five transformative inventions from the 20th century.

The Electric Refrigerator

Today the electric refrigerator is so commonplace, you would barely give it a second thought, but when it was first invented, this humble appliance completely changed the way people lived. The first electric fridge designed for home use was patented in 1913 by an American engineer named Fred Wolf, and by the 1960s the technology had advanced enough for fridges to become a fixture in most U.S. homes. The new kitchen staple transformed nearly every aspect of the way Americans bought, stored, and shipped food. Before the fridge, if you didn’t live near the source of certain perishable foods, it often meant you simply couldn’t get them. Refrigeration made it possible to ship fresh food over long distances without spoilage. It also meant that people could store certain foods year-round without resorting to time-consuming, taste-altering preservation processes such as drying or pickling. Today, electric refrigerators can be found in 99.5% of American homes, allowing people to eat foods from all over the world, pretty much whenever they want — a way of life that would have been unrecognizable to someone living at the turn of the 20th century.

The Television

When the first fully electronic television system was created by American inventor Philo Farnsworth in 1927, it altered the media landscape forever. The TV made it so that for the first time in history, people could witness significant political and historical events as they were actually happening. Footage of world-changing moments — from Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon to the fall of the Berlin Wall — could be broadcast directly into people’s homes instead of merely described over the radio or summarized after the fact in a newspaper. TV didn’t just change the way people consumed their news, of course; it also gave rise to a whole new form of entertainment. Entirely new storytelling formats — from the sitcom to the hour-long prestige drama of the modern era — were created especially for the small screen and gobbled up by millions of viewers around the world, transforming popular culture in the process.

The Airplane

On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers completed their first successful airplane flight and ushered in the age of air travel. The world was never the same. As air travel became more accessible, people were able to complete journeys in a matter of hours that previously would have taken days or even weeks. The pace of international trade and globalization increased dramatically, and tourists could suddenly visit distant places and experience cultures that would have been inaccessible before. The invention of the airplane also led to rapid advances in aerodynamic technology that propelled air travel to (literal) new heights, opening up possibilities that once existed solely in the realm of science fiction. It was just 66 years after the first airplane flight that the Apollo 11 astronauts successfully landed on the moon.

The Personal Computer

When the world’s first personal computer, the Kenbak-1, was released in 1971, it would have been easy to dismiss the invention as a mere flash in the pan. Only 40 units of this early PC were sold, and the company that made it, the Kenbak Corporation, dissolved just two years later. However, over the next few decades, the personal computer went from a niche technology to one of the most transformative innovations of the 20th century. In 1977, Apple released the Apple II to considerably more success than had greeted the Kenbak-1: Apple’s PC went on to sell nearly 6 million units between 1977 and 1993. The power of computer technology, which had once been accessible only to a few select specialists, became available to many ordinary people. The average consumer could use computers to automate complex tasks, store huge amounts of information, and — with the advent of computer games — experience totally new forms of entertainment that only scratched the surface of what was to come.

The Internet

Computers were a powerful technology in their own right, but it was the invention of the internet in 1983 that made them touch nearly all aspects of everyday life. The internet allowed computers to communicate with one another in a global network, which meant that huge amounts of information could be exchanged across vast distances in the blink of an eye. As the 20th century came to a close, the web was rapidly becoming a central part of the way most people shopped, communicated, worked, played, and even found love. It became a principal source of news and entertainment, and permanently altered industries as diverse as global finance, popular music, and tourism. It’s no exaggeration to say the internet transformed the world at the end of the 20th century, and the society we live in today is a product of its profound influence.