One of the first people to build a telephone exchange was Hungarian Tivadar Puskas (above) in 1877 while he was working for Thomas Edison. George W. Coy designed and built the first commercial telephone exchange which opened in New Haven, Connecticut. He’s been called the first full-time telephone operator. The switchboard was built from "carriage bolts, handles from teapot lids and bustle wire" and could handle two simultaneous conversations .

    
              The first telephone switchboard built by George W. Coy

Barnaby Jones is a television detective series starring Buddy Ebsen and Lee
Meriwether (seen above) as father- and daughter-in-law who run a private
detective firm in Los Angeles. The show ran on CBS-TV until April 3, 1980,
when it was cancelled due to low ratings among young viewers.

Elvis Presley made his first national television appearance on CBS’s Stage Show. The program, produced in New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders
and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. Elvis was booked for six appearances on the show over a two month period.

Space Shuttle Challenger  was NASA’s second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia being the first. Its maiden flight was on April 4, 1983, and it completed nine missions before breaking apart 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission, on January 28, 1986, resulting in the death of all seven crew members. The break up was ultimately due to the failure of an O-ring on its right solid-fuel rocket booster (SRB). The failure was due to a variety of factors, including unusually low temperatures prior to liftoff.

The accident led to a two-and-a-half year grounding of the shuttle fleet. The  missions resumed in 1988 with the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery.

    
                                                 The Challenger crew

   
                                                

             Challenger memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart  was a influential Austrian composer of the Classical era.
He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as the finest of symphonic, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most popular of classical composers.
Mozart showed extraordinary ability from early childhood by being competent on the piano and violin. He composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At the age of 17, Mozart was hired as a court musician. Mozart died in 1791 at the age of 35. Many believe the cause was acute rheumatic fever.