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QOTW: If you had to let a Generative AI write your professional bio using only your last three online purchases, what would your new job title be?
Discord | #question-of-the-week | Technorama Podcast

On This Day In History for January 21, 2026

This is the 21st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 344 days remaining in 2026.

It was on this date in 1789, that The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth by William Hill Brown, was printed in Boston.
118 years ago today, New York City passed the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public, only to have the measure vetoed by the mayor.
January 21, 1911, The first Monte Carlo Rally took place.
The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, the First Lady of the United States on this date in 1954.
Also on January 21, 1960, Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifted off from Wallops Island, Virginia with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board.
That same date in 1971, The current Emley Moor transmitting station, the tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom, began transmitting UHF broadcasts.
It was on this date in 1976, that Commercial service of Concorde began with the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes.
January 21, 1981, Production of the DeLorean sports car began in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.
NASA’s MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceased communication with mission control. The problem was in the management of its flash memory and was fixed remotely from Earth on February 6 on this date in 2004.

Happy birthday goes out on this date to:

Royal Navy officer, hydrographer, astronomer and numismatist, William Henry Smyth, born on this date in 1788.
American general, explorer, and politician, 5th Territorial Governor of Arizona, John C. Frémont was born 213 years ago today.
Born January 21, 1827, Russian mathematician and theorist Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin.
Dutch mathematician and academic, Pieter Hendrik Schoute was born 180 years ago today.
Joseph Achille Le Bel, the French chemist was born 179 years ago today.
Born January 21, 1874, French mathematician René-Louis Baire.
Belgian-American astronomer George Van Biesbroeck was born 146 years ago today.
Russian mathematician and theologian, Pavel Florensky, born on this date in 1882.
Paul Allen, American businessman and philanthropist, co-founded Microsoft was born on that same date in 1953.

Listener Birthdays

21 – Michael Rabalais
22 – TAW012294
23 – Kathie Luke, IL
23 – Chris Moody from PodioMedia Chat
23 – Keith Lane from TGGeeks
24 – Cynthia Fry
25 – Kreg Steppe
26 – Will The Computer Guy
27 – Mark in Memphis
27 – Chip Burkhead from The Scotchcast

And that’s the way it was, on this day in history for January 21, 2026

If you want to get on the Technorama Birthday Calendar, visit our website and look for the Birthday Calendar link.

News

Lunar Standard Time (LTE440): Scientists have developed new software to translate Earth’s time flow to the Moon’s, accounting for gravitational differences.
The Bot Takeover: Recent reports confirm that 51% of all web traffic is now generated by bots, surpassing human activity for the first time in a decade.
DNA Storage Breakthrough: A Twist Bioscience spin-off is targeting terabyte-scale DNA storage, theoretically fitting 13TB of data into a volume the size of a water droplet.

Hacks & Strange Stories

Doom in the Kitchen: A programmer successfully ported the classic shooter Doom to run on a smart electric cooking pot after reflashing its touchscreen firmware.
Gen Z’s Retro Revival: Why younger generations are ditching smartphones for “obsolete” early-2000s digital cameras and Walkmans to find “authenticity”.

Shout out to the chat room

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Pass me the remote

Chuck
- Dune (1984) – Netflix
- Starfleet Academy – Paramount+
- Finding Nemo – Plex
Kreg
- The Running Man – Paramount+
- Starfleet Academy – Paramount+
- Rewatch – Ted Lasso – Apple TV

Question of the week

If you could upload your consciousness into any robot from sci-fi history, which one would you pick and why?

Patreon Topic this week

I got a new phone case
Hearing aids and glasses ordered
What I discovered about moving my songbook app off ServiceNow
- Don’t end your password with a % if you plan on putting it in a ‘.env’ file
- Notion APIs are too slow!
- Sequelize is cool (and very familiar)
Anbernic

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Episode 795: The Winter of our Disconnected Content