FTX was founded in May 2019 and filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 — just three and a half years later. In between, founder Sam Bankman-Fried became a billionaire, the exchange attracted millions of users, and its leadership used customer funds for their own investments. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Claude Shannon was born on April 30, 1916. He formalized the concept of the 'bit,' showed that information can be measured and encoded mathematically, and connected logic with electrical circuits. His paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication' remains one of the most important works in computing history.
Visual Studio Code was introduced at Microsoft's Build conference on April 29, 2015. Today it is the dominant code editor worldwide — distributed under the MIT License, it has spawned several popular forks, including Cursor.
On April 28, 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store — making it possible to buy a single track for $0.99. In its first week, one million tracks were sold, proving that people would pay for music if you made it easy enough.
Eric Schmidt was born on April 27, 1955. As Google's CEO from 2001 to 2011, he guided the company through the dot-com crash, the launch of Gmail and Google Maps, and the acquisition of Android — helping turn a search engine into the most influential internet company in the world.
On April 26, 1986, the worst man-made disaster in history took place at Chernobyl. The SCALA computer system was well-designed and working correctly — but it had no ability to block operator actions without human consent. The operators disabled the alarms and proceeded anyway.
On April 23, 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the very first video to the platform. Called 'Me at the zoo,' it runs 18 seconds and features Karim standing in front of elephants. At the time of writing, it has 388 million views.
Released on April 22, 1993, Mosaic was the browser that made the web mainstream. It introduced the graphical interface elements we now take for granted — Back and Forward buttons, clickable links, an address bar — and was the first browser to display images inline on web pages.
Zoom Video Communications was founded on April 21, 2011 by Eric Yuan, a former Cisco vice president unhappy with the direction of WebEx. Nine years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company's stock rose eightfold in a matter of months.
David Filo was born on April 20, 1966. As co-founder of Yahoo, he and Jerry Yang built one of the first large-scale internet search platforms — starting with a manually curated list of links that two people could realistically maintain when the web was just three years old.
Frederick Brooks was born on April 19, 1931. He led the development of OS/360 for the IBM System/360 mainframe, and later wrote The Mythical Man-Month — still considered essential reading for software project managers fifty years after publication.
On April 18, 1983, Osborne Computer previewed its upcoming models to industry insiders before they were ready to ship. Word spread immediately, dealers stopped ordering the current model, and the company filed for bankruptcy five months later — giving the industry a term it still uses: the Osborne effect.
David Farber was born on April 17, 1934. Known as the 'Grandfather of the Internet,' he mentored many of the people who shaped the modern web — including Steve Crocker, author of RFC 1, and Jon Postel, one of the architects of TCP/IP and DNS.
On April 16, 1971, RFC 114 described the first version of FTP — a protocol for transferring files between computers on ARPANET. Before the web existed, FTP was the primary way to distribute software, source code, and scientific data across the early internet.
On April 15, 1993, the Clinton administration launched the Clipper Chip project — a government-backed encryption module with a built-in backdoor. It faced immediate opposition from cryptographers and technology companies, and by 1996 the project was effectively dead.
Yukihiro Matsumoto was born on April 14, 1965 in Osaka. He is the creator of the Ruby programming language, which he began developing in 1993 and released in December 1995. Within the Ruby community, he is universally known simply as Matz.
On April 11, 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak presented the Apple I at a Homebrew Computer Club meeting — essentially a circuit board you could connect to a keyboard and TV. A computer store owner in the audience immediately ordered 50 units, starting Apple's commercial history.
On April 10, 1981, sixteen minutes before the first Space Shuttle launch, one of the onboard IBM computers reported data that didn't match the others — and automatically halted the countdown. It was the first time in history a computer stopped a space mission launch.
On April 9, 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion — before the app even had Android support or revenue. The deal legitimized billion-dollar startup acquisitions based on audience growth rather than profit, and changed the industry forever.
On April 7, 1969, Steve Crocker published RFC 1 — not as a standard or specification, but as an invitation to discuss. That simple idea of open, collaborative communication became the foundation of how the internet is still built today.
