This archive covers progress stories from North and Central America, spanning the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the nations of Central America. Readers will find reporting on health, environment, community resilience, and policy advances across the region.
MS-DOS arrived in August 1981, when Microsoft sold IBM the operating system that would power its new personal computer. The twist: Microsoft didn’t write it, but bought the underlying code from a Seattle programmer for $25,000 and kept the rights to license it elsewhere. That clause helped shape the PC era.
The world’s first wind farm spun to life in late 1980 on a New Hampshire hillside, where 20 small turbines fed electricity directly into the grid. Blades broke, towers stood just 60 feet tall, and the project was quietly dismantled within a couple of years. But the proof held, and a direct line runs from those struggling machines to today’s global wind industry.
Greenland home rule arrived on May 1, 1979, after 70.1% of voters said yes to governing themselves. Copenhagen kept defense and foreign affairs, but Greenland gained its own parliament, control over schools and hospitals, and official status for Kalaallisut. After centuries of decisions made across the Atlantic, Greenlanders finally held the pen.
On January 21, 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter grants an unconditional pardon to hundreds of thousands of men who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.
The first modern pneumococcal vaccine was licensed in the United States in 1977, ending a century-long hunt to tame one of humanity’s deadliest bacteria. Physician Robert Austrian had shown that many patients died within 96 hours of infection, before antibiotics could help. Prevention, not just cure, finally had a tool.
The Altair 8800 landed on the cover of Popular Electronics in December 1974, a mail-order kit built in an Albuquerque garage by an engineer trying to save his debt-ridden company. It sold out almost instantly, inspired a teenage Bill Gates to cold-call its maker, and sparked the Homebrew Computer Club. Personal computing had found its audience.
The first mobile phone call rang out on a Manhattan sidewalk in April 1973, when Motorola engineer Martin Cooper lifted a 2.5-pound prototype to his ear and dialed his rival at Bell Labs. Passersby thought it was a film shoot. It would take another decade before anyone could actually buy one.
Olivia Records launched in 1973 when a group of lesbian feminist activists in Washington, D.C. pooled a $4,000 loan to build a record label owned and run entirely by women. Their first single sold by mail for $1.50 and raised enough to fund a full album. It remains an early, tangible experiment in a community owning its own culture.
The Very Large Array broke ground in April 1973 on a remote stretch of New Mexico high desert, launching one of the most ambitious radio astronomy projects ever attempted. Its 27 dishes, arranged in a 23-mile “Y,” can be repositioned by rail to zoom in on the cosmos. A patient bet on listening harder to a universe already speaking.
Nike’s Waffle Trainer started with a breakfast appliance. One Sunday in Eugene, Oregon, track coach Bill Bowerman poured liquid urethane into his wife’s waffle iron, chasing a lighter, grippier sole for his runners. The shoe reached stores in 1974, and its grid of independent rubber nodes still shapes how performance footwear is designed today.
