1981: International Business Machines introduces its personal computer for the home market, and in the first year and a half 136,000 are sold. Shortly after an entire industry of "PC clones" begins.

1997: Deep Blue, a 32-node IBM supercomputer, defeats World Chess champion Gary Kasparov.

1981: A number of near-miss nuclear accidents occur. The USS George Washington, a submarine carrying 160 nuclear warheads, collides with a Japanese freighter in the East China Sea, and an American Posiedon nuclear missile being removed from the USS Holland is caught by a safety mechanism just seconds before it would have hit the ship's hull.

1997: The United States breaks a five-year moratorium on nuclear testing and conducts an underground sub-critical nuclear weapons test at the Nevada Test Site.

1997: Alexander Lebed, Russian President Boris Yeltsin's former National Security Advisor, claims that 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs are missing in Russia.

1998: Both India and Pakistan conduct nuclear...