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By the early 1960s Tokyo's Haneda Airport was boxed in by dense neighborhoods and out of capacity, so in 1966 the Transport Ministry chose the farming villages of Sanrizuka and Shibayama in Chiba Prefecture, about 60 kilometers east of central Tokyo, for a five-runway hub. It finalized the site without consulting residents and planned to take the land by eminent domain, and many families learned of it from the evening news. Conservative farmers joined radical New Left students, including the Chukaku-ha and Zengakuren, in the Sanrizuka-Shibayama Union. They barricaded survey roads from 1967, built steel towers in the planned flight paths, and three police officers were killed in the clashes. The first terminal was finished in 1972, but no runway could be built.

On March 26, 1978, four days before the scheduled opening, protesters stormed the control tower, smashed equipment and caused about half a million dollars in damage, delaying the opening by two months. Narita opened on May 20, 1978 with 14,000 police facing 6,000 protesters, while another cell cut power to the air traffic control center in Tokorozawa and shut Tokyo's airspace. Only one of five planned runways worked. In 1986 eight farming families still owned about 53 acres in the way, and the government had renounced forced expropriation. Runway B opened in 2002 for the World Cup at 2,180 meters, 320 meters short, and its taxiway bent around a three-story concrete protest building until a 2008 Supreme Court ruling and a 500-officer operation in 2011 cleared it. Until 2015 everyone entering the airport had to show ID.

• From about 2006 Narita grouped airlines by alliance: SkyTeam in Terminal 1 North, Star Alliance in Terminal 1 South and oneworld in Terminal 2.
• Terminal 3, opened in 2015 for low-cost carriers, uses floor decals instead of hanging signs and outdoor air stairs instead of jet bridges, and Skytrax ranked it the world's second-best LCC terminal in 2024.
• A 47-kilometer underground pipeline from the port of Chiba City had pumped 130 billion liters of jet fuel by its 30th anniversary in 2013.
• Helsinki is Narita's busiest European route because the polar route makes it the first major gateway.
• Runway C, a 3,500-meter strip built over two road tunnels and due in fiscal 2028, will lift annual slots from about 300,000 to 460,000.

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When regulators broke up the AT&T Bell System in 1983, Bell Atlantic emerged as the Baby Bell for the Mid-Atlantic states. It merged with NYNEX in 1996 and moved to New York City, then in 2000 merged with GTE and renamed itself Verizon, a blend of veritas and horizon. That year it formed Verizon Wireless with Vodafone, holding 55 percent to Vodafone's 45, and started with 23 million customers before absorbing smaller carriers such as Rural Cellular and Alltel. In 2014 Verizon bought out Vodafone's stake for $130 billion, one of the largest corporate deals in history, taking full control of its national network.

Control brought controversy. In 2004 and 2005 Verizon blocked all European email by default to fight spam, prompting a class action; in 2007 it initially refused NARAL Pro-Choice America a text short code; in 2010 it blocked 4chan over DDoS attacks; and in 2014 it won a court ruling that struck down FCC net neutrality rules. Reports in 2006 said it handed landline records to the NSA without warrants, and the 2013 Snowden leaks revealed a FISA court order requiring daily call metadata. Verizon then tried media: the tech site SugarString, which barred stories on net neutrality and surveillance, AOL for $4.4 billion in 2015 and Yahoo's core business for $4.8 billion in 2017, combined as Oath. It wrote down $4.6 billion in December 2018 and sold the division to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion in 2021.

• A researcher found a flaw in Verizon routers in 2015 that exposed home Fios customers to account information leaks.
• Its 2019 5G rollout bet on millimeter wave spectrum, which needs dense small cells because the signal struggles to pass through buildings and foliage.
• Verizon bought Tracfone in 2020 and agreed to acquire Frontier Communications for $20 billion to expand its fiber footprint.
• In May 2025 it ended its diversity, equity and inclusion programs as the Trump administration probed them, a move the episode ties to securing Frontier approval.
• New CEO Dan Schulman, named in October 2025, cut about 3,000 jobs and sold company-owned stores to franchisees in a $5 billion cost plan that includes replacing routine roles with AI.

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In 1901 J.P. Morgan bought out Andrew Carnegie's steel empire and combined it with Federal Steel, National Steel and others into the United States Steel Corporation. The merger cost about $492 million, yet the new company was capitalized at $1.4 billion when the entire federal budget was under $1 billion, and in 1902 it made 67 percent of American steel. It owned iron ore and coal mines, railroads and the largest commercial fleet on the Great Lakes, but fear of antitrust action made it cautious, letting rivals like Bethlehem Steel out-innovate it. After absorbing the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company of Birmingham in 1907, it relied, according to author Douglas Blackmon, on convict leasing deals with more than 20 Alabama counties, paying about $9 a month per prisoner to work its coal mines into the late 1920s.

In 1952 Harry Truman seized the steel mills during the Korean War, and the Supreme Court ruled he lacked the authority. In 1962 John F. Kennedy forced U.S. Steel to reverse a price hike. The company recognized the union in 1937 under Myron Taylor, then in 1986 endured a six-month work stoppage of 22,000 workers and closed four plants, cutting 3,500 union jobs. With tax relief meant for modernizing mills, it bought Marathon Oil in 1982 and became USX in 1986. Its market share fell to 8 percent by 2001 and it left the S&P 500 in 2014. After buying non-union Big River Steel in Arkansas, it rejected a $7.3 billion Cleveland-Cliffs bid and accepted Nippon Steel's $14.9 billion offer in December 2023. President Biden blocked the sale through CFIUS in early 2025, and in May 2025 President Trump allowed it with a U.S. government golden share.

• The 1948 Donora smog trapped emissions from U.S. Steel's zinc works over the Pennsylvania town, killing 20 people in three days and 50 more afterward.
• U.S. Steel created the Steelmark logo later adopted by the Pittsburgh Steelers, built the 1964 World's Fair Unisphere and supplied modular steel rooms for Disney's Contemporary Resort.
• Big River uses electric arc furnaces that melt scrap with electricity and need a fraction of the workers of legacy blast furnaces.
• Activist investor Ancora Holdings launched a proxy fight to oust CEO David Burritt, cancel the Nippon deal and sell Big River.
• The golden share lets Washington appoint a director and veto moving headquarters from Pittsburgh, closing certain plants or changing the name, powers that later pass to the Treasury and Commerce departments.

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ZTE was founded in Shenzhen in 1985 as Zhongxing Semiconductor by investors tied to China's Ministry of Aerospace Industry, with Hou Weigui as founder. In 1993 it became Zhongxing New Telecommunications Equipment under a "state-owned and private operating" model: at holding company ZTE Holdings, state-owned enterprises nominate five of nine directors and a founders' entity nominates the other four. Building hardware for both the CDMA and GSM standards, ZTE won 40 percent of new global CDMA network orders by 2006 and was the third-largest GSM vendor by 2009, while selling Axon, Nubia, Red Magic and Blade phones and sponsoring the Houston Rockets, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks and Borussia Mönchengladbach.

In March 2017 ZTE pleaded guilty to illegally exporting U.S. technology to Iran and North Korea and was fined a record $1.19 billion on condition it discipline those responsible. The Commerce Department found it fired four senior officials but paid bonuses to 35 employees involved and made false statements, and in April 2018 imposed a seven-year ban on U.S. exports to the company. With at least 25 percent of its phone components from the U.S., including Qualcomm processors and Google software, ZTE suspended major operations in May. After Donald Trump and Xi Jinping intervened, a June 2018 settlement required another $1 billion fine, $400 million in escrow, a U.S.-selected compliance team and new senior management. The FCC named ZTE a national security threat in 2020, the Secure Equipment Act signed by President Biden in 2022 barred new ZTE equipment, and in May 2026 the European Commission recommended EU states exclude its gear.

• U.S. court filings allege ZTE ran a dedicated department for managing bribes to win telecom contracts in West Africa, and a DOJ probe into bribery in South America was ongoing as of December 2025.
• Telenor banned ZTE in 2008 over procurement conduct, and a Philippine government broadband deal was canceled over kickback allegations.
• In 2010 ZTE sold an eavesdropping system to Iran's government-controlled telecom company, and Reuters reported in 2018 that it helped build Venezuela's fatherland ID card.
• A ZTE Score phone sold in the U.S. contained a hard-coded password that allowed remote access.
• India blocked ZTE from its 5G rollout after 2020 border clashes, Sweden banned it on security advice, and ZTE did not withdraw from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.

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Travelocity's roots run back to 1978, when American Airlines opened its Sabre reservation mainframe to outside travel agents. In the mid-1980s, under Kathy Misunas, American offered a consumer slice called Easy Sabre, spelled with a double A to nod to the airline, over text-only dial-up networks like CompuServe and GEnie and later AOL. In 1994 Worldview Systems Corporation and Sabre formed a 50-50 venture, launched Travelocity.com over 1995 and 1996, and in 1996 Sabre bought out investors Ameritech and Advance Publications and put longtime Sabre IT executive Terry Jones in charge. An exclusive AOL partnership followed in 1999, and a 2000 merger with Preview Travel made it the leader in online travel and took it public on the NASDAQ with Sabre keeping 70 percent.

Facing Expedia and Orbitz, Sabre took Travelocity private again in a 2002 tender offer, bought last-minute specialist Site59 and made its founder Michelle Peluso CEO in December 2003. The Roaming Gnome arrived in 2004, the brand sponsored The Amazing Race for 34 seasons, and in 2005 it paid 577 million pounds for lastminute.com. 2012 brought a $180,000 Department of Transportation fine over fares that left out fuel surcharges and a $29.95 paper ticket fee revealed only at checkout. Under Carl Sparks, a former Expedia marketing chief, the company sold off its pieces, handed its North American sites to Expedia's technology in August 2013, and in January 2015 Sabre sold the Travelocity brand to Expedia Group for $280 million in cash.

• Sabre launched a direct-to-consumer site knowing it risked a revolt from the travel agencies that were its core customers.
• In August 2012 Travelocity's social team retweeted a $200 code meant for National Federation of the Blind conference attendees, then canceled trips booked by anyone not on the attendee list.
• The Asia-Pacific agency Zuji sold for $25 million in 2012, and lastminute.com went to a Swiss firm for 76 million pounds in 2014.
• The company also shed Travelocity Business and shut its review site IgoUgo.
• Peluso resigned in 2009, and her successor Hugh Jones stepped away in 2011.

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During the 2006 Second Lebanon War, about 4,000 rockets, mostly unguided Katyushas fired by Hezbollah, killed 44 Israeli civilians and forced a quarter million people from their homes, while more than 8,000 projectiles, mostly Qassam rockets and mortars, were fired from Gaza between 2000 and 2008. U.S. officials pushed the Phalanx gun system instead, and early assessments gave the new concept a success rate in the low teens. Brigadier General Daniel Gold, head of the IDF Research and Development Bureau from 2004, skirted contracting rules to fund it, and Defense Minister Amir Peretz selected Iron Dome in February 2007. The system links an Elta ELM-2084 radar, mPrest battle management software and launchers holding 20 Tamir interceptors each, and it fires only when a rocket's computed path threatens a populated area or key infrastructure.

Working under startup-style deadlines, engineers bought a radio-controlled car at Toys R Us and used its parts in early prototypes. The first combat interception came in April 2011 near Ashkelon, and Israel claimed 85 to 90 percent success and 735 interceptions in Operation Protective Edge in 2014, figures MIT physicist Theodore Postol disputed, arguing the proximity-fused shrapnel often hit rocket bodies without destroying warheads. A battery costs about $50 million and each Tamir $100,000 to $150,000, against as little as $800 for a Qassam. The U.S. contributed $1.6 billion from 2011 to 2021 and approved another $1 billion afterward, and Raytheon co-produces the interceptor as the Skyhunter in Tucson and East Camden, Arkansas. Rafael's Iron Beam laser costs under a dollar per shot but loses focus in fog, sandstorms and cloud.

• The project leader's wife suggested the name Tamir; "Golden Dome" was dropped as too ostentatious, and "anti-Qassam" as poor optics.
• Property damage claims fell from about 30,000 in the 2006 war to 2,400 in 2014, though a 2018 study found sirens and shelters at least as effective as the interceptors.
• Hamas adapted with saturation salvos and flatter trajectories that cut the software's reaction time.
• The Sea Dome variant sits on Sa'ar 6 corvettes, the U.S. Army tested two batteries at Guam and Fort Bliss, Romania and Cyprus signed deals, and a battery deployed to the UAE in 2026.
• Tel Aviv University's Yoav Fromer argues the system's "physical and psychological solace" eases pressure on leaders to seek diplomatic solutions.

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Toshiba grew from two struggling 19th century firms: Tanaka Seisakusho, founded in 1875 by inventor Tanaka Hisashige to make Japan's first telegraph equipment, and Hakunetsusha, a bamboo-filament light bulb maker founded in 1890 by Miyoshi Shoichi and Fujioka Ichisuke. After rebranding as Shibaura Seisakusho and Tokyo Denki, they merged in 1939 as Tokyo Shibaura Denki, shortened to Toshiba in 1978. Owning everything from power generation to the bulb, the company rode Japan's postwar boom with the TAC digital computer in 1954, transistor televisions and microwave ovens in 1959, Japan's first word processor in 1978 and the T1100 laptop in 1985. In the 1980s a team led by Fujio Masuoka invented flash memory, first NOR, then the denser and cheaper NAND that now stores data in phones everywhere.

The sprawling keiretsu also produced scandal. In 1987 a Toshiba subsidiary was caught selling precision milling machines to the Soviet Union in violation of the COCOM embargo, helping it build quieter submarine propellers. In 2008 Toshiba conceded the HD DVD format war to Sony's Blu-ray. Its 2006 purchase of Westinghouse for $5.4 billion turned disastrous after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, where Toshiba had built Unit 3, as fixed-price contracts for the Vogtle and V.C. Summer plants ran over. A 2015 investigation found profits inflated by $1.2 billion over seven years, CEO Hisao Tanaka resigned with eight other officials, and in 2017 Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy, leaving a $6.3 billion write-down. After selling its divisions, Toshiba accepted a $15 billion buyout from the JIP consortium and was delisted in December 2023 after 74 years on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

• Keiretsu loyalties ran so deep that Toshiba employees predominantly drank Asahi beer because of corporate alliances.
• Executives handed division heads impossible financial targets called "challenges," and managers falsified ledgers rather than admit failure.
• The memory business that invented flash went to a Bain Capital-led consortium for $18 billion and now operates as Kioxia.
• Regza televisions went to Hisense, home appliances to Midea, medical systems to Canon, and the PC line to Sharp under the Dynabook name.
• The private, slimmed-down Toshiba is now putting research money into quantum cryptography.

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The M777 began in 1987 as the Ultralight Field Howitzer developed by Vickers in the United Kingdom and was later taken over and largely Americanized by BAE Systems. About 70 percent of its parts are now U.S. built, with barrels made at Watervliet Arsenal in New York and final assembly in Mississippi. Extensive use of titanium brings the 155mm gun to 9,800 pounds, against 16,000 pounds for the M198 it replaced, a 41 percent cut, while a hydraulic recoil system absorbs the blast. Emplacement takes 2 minutes 10 seconds compared with over six and a half minutes for the M198, displacement 2 minutes 23 seconds, a C-130 carries two instead of one, and a helicopter can lift it by sling. Digital fire control using GPS and ring laser gyroscopes lets the gun aim as soon as it lands, and the GPS-guided M982 Excalibur round stretches range to 40 kilometers, with a 5-meter circular error probable in testing from 24 kilometers.

Canada took it into combat first, during Operation Archer in Afghanistan in 2006, where two Canadian guns hit retreating Taliban forces in the Battle of Panjwai. In 2012 Marines of the 11th Marine Regiment in Helmand fired an Excalibur 36 kilometers, the longest operational barrel artillery shot in Marine Corps history. At Firebase Bell near Makhmour, Iraq, Marines fired more than 2,000 rounds in 60 days in 2016 to support the Mosul offensive. In Ukraine, after the U.S. donated over 140 units, crews report firing up to 6,000 rounds through barrels meant to be replaced at about 2,500, and roughly a third of some 350 Western howitzers are reported offline for maintenance at any time. BAE Systems is opening plants in Sheffield and Louisville, Kentucky to build new units, titanium castings and M776 replacement barrels.

• The normal crew is eight, the minimum is five, and in an emergency three people can fire it.
• The Bofors BONUS round releases two winged submunitions that scan for vehicle engine heat and fire shaped charges into tank roofs.
• Fatal accidents occurred in training at Fort Bragg in 2011 and 2014, and a 2017 explosion in Iraq killed two soldiers.
• The Oryx blog recorded more than 100 M777s destroyed, damaged or captured in Ukraine; each gun costs $2 million to $3.7 million.
• India bought 145 for its mountain border with China, with 120 assembled locally by Mahindra Defence Systems under Make in India.

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The Titan rocket family flew 368 missions between 1959 and 2005, and it began as a weapon. The Martin Company built Titan I as a costly backup to the slow Atlas ICBM program. It burned RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen, which boiled off and could not be kept in a sealed silo, and it was steered by an underground Univac Athena computer that tracked the missile by radar and radioed commands to it. Titan II switched to hypergolic propellants, Aerozine 50 and nitrogen tetroxide, which ignite on contact and stay liquid at room temperature, so missiles could sit fueled for years. The toll came in the silos: in August 1965 a welding fire in a silo near Searcy, Arkansas killed 53 construction workers, and in 1978 a ruptured oxidizer line near Rock, Kansas forced 200 residents to evacuate and killed an Air Force staff sergeant.

In September 1980, at Titan II silo 374-7 near Damascus, Arkansas, a technician dropped an 8-pound wrench socket that fell 70 feet and punctured the missile's thin aluminum skin. Hours later the silo exploded, throwing the 740-ton launch door 200 feet into the air and ejecting a 9-megaton warhead into a ditch without detonating it. One airman died and 21 were injured. The Air Force retired all 54 Titan IIs by 1987 in favor of the solid-fuel MX Peacekeeper. By then NASA had flown 12 Titan II GLVs for the Gemini program from 1964 to 1966, every one successful. Program 624A turned the core into the Titan III for spy satellites, the Titan IIIE with a Centaur upper stage launched the Viking and Voyager missions, a Titan IV carried Cassini-Huygens in 1997, and the last Titan IVB left Vandenberg on October 19, 2005.

• Titan II's fuel tank walls were the missile's outer skin, an aluminum alloy less than a tenth of an inch thick in places.
• For Gemini, engineers removed the missile's retro rockets and swapped its inertial targeting guidance for radio ground guidance to track the astronauts' ascent.
• The Titan 23G program pulled deactivated Titan II missiles from storage, cleaned and recertified them, and launched government satellites from Vandenberg with a perfect record.
• The Titan IIIC steered its solid boosters by injecting nitrogen tetroxide into one side of the exhaust to deflect the thrust.
• The Titan IIIB with an Agena upper stage placed KH-8 Gambit reconnaissance satellites in polar orbit, and Titan rockets also launched the Vela Hotel nuclear detection satellites.

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TiVo began in 1997 as Teleworld, founded by Jim Barton and Mike Ramsay to build a home network device before pivoting to a machine that digitized, compressed and stored television on a hard drive. After Ramsay promised a first-quarter release, engineers hit March 31, 1999, a blue moon, and code-named the first DVR Blue Moon. Designer Michael Cronin and the firm Pittard Sullivan created the smiling TV-set mascot. Because the drive kept a rolling 30-minute buffer, Trick Play let viewers pause, rewind and skip ahead in live TV, Season Pass recorded whole series, and TiVo Suggestions used thumbs-up and thumbs-down ratings to record shows automatically.

TiVo logged every remote key press, and the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake moment at the February 1, 2004 Super Bowl became its most replayed ever, with a spike a company representative compared to an electrocardiogram. Users were opted in to data collection by default, and TiVo worked with Nielsen to sell commercial-viewing data. It tested pop-up ads during fast-forward in 2005 and added pre-roll ads in 2019. Broadcasters' copy-once flags blocked transfers, and TiVo's lockdown of its Linux-based boxes led Richard Stallman to coin Tivoization and the Free Software Foundation to bar the practice in GPLv3.

• Rival ReplayTV offered automatic commercial skipping and internet sharing, was sued by the TV industry, and its parent company went bankrupt.
• Comcast, Verizon and Dish built basic DVRs into the set-top boxes they rented to customers.
• TiVo ended U.K. unit sales in 2003 after BSkyB's integrated decoder, returned through Virgin Media in 2010, and in late 2017 shut off its Australian service server-side.
• Bought by Rovi for $1.1 billion in 2016 and merged with Xperi in 2020, TiVo lost ground when the FCC dropped the CableCARD requirement in 2020; a 2015 redesign had turned the mascot into Blank Man.
• On October 1, 2025, TiVo was reported to have exited hardware entirely to license TiVo OS and collect fees from legacy boxes.