Moments in time

•On July 14, 1811, Byron returns to England after touring Europe and the Near East for two years. His travels inspired “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1812). The poem brought him almost instant acclaim in England, and Byron’s taste, manners and fashion became widely imitated.

•On July 13, 1938, the first “television theater” opens, in Boston. The audience paid 25 cents admission to view a black-and-white broadcast on a 9-by-12-inch screen of singers, musicians and dancers performing in a studio above the auditorium.

•On July 16, 1945, the United States conducts the first test of the atomic bomb at its research facility in Los Alamos, N.M. As he watched the mushroom cloud rise into the sky, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the project, recited a passage from an ancient Hindu text: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”

•On July 17, 1955, Disneyland, Walt Disney’s metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy, and futurism, opens in Anaheim, Calif., on 160 acres of former orange groves. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 14 million visitors a year.

•On July 15, 1965, the unmanned spacecraft Mariner 4 passes over Mars at an altitude of 6,000 feet and sends back to Earth the first close-up images of the red planet. The photos revealed a vast, barren wasteland of craters and rust-colored sand, dismissing 19th-century suspicions that an advanced civilization might exist on the planet.

•On July 11, 1985, soft-drink giant Coca-Cola announces plans to return the beloved original version of Coca-Cola — now christened “Classic Coke” — to the market. The original Coke had been dropped in favor of reformulated “New Coke,” which was a resounding flop with consumers.

•On July 12, 1990, the TV series “Northern Exposure” airs its first episode. The offbeat show, about a Manhattan doctor forced to work in a small Alaska town, consistently ranked in the Top 20 most-watched TV shows until it was canceled in 1995.