The puzzle of γ-ray bursts began in the year 1967 with the detection of inexplicable increases in the count rate of γ-ray detectors on board the Vela series of satellites meant to monitor violations of the nuclear explosion test ban treaty (Strong et al. 1973). The discovery of the then so-called γ-ray bursts was published in the year 1973 by Klebesadel et al. (1973), after several years of confidence building through the consistent accumulation of data [a summary of historic remarks can be found in Ramanamurthy and Wolfendale (1984)].