The Great Geek Manual

All life is an experiment.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

1633
Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei is forced by the Inquisition to “abjure, curse, and detest” his heliocentric theories that the Sun rather than the Earth is the center of the Universe. He is also condemned to “formal prison of the Holy Office” for an indeterminate period served at the pleasure of the Inquisition’s judges and ordered to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week, every week for three years. However the Pope will moderate the sentence by specifying it would be served under house arrest.

1675
The Royal Greenwich Observatory is created by Royal Warrant in England by Charles II. Construction will begin on August 10, 1675 and finish the following year. The observatory’s primary uses will be practical astronomy: navigation, timekeeping, and mapping the star. Visit the official Greenwich Observatory website.
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Do not try the patience of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

- Galen, “The Geometry of Shadows,” Babylon 5 by J. Michael Straczynski

June 21st is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere.

1768
The first commencement of a US medical college is held at the College of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. Its Department of Medicine was established in 1765 and was the first medical school in the United States.

1808
French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac announces the isolation of the element Boron, nine days ahead of Englishman Humphry Davy, who independently separated boron and made his own announcement on June 30, 1808.

1851
Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzk play a recreational game of chess, which, by virtue of a series of bold sacrifices, goes down in history as the immortal game, one of the greatest games in chess literature. In the course of the game, Anderssen sacrifices both of his rooks as well as his queen before finally checkmating his opponent with his three remaining minor pieces.

1889
British photographer William Friese-Greene receives a patent for the first cinematograph camera specifically designed to make use of perforated celluloid films, though it only shoots film at a rate of four or five frames per second.

1893
The first Ferris wheel is premiered at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, America’s third World’s Fair. It was invented by George Washington Ferris, a Pittsburgh bridge builder as an attraction similar to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. Ferris’ design features a web of cables rather than rigid spokes in the wheel’s center and two 140 foot steel support towers. It stands 264 feet tall. Each of its thirty-six cars has a sixty passenger capacity, with a one hundred fifty ton total capacity. Its cars and wheels weigh 2,100 tons without passengers, and the levers and other associated machinery required to turn the wheel weigh another 2,200 tons. Its forty-five foot axle is the single largest piece of forged steel in the world. The ride cost fifty cents and made US$726,805.50 during the World’s Fair.
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Art

• If the Seven Deadly Sins were red wine glasses, how would they be shaped?

Comics

• I don’t know how the Topless Robot managed to narrow their “The 10 Least Incredible Hulk Villains Ever Smashed” list down to ten, but…
• io9 posts its best list ever: Superheroes Who Can’t Have Sex.
• PS3 Fanboy has compiled a list of the 10 Best PlayStation Ads and the 10 Worst PlayStation Ads.
• The Late Show presents Top ten signs your wife is having an affair with The Incredible Hulk.

Literature

• Free Speculative Fiction Online offers a rapidly growing selection of vintage science fiction short stories.

Video Games

• According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers, global video game industry sales will reach US$26.4 billion by 2012.
• The ten most ludicrously named arcade games includes such winners as “Boong-Ga Boong-Ga,” “Hotdog Storm,” and “Xexex.”

Any fool can use a computer. Many do.

- Ted Nelson, Information technology pioneer

1214
The University of Oxford receives its chartered.

1840
Samuel F.B. Morse receives a patent for his telegraphy signals, known as Morse code. (US No. 1,647)

1877
Alexander Graham Bell installs the world’s first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. In the first month, Bell will sell only six telephones. By September, 778 telephones will be in use.

1926
Herr Schaetzle demonstrates a wireless phone for autos in Berlin, Germany.

1939
Ernst Heinkel tests the world’s first aircraft to be propelled solely by a liquid-fuelled rocket, the He-176 experimental rocket airplane, flies for first time in Peenemunde, Germany. It’s powered by an engine based on Hellmuth Walter’s hydrogen peroxide-based rocket and piloted by Erich Warsitz. It’s a small aircraft, without an enclosed canopy, built almost entirely out of wood with a fixed, tricycle undercarriage. The fifty second flight of the He-176 isn’t spectacular, but it does provide a “proof of concept” for rocket propulsion. Read more at Luft 46.
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Art

• Chet Zar, one of the artists behind the upcoming Hell Boy movie, has a haunting, somewhat dissettling online gallery.

Film

• The American Film Institute has released a list of their top ten best science fiction and fantasy movies as determined by a jury of 1,500 film artists, critics and historians.
• Den of Geek has a great list of the Top 10 Forgotten British Fantasy Movies for the next time you have a weekend to kill.

Literature

• An 1881 scifi novel republished last month is being compared to Pride and Prejudice. “The Great Romance deals with ‘ground-breaking’ themes such as interplanetary colonisation by humankind, sexual relations with aliens and the problems of space flight, including space shuttles, spacesuits and air locks academics and reviewers say.”
• Free Fiction: ManyBooks.net has published “This Crowded Earth” by the renowned Robert Bloch.
• Zogby International’s has published the interesting (and somewhat depressing) results of a survey of The Reading and Book Buying Habits of Americans.

Television

• Both Paste Magazine and Telewatcher have weighed in on what they consider to be the best sci-fi television series.

Video Games

• Topless Robot has a list of The 10 Most Punishingly Hard Videogames Ever Made with the ring of truth about it.

240 BC
Greek astronomer and mathematician Eratosthenes calculates the circumference of the Earth. As director of the great Library of Alexandria, he read in a papyrus book that in Syene, the shadows of temple columns grew shorter as the hour approached noon on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. At noon, the shadows disappeared altogether because the sun was directly overhead. However, on the same day, a stick in Alexandria, to the north of Syene, casts a pronounced shadow. After learning about the shadows in Syene, Eratosthenes realizes that the surface of the Earth couldn’t be flat and that the more its surface curved, the greater the difference in the length of shadows between different locations would be. Eratosthenes calculated that the distance between the two locations was one fifieth of a full 360-degree circle. He then estimated the distance between the two locations and calculated the planet’s circumference by multiplying the distance by fifty.

1911
The first state film censorship board in the United States is established in Pennsylvania.

1914
A radiotelegraphic link is established between Germany and the United States, and German Emperor Wilhelm II and US President Woodrow Wilson exchange telegrams to mark the event.

1931
The first commercial doors operated by a photoelectric cell is installed. The “magic eye” controls automated swinging doors between the kitchen and main dining room of Wilcox’s Pier Restaurant in West Haven, Connecticut.
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Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.

- Douglas Adams, in his JavaOne keynote address in 1999

Phi is the Greek letter that represents the mathematical constant known as the Golden Ratio.
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Today, June 18, is Phi Day! Like Pi, Phi, also knowns as the Golden Ration, is an irrational number, equal to approximately 1.61803398874989484820458683436564. Phi is used a great deal in astronomy, but it’s found everywhere you look here on Earth, from architecture to shells and even the human body. Most importantly, it’s found in the proportions in the Greeks’ famous golden rectangle, and it’s derivable by many proofs, including the famous Fibonacci Sequence.

1858
Charles Darwin receives an academic paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that draws conclusions regarding evolution nearly identical to those Darwin made himself. The concurring opinion prompts Darwin to publish his own theory of evolution.
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