The Great Geek Manual

1046
Monks record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that “no man alive…could remember so severe a winter.” It is the first historical record of the beginning of the two hundred year period of exceptionally cold weather conditions which will follow, constituting a period which will later be dubbed the “Little Ice Age.”

1709
Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk is rescued from the desert island on which he has been shipwrecked. His story will later inspire the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

1880
The world’s first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana.

1893
The first close-up, a shot of a man sneezing, is filmed at Edison studio, in West Orange, New Jersey.

1931
A rocket is used to deliver mail for the first time by Friedrich Schmiedl in Austria. The rocket is a 880cm V7 able to carry one hundred letters from Schoeckel bei Graz to Sankt Radegund, over a distance of about two kilometers, before descending by parachute.
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1884
The first volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, A-Ant, is published.

1893
Thomas Alva Edison completes the construction of the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria in West Orange, New Jersey.

1911
Thomas Jennings is convicted of killing Clarence B. Hiller by the Criminal Court of Cook County using fingerprint evidence for the first time in the US. On December 21, the Illionis Supreme Court will uphold the admissibility of the evidence. On February 16, 1912 Jennings will be executed.

1946
At a press conference, University of Pennsylvania announces the development of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator).

1949
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) releases the first single record ever (45 rpm). The release comes in response to the rising popularity of Columbia Record’s 33 1/3 long play records.
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‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to’, said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where…’, said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go’, said the Cat.
‘So long as I get somewhere’, Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that’, said the Cat, ‘If you only walk long.’

- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865.