The Great Geek Manual

‘How do you know so much about everything?’ was asked of a very wise and intelligent man; and the answer was ‘By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions as to anything of which I was ignorant.’

- John Abbott

512
A solar eclipse is recorded by a monastic historian in Ireland.

1613
The original Globe Theatre in London, England burns down accidentally when a cannon discharged during a performance of William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII sets fire to the building’s thatched roof.

1888
Edison’s foreign sales agent, Colonel George Gouraud, makes a wax cylinder recording in the Crystal Palace, London of a four thousand person choir performing Handel’s Israel in Egypt at a distance of more than one hundred yards from the phonograph. It is the first known recording of classical music.

1929
Construction of the first high-speed jet wind tunnel is completed at Langley Field, California, the field laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Preliminary design work began November 14, 1928. The tunnel is capable of producing wind speeds of about 600mph, permitting the testing of aerofoils. Read more about the history of wind tunnels at the US Centennial of Flight Commission and NASA websites.
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1928
Austrian Friedrich Schmiedl launches his first experimental rocket. Though his first rocket design isn’t successful, on September 9, 1931, Schmiedl will operate the world’s first official postal rocket-mail service in Austria using a V-7 rocker, until laws prohibiting the civilian use of explosives are passed.

1938
A 450 metric ton meteorite strikes the Earth in an empty field near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

1955
The HMTS Monarch sets out from Clarenville, Newfoundland laying the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, TAT-1. On September 26th, the Monarch will reach the Firth of Lorne in Oban, Scotland.

1956
The first atomic reactor built for the purpose of private research goes into operations in Chicago, Illinois.

1965
The first commercial communications satellite, “Early Bird,” goes into commercial service, relaying a commercial telephone conversation over a satellite between America and Europe for the first time. Early Bird has a capacity for 240 voice circuits capacity or one black and white television channel. The satellite will later be renamed Intelsat I.
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I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.

- Alan Greenspan

The films I look forward to the most are the ones that take an established trope or hollywood cliche and turn it on its head, and this looks to one of those films. Daybreakers is a sci-fi vampire flick that looks a lot like 30 Days of Night meets Children of Men. In it, vampires have overrun the Earth, and the humans that they hunt as a food source are becoming scarce.

Unlike Twilight, which just sucked, this looks to be a sparkle and heart-throb-free film aimed at genre fans! Woohoo!

The downside is that it casts Ethan Hawke in a role that looks as if it may come perilously close to re-hashing his part in Gattaca. Still… no sparkling in sight!

Film

• DailyFill has posted an infographic of Michael Bay: By the Numbers.
• Is it just me, or is this list of The 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time one of the worst “best movies” lists ever?
• M. Night Shyamalan discusses Avatar. [YouTube] Anyone else think this film is a way of punishing him for his past failures?
• Mary Robinette Kowal rounds ups the Best Film Fantasy World Portals., beginning with the drawings from MirrorMask.
• Memo to Hollywood: Not ALL 80s Cartoons Need to Become Movies
• Mike Brotherton names the Ten of the Dumbest Things in Science Fiction Film.
• Popular Mechanics counts down the Top 10 Movie Explosions of All Time, starting with the head explosion from Scanners.
• Total Film rounds up The 30 Greatest Gangster Movies, beginning with Infernal Affairs and topping out with Goodfellas.

Internet

• Apex magazine is returning from hiatus in July.
• BloginHood touts the Top 5 Rejected Ideas for Transformers.
• Students from the University of Michigan have written a Harry Potter musical. It’s a bit corny, but it’s hard not to watch.

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1847
New York and Boston are linked by telegraph wires.

1885
Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter apply for a patent which will be granted on May 4, 1886 for a phonograph-type apparatus called the graphophone. (US No. 341,214) The device improves on Thomas Edison’s principles by specifying cardboard discs coated with wax in which a vibrating style cuts a narrow spiral groove. Bell and Tainter decide to use cylinders rather than discs while still employing hill-and-dale inscribing rather than the lateral-cut.

1898
The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia aboard his sloop-rigged fishing boat that he named Spray.

1923
John Logie Baird runs an advertisement in The Times personal column. “Seeing by Wireless—inventor of apparatus wishes to hear from someone who will assist (not financially) in making working model.” His experiments are being conducted at 21 Linton Crescent, Hastings, Sussex.
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