The Great Geek Manual

Film

• Wired is offering a look Behind the Scenes of Fanboys, a film which follows a group of geeks on roadtrip to Skywalker Ranch.

Humor

• Bookgasm has posted a great rant entitled “The 9 Most Annoying People I Always See at the Bookstore“.
• This ad for the Storm Trooper Army lampoons US Army commercials.

Internet

• io9 has posted a fun look at Ray Guns in Science Fiction, complete with trivia and a great photo gallery.
• Universal Day of the Jedi has posted a list of The 10 Coolest Star Wars Videos Ever Made.

Literature

• Free Reading: Fantasy & Science Fiction has posted the Hugo-nominated short story, “Finisterra” by David Moles.
• Free Reading: Tor has posted the fantasy novel Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell. Learn more about this amazing book at the Dragon Page.
• SF Scope has posted the complete Hugo Award Final Ballot for 2008.
• Subterranean Press has just posted the cover of Neil Gaiman’s next book, The Graveyard Book.

Television

• Command Line Warriors wonders Is Torchwood just too depressing?
• NBC has announced that the SciFi channel has approved a spin-off of Battlestar Galactica called Caprica.

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1655
Christiaan Huygens discovers Titan, the largest satellite of Saturn using a simple telescope with magnification of fifty, and subsequently determines the period of its revolution. However, the moon won’t be named for nearly two centuries.

1857
Frederick Laggenheim takes the first photograph of a solar eclipse.

Leon Scott de Martinville patents the Phonautograph, the first machine to record sound, twenty years before Thomas Edison invents the first Phonograph. However, unlike the later phonograph, the device is able to record sound but unable to play it back. As such, the phonautograph will become well-known among scientists but will remain a scientific instrument used in the study of sound waves. Read more about the history of phonautograph.

1930
The planet Pluto is officially named. The name was suggest by a eleven year old girl named Venetia Burney. The name was selected from three suggestions by a unanimous vote of the members of the Lowell Observatory. The other two possible names were “Cronus” and “Minerva.” Read more about the history of Pluto.

1959
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) invites applications for over-the-air paid television experiments, for a three-year period. Only one trial will be permitted in any market with at least four commercial television stations.

The “Microwave Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation” (MASER) is patented by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes. (US No. 2,879,439) The device is an apparatus for producing coherent electromagnetic energy from excited atoms.

Robert Noyce of Texas Instruments (TI) publicly demonstrates the first integrated circuit. The circuit demonstrated consists of a sliver of Germanium with five components, each linked by wires.
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1840
Englishman John William Draper becomes the first person to successfully photograph the Moon. The image is a daguerreotype, the precursor of the photograph.

1903
The Wright Brothers apply for a patent for one of the first successful airplanes. View the original patent application.

1965
NASA launches Gemini III, nicknamed the “Molly Brown,” from Cape Canaveral. It is the United State’s first maneuverable two-man mission. The mission is crewed by astronauts Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom and John W. Young. The flight is the first for Young, who breaks quarantine regulations by smuggling a sandwich into orbit to share with Grissom. Before the end of the mission, Young will become the first man to eat a corned beef sandwich in space. Read more about the history of Project Gemini.

1967
The Star Trek episode “The Alternative Factor” first airs. (No. 27) In it, the Enterprise encounters a scientist with the ability to shift between universes who claims to be pursued by a monster. Memory Alpha entry
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1457
Gutenberg Bible becomes the first printed book.

1895
The first motion picture shown on a screen is presented by Auguste and Louis Lumière in a private screen for the Société d’Encouragement à l’Industrie Nationale. An invited audience at forty-four spectators at the Rue de Rennes in Paris, France, viewed the film La Sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière, a film they shot specially for the occasion. The film is a recording of workers leaving the Lumières’ own factory in Lyon, which manufactured photographic products. The workers stream out, most on foot, some with their bicycles, followed by those with cars. Several more such screenings will follow before the first public exhibition at the Salon Indien of the Grand Café at 14 Boulevard des Capucines in Paris on December 28. The Lumières will soon after began opening cinemas in Berlin, Brussels, London, and New York.

1935
Television broadcasts begin in Berlin, Germany, with a low definition, 180 line system.

1942
The BBC begins transmitting news bulletins in Morse code for the benefit of resistance fighters in mainland Europe.

1946
The first rocket built in the United States, one of the WAC Corporals, leaves the Earth’s atmosphere, a year after Germany had launched a rocket. The US rocket is launched from White Sands, New Mexico, and attains an altitude of fifty miles.
First US rocket to leave the Earth’s atmosphere (50 miles up).
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• About.com has posted an interview with actor David Hewlett, who plays Rodney McKay on Stargate Atlantis. It turns out he’s a real geek himself.
• Bayraider – A listing of the strangest and most interesting items auctions on eBay and other sites.
• DIY Drones – a website for about amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) builders.
• Education Portal has posted a list of Ten Free Math Course available from legitimate colleges online. Courses range from Algebra to Calculus.
• Lexisum – An online AJAX tool that provides brief summations of Wikipedia articles.

1684
Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovers Tethys and Dione, two moons of Saturn with a refractor telescope.

1859
The first Zoological Society is incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following the disruption of the Civil War, the society will establish the country’s first Zoo.

1925
Wolfgang Pauli publishes his “exclusion principle” at the young age of twenty-four, in an article in the journal Zeitschrift für Physik. The Pauli exclusion principle states that two fermions, such as electrons, cannot be in the same quantum state at the same time. In 1945, Pauli will be awarded a Nobel Prize for this fundamental contribution to the science of quantum mechanics.

1928
Charles Lindbergh is awarded the Medal of Honor for his first trans-Atlantic flight. Read more about Charles Lindbergh.

1942
Arthur C. Wahl and Glenn Seaborg submit a secret report suggesting the name “Plutonium” for artificial element 94, since it follows Uranium (element 92) and Neptunium (element 93) in the periodic table of elements. The paper will be remain secret until 1948, following World War II, when it will be published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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