The Great Geek Manual

1675
The foundation stone of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London is laid by King Charles II.

1846
An Act of Congress signed by US President James K. Polk establishes The Smithsonian Institution as a trust to administer the generous bequest of James Smithson in an amount over US$500,000. In 1826, James Smithson, a British scientist, drew up his last will and testament, naming his nephew as beneficiary. Smithson stipulated that, should the nephew die without heirs (as he did in 1835), the estate should go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” The motivation behind Smithson’s bequest remain mysterious. He had never traveled to the US and seems to have had no correspondence with anyone there. Read more about the history of the Smithsonian Institute.

1928
Baird demonstrates television pictures with a stereoscopic relief effect.

1932
A 11.2 pound (5.1kg) chondrite-type meteorite breaks into at least seven pieces and lands near the town of Archie in Cass County, Missouri.

1960
An ejected space capsule from Discoverer 13 is recovered after it returns from orbit, becoming the first human-made object ever recovered from space.

1966
The first lunar orbiter, Lunar Orbiter I is launched on a mission to photograph potential landing sites for the Apollo and Surveyor missions.

A daylight meteor is seen from Utah to Canada. It is the only known case of a meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere and then leaving it again.

1981
According to Twin Galaxies, Samir Mehta scores a record setting 338,000 points on Atari’s Centipede after playing the game for thirty minutes at the Time Zone arcade in Mountain View, California. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1983
Release 10 of Infocom’s interactive fiction game Enchanter becomes available for personal computers. It is the first fantasy game published by Infocom following the popular Zork trilogy.

A cockpit style version of a Star Wars coin-operated video game is presented to George Lucas by Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, Inc. An inscription on the game reads: “A special thanks for creating The Force behind so much fun.”

1984
MGM releases the action film Red Dawn to 1,822 US theaters. It is the first widely distributed PG-13 film ever released. The PG-13 rating was first introduced by the MPAA on July 1, 1984 after the release of a number of films that had straddled the PG and R ratings, including Dragonslayer, Footloose, Gremlins, Poltergeist, and Tootsie.

The PG-13 rating is introduced by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to address the issue of the increasing number of films that straddled the PG and R ratings, such as Watership Down, an 1978 animated film that had featured explicit violence.

1985
Paul H. Levy releases “The Ultimate in WarGames Dialer Programs,” Ultra-Dial version 5.1.

1987
Borland International releases the Quattro spreadsheet software for the IBM PC.

1989
The first Macworld Expo is held, in Boston, Massachusetts. The event is attended by about thirty thousand people..

1990
The NASA space probe Magellan arrives at its planned polar orbit around the planet Venus. As the planet rotates slowly beneath it, Magellan circled once every three hours fifteen minutes, collecting radar images of the surface in strips about 10-17 miles (17-28km) wide and returns the data via radio. The Magellan mission also provides gravity and atmospheric measurements.

1992
The first South Korean satellite, Kitsat A, is launched.

The second annual Silicon Valley Personal Computer Design Conference is held, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California.

1993
The first Turkish satellite, Turksat 1B, is launched.

1994
The first Turkish satellite, Turksat 1B, is launched.

1995
The Gen Con Game Fair is held from August 10 – 13 at the Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center & Arena (MECCA) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1996
The website of Livets Ord is hacked by “ivil h4x0r”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

1997
The servers of Cyper Promotions are anonymously hacked.

Ståle Schumacher publishes an international version of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) freeware 5.0i for Unix in Norway. It marks the first time PGP has been legally exported from the US, however, in order to export the encryption legally, its source code had to be printed as a book then scanned and re-entered into a computer using OCR in Norway.

2000
According to Ibiblio.org world population tracker, the global population reaches six billion. Visit the Ibiblio website.

2001
Rhythms NetConnections, Inc., a broadband services provider, announces that it will cease service within thirty days and let go of 75 percent of its work force, or about seven hundred employees.

South Korea Information and Communication Ministry announces that they have found a third new version of the Code Red worm.

2004
The iTunes Music Store adds the millionth song to its library of available selections. Visit the online store,

2005
Astronomers discover the first triple asteroidal system which consists of two satellites orbiting the asteroid 87 Sylvia.

Lee Seung Seop, a twenty-eight year old industrial boiler repairman, dies of exhaustion in Taegu, South Korea after playing the real-time strategy game StarCraft continuously for over 49 hours at an Internet cafe. Exhaustion and dehydration induced heart failure, and he goes into cardiac arrest. He dies shortly after his collapse at a local area hospital. Roughly six weeks prior, his girlfriend, also an avid gamer, had broken up with him after he had lost his job due to repeated tardiness. According to his friends, his normal game preference was World of Warcraft, and he was a confirmed video game addict.

Opera Software releases the Opera Mini Java ME web browser for mobile devices in Norway. The browser will be released globally on January 24, 2006. Visit the application’s official website.

2007
In the matter of SCO v. Novell, a United States District Court rules that Novell holds the copyright to UNIX and UnixWare, allowing the company to claim licensing fees that SCO had previously withheld. The court also rules that SCO must drop its suits against IBM and Sequent regarding the distribution of Linux following Novell’s newly legitimized waiver of SCO’s claims. Following the ruling, Novell publicly announces that the company has no interest in suing any individuals over the user or distribution of Unix, stating “We don’t believe there is Unix in Linux.” The move earns the company the praise of the open source community.

Lions Gate Entertainment releases the horror action film Skinwalkers, directed by James Isaac and starring Jason Behr, Elias Koteas, Rhona Mitra, Kim Coates, Natassia Malthe, Sarah Carter and Lyriq Bent, to 745 US theaters. It will gross US$553,520 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit this film’s official website. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 50 mins

The Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s largest record company, announces that it will begin making a portion of its catalog available without digital rights management (DRM) technologies through digital retail services such as RealNetworks and Wal-Mart beginning in January. The announcement marks a significant departure from the company’s strong (some say fanatical) anti-piracy stance.

The will be offered as a test intended to allow executives to study how the removal of DRM affects consumer demand and internet piracy. If Universal makes the change permanent, the move would place immense pressure on other record companies to follow suit. Read more at the New York Times.