The Great Geek Manual

1642
Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovers the south polar cap of Mars.

1876
The four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) written by German composer Richard Wagner premieres at the new Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which Wagner had custom built just for performances of the Ring cycle. The cycle takes four nights to perform, for a total of up to fifteen hours of performance. The plot revolves around a magic ring forged by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich from gold stolen from the river Rhine that grants the wearer the power to rule the world. Read more about the opera at the University of Texas.

1889
The first coin-operated telephone box is patented by William Gray of Hartford, Connecticut. He will begin selling the device through the Gray Telephone Pay Station Company, which he will found in 1891. The device is not the first pay telephone however. As early as 1880, a series of telephone pay stations were operating throughout New York City. Customers could use these phones by paying their attendants.

1903
The journal Nature reports that helium gas is produced by the radioactive decay of Radium. This key discovery by William Ramsay and Frederick Soddy will help to reveal the structure of atoms.

1912
The US Congress approves Public Law No. 264, “An Act to regulate radio communication,” also known as the Radio Act of 1912, mandating that radio stations must be manned twenty-four hours a day. The same day, the first experimental radio transmission license is granted by the US Department of Commerce to St Joseph’s College, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1953
Paramount Pictures releases the sci-fi film The War of the Worlds, directed by Byron Haskin and starring Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, and Less Tremayne, to US theaters. It is based on the H.G. Wells novel of the same name. Produced on a budget of two million dollars, it will go on to win an Oscar for its special effects. IMDB listing

1960
The first two-way telephone conversation by satellite takes place with the use of Echo I, a balloon satellite.

1973
The Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals (ICCP) is founded. The organization will regulated the professional standards of the computer industry, offering a certification program for engineers to earn Certified Computing Professional or Associate Computing Professional designations.

1976
AIP releases the sci-fi film Futureworld, directed by Richard T. Heffron and starring Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner, Arthur Hill, Yul Brynner, and Jim Antonio, is released to US theaters. It is the sequel to the 1973 film Westworld. In the film, it has been a couple of years since the disasterous events of “Westworld” and the Delos amusement park is reopening to rave reviews. However one of Delos’s most famous critics, reporter Chuck Browning, is still unconvinced of the park’s safety, especially after one of his friends dies after returning from the new Delos. Deciding to investigate, Chuck goes to Delos and teams up with fellow reporter Tracy Ballard to find out why his friend died. What they discover is that the androids of Delos are being used to replace famous and important visitors with duplicates which will, unless stopped, conquer the world. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hr 44 mins

1981
The Gen Con XIV is held from August 13 – 16 at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Joel Barrett scores a record-setting 18,201,100 points playing the Konami arcade game Amidar at the Pot of Gold arcade in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

According to Twin Galaxies, Antonio Medina scores a record-setting 6,198,490 points playing the Namco arcade game Dig Dug at the Cosmic Palace arcade in Napa, California. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1984
Atari files a US$100 million suit in Santa Clara County Superior Court against the Amiga Corporation alleging a breach of contract. Atari charges that Amiga fraudulently dealt with other potential buyers while developing graphics microprocessors under an exclusive contract with Atari despite a US$500,000 advance payment. The tentative plans between Amiga and Atari incorporated state that Atari would purchase one million preferred shares of Amiga, a privately held company, at US$3 each by September 1st. Although Amiga had returned the US$500,000 advance by the end of June, Atari seeks damages as well as an injunction barring Amiga from delivering or selling chips except to Atari.

1986
The International Fidonet Association (IFNA), a pioneering force for the establishment and popularization of Usenet, files Articles of Association in the state of Missouri, declaring itself as a non-profit organization.

1987
Scientists announce that fossilized bones discovered in Texas in 1984 may be those of the world’s oldest birds.

1991
Nintendo releases the platform game Super Mario World along with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in North America. It is the original game to come bundled with the SNES, and will go on to become one of the most sold games for the system. The game introduces the Yoshi character to the Mario franchise. ESRB: E (Everyone)

Steve Ahola, Regional Coordinator for FidoNet EchoMail Region 16, commits suicide, partially over the prospect of losing his BBS and his position with it.

1996
Data is returned from the Galileo space probe indicating that there may be water on Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter.

Microsoft releases the Internet Explorer 3 web browser. The browser will prove to be far more popular than its predecessors, due to the breadth of technologies it introduced. The browser is the first major browser released to the market to feature Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) support, although the support is incomplete. This version also introduces ActiveX controls, Java applets, inline multimedia, and the PICS system for content metadata to the Internet Explorer line. This version of Internet Explorer is also the first to adopt the blue letter “e” as its logo. The browser’s sudden popularity will draw a great deal of scrutiny, and, as such, an unprecedented number of security flaws will be found in the application in very short order, marking the birth of Internet Explorer’s long-lasting reputation for poor security. The first major flaw, the Princeton Word Macro Virus Loophole, will be discovered on August 22, 1996.

1997
Version 1.1 alpha 0 of the Ruby programming language is released. Visit the official Ruby website.

1998
The Bandai ecommerce site, AnimeVillage, goes online. It is the Bandai’s first attempt to sell anime in North America; however, AnimeVillage only offers subtitled VHS cassettes, despite the popularity of the DVD format and dubbed anime. Visit the AnimeVillage.com site, newly relaunched in 2006.

1999
Donald A. Thomas, Jr. of Manteca, California purchases the first commercially available copy of Yars’ Revenge for the Game Boy Color handheld video game system. Only a small number of the cartridges were shipped to the Telegames booth at the Classic Gaming Expo held in the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Game Boy Color version of the game was written by Mike Mika and based on a game by the same title originally released on the Atari 2600.

Walter Day of the Twin Galaxies website and John Hardie of the Classic Gaming Expo present an award to Donald A. Thomas, Jr., creator of ICWhen.com, for being a pioneer in the effort to preserve the history of video games at a dinner for special guest attendees of the Classic Gaming Expo. At the same event, Pac-Man is named “Game of the Century.”

2000
The Brazilian website of MSMT-Liceu Salesiano Sao Goncalo is hacked by “X-Raptor”. The website is hosted on a server running Windows NT. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Bankers Systems, Inc is hacked by the Pakistani group “Gforce Pakistan”. The hack is one act in a series hacktavism defacements. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2001
Reuter’s news service publishes an article claiming that an unnamed sources have indicated that AOL Time Warner, Inc. may initiate a second round of layoffs within the company’s Internet unit.

The Sega Corporation confirms word that it has discounted its discontinued Dreamcast video game system from US$99.99 to US$79.99. Sega claims an installed base in North America of 3.9 million units with approximately 600,000 units yet unsold. Sega also announces a Dreamcast bundle that includes three sports games for a package price of US$99.

2002
Apple Computer releases the 1GHz Power Mac computer and the Mac OS 10.2, “Jaguar.”

2003
Google releases version 2.0 of Google Search Toolbar, which includes several new features, including AutoFill, which completes web forms with information that’s saved securely on a user’s own computer, BlogThis, which makes posting links to Blogger.com weblogs quick and easy, and Pop-up Blocker, which blocks distracting pop-ups while users surf the web. Visit the application’s official website.

2004
20th Century Fox releases the sci-fi horror film Alien vs. Predator (AVP), directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henriksen, Raoul Bova, Ewen Bremner, and Colin Salmon, to 3,395 US theaters. It is based on several series of Alien vs. Predator comic books published by Dark Horse Comics and on the Alien and Predator films which spawned the original characters. Produced on a budget of US$60 million, the film will gross US$38,291,056 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 27 mins

According to Twin Galaxies, Gary Whelan of Manchester, England scores 399,290 points playing Galaxian, which is the game’s official all time highest score. Galaxian is an arcade shooter first released by Namco in 1979. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

Adam Curry, a former MTV video jockey, launches the Daily Source Code (DSC) podcast. The podcast will earn him a name as “the father of podcasting,” not for inventing the medium but for popularizing it. Podcasting had technically existed in the form of “audioblogging.” Curry, however, was the first to offer audio recordings via RSS feeds, and his program would become the first audio program to be offered online in the format of a radio talkshow on regular basis. At its peak, the program will have over half a million subscribers, and it would run for over eight hundred episodes. The advance was made possible when Dave Winer, the developer behind RSS, released RSS 0.92 with the new “enclosure” element to pass the address of a media file to the RSS aggregator at the urging of Adam Curry and other audiobloggers. The day before the launch of Daily Source Code, Winer launched his own podcast, Morning Coffee Notes, but as a former MTV jockey, Curry far outstripped Winer’s popularity. Daily Source Code featured a combination of Curry’s reflections on his own personal life and his favorite indie pop music from Podsafe Music Network. Visit the official Daily Source Code website.

2005
The thirteenth World Computer Chess Championship (WCC) is held August 13 – 21 at Reykjavik University in Iceland. It will be won by Zappa, a chess engine programmed by Athony Cozzie, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Early versions of Zappa are free to download via the official ChessBase website. Visit the event’s official website.

2008
In the case of Robert Jacobsen v Kam Industries, Judge Faith S. Hochberg of the U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington rules that programmers can exert control over their intellectual property even after it has been released for free under an OSS license (Artistic License). The landmark decision is the first examine the validity and enforceability of open source software licenses. The case began in March 2006 when Jacobesen, a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley filed a lawsuit against Kam alleging that the company had taken software code from his Java Model Railroad Interface project, and was redistributing the program without the credits. In her ruling, the judge remarked, “Traditionally, copyright owners sold their copyrighted material in exchange for money,” the court said. “The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration, however.”

Marketing research firm ComScore releases a report revealing that Facebook has overtaken MySpace to become the most popular social networking site after 153% growth over the previous year, with 132 million unique visitors versus MySpace’s 113 million.