The Great Geek Manual

565
St. Columba allegedly saves the life of a Pict who was being attacked by a monster in Loch Ness. The account will later be recorded in the book Life of St. Columba by Adamnan. It is the beginning of the Loch Ness Monster myth. Adamnan recounts the event in the book, “…(He) raised his holy hand, while all the rest, brethren as well as strangers, were stupefied with terror, and, invoking the name of God, formed the saving sign of the cross in the air, and commanded the ferocious monster, saying, “Thou shalt go no further, nor touch the man; go back with all speed.” Then at the voice of the saint, the monster was terrified, and fled more quickly than if it had been pulled back with ropes, though it had just got so near to Lugne, as he swam, that there was not more than the length of a spear-staff between the man and the beast.”

1901
The Cadillac Motor Company is founded.

1906
The Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey, manufactures its first Victrola record player. The devices, including the hand cranked unit and horn cabinet will sell for US$200. It stands out from other phonographs with its elegant wooden cabinet, which conceals the device’s horn and turntable while providing storage space for records. The cabinet, which is available is several contemporary styles, is an innovation that will be imitated by later entertainment systems, including radios and televisions.

1911
The theft of the Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum in Paris, France the previous night is discovered.

1929
Walt Disney releases the animated short film The Skeleton Dance, directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks, in the US. In the Silly Symphonies cartoon, a group of skeletons dance and make music around a spooky graveyard. It is the first film in the Silly Symphonies series, which will have a powerful influence over the emerging art of animation. IMDB listing

1932
The BBC begins regularly transmitting experimental television programming four days a week using the new 30-line system invented by John Logie Baird. The transmissions are broadcast from Studio BB in the basement of the newly built Broadcasting House in London, England.

1939
The first US patent for dispensing liquids under pressure from a disposable container is issued to Julius Seth Kahn of New York City. (US No. 2,170,531) The patent is titled “Apparatus For Mixing a Liquid With a Gas.” It will be the predecessor of the aerosol spray can. In this case, the patent more particularly specified a use for whipping cream “by discharging the cream and gas mixture through a constricted orifice.” The cream could be contained in a common soda-pop glass bottle. Gas can be introduced at a controlled pressure. An inexpensive valve discharges the whipped cream. The patent will later be used in such applications as dispensing paints, pharmaceuticals, and insecticides.

1950
The pile at the world’s first nuclear reactor dedicated to the peaceful applications of atomic energy, the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor (BGRR), achieves criticality and goes online.

1955
The first computer users’ group anywhere, SHARE, is founded by engineers and scientists in the aerospace industry who work with IBM’s newest system, the IBM’s Model 704. The group’s member meet to discuss the computer system and exchange software programs, since both software development and technical support are both still in their infancy. Because the group represents many of IBM’s largest customers, the members of SHARE will have a significant influence over the company’s designs and customer support service over the coming years.

1958
Ground is broken for the Museum of History and Technology, which will later be renamed the National Museum of American History, on the National Mall in Washington D.C. The first shovel full of earth is turned by Smithsonian Institute regent Senator Clinton P. Anderson. Construction will be completed on January 23, 1964.

1961
First public demonstration of live color television in the UK is held at the Earl’s Court Radio Show in London, England.

1962
The NS Savannah, the world’s first nuclear-powered ship, completes her maiden voyage from Yorktown, Virginia, to Savannah, Georgia. The ship was conceived of by United States President Eisenhower as a part of his 1955 “Atoms for Peace” program. The ship, named after the steamer which became the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean in 1819, is powered by a twenty-eight million dollar nuclear propulsion system, which cost nearly ten million dollars more than the entire rest of the ship combined. It will be decommissioned in January 1972 due its high operating costs but preserved as a National Historical Landmark.

1963
The X-15 rocket plane sets a world record when US Air Force pilot Joseph Walker reaches an altitude of 354,200 feet (67 miles) during test flight 91. The internal structure of the X-15 is titanium sheathed in a skin of Inconel X, a chrome-nickel alloy. The X-15 was launched in mid-air from a B-52, at an altitude of about 45,000 feet.

1980
IBM’s Project Chess task force meets with Digital Research about using CP/M-86 for IBM’s upcoming microcomputer. Gary Kildall will later claim that he agreed to provide CP/M-86 to IBM. However, sources at IBM will later state that Kildall was never interested in the agreement.

1985
International Business Machines (IBM) and Microsoft sign a joint-development agreement to work together on future operating systems and environments.

1987
Nintendo releases the fantasy platform game The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America.

1989
The first complete ring around Neptune is discovered in photographs transmitted by Voyager 2 to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the photography, dusty debris can be seen in the form of a ring approximately seventeen miles above Neptune’s cloud tops and just outside the orbit of the planet’s small moons, which were also discovered by the Voyager 2 space probe.

1995
Squaresoft releases Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in North America, which is Squaresoft’s largest game for the SNES at 32 megabits, and includes multiple ways to finish the game. Several of the game’s features are revolutionary, including the game’s multiple endings, unique battle system, detailed graphics, and plot-related side quests, which focus on character development. Visit the game’s official website.

1996
Eric Jenott, a paratrooper stationed at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina is accused of hacking US Army computer systems and giving the passwords to a citizen of China. Jenott’s attorney says that the soldier is just a recreational hacker who was testing the strength of a supposedly impenetrable computer system, found a weakness, and then told his superiors about it. He will later be cleared of the charges, but is still found guilty of damaging government property and computer fraud.

Just nine days after the release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 3, two Princeton researchers report the discovery of its first major security flaw, The Princeton Word Macro Virus Loophole. According the researchers, Edward Felten and Dirk Balfanz, the Loophole would allow a webmaters to triggers downloads without a user’s knowledge, including macros, trojans, and viruses. Microsoft will respond with a patch the next day, but the early security hole foreshadows a long and rocky road for the browser.

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

1997
Miramax Films releases the sci-fi horror film Mimic, directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Mira Sorvino, to 2,255 US theaters. The film was inspired by a short story of the same name by Donald A. Wollheim. In the film, a disease carried by common cockroaches begins afflicting children in Manhattan. In an effort to stop the epidemic, entomologist Susan Tyler engineers mutant insects that secrete a fluid to kill the roaches throughout the city. This mutants are intended to die after only a single generation, but three years later, Tyler discovers that the species has survived and evolved into a monstrously large species that can mimic the human form. Produced on a budget of US$30 million, the film will gross US$7,818,208 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 45 mins

1999
The United States Justice Department reveals that it has drafted legislation that will permit investigators to enter homes and offices secretly in order to disable computer scrambling software being used for criminally suspicious purposes with the use of a warrent.

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) issues a memo requiring all US military systems to connect via the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET), rather than directly to the Internet by December 15, 1999. NIPRNET is used to exchange unclassified but sensitive information between “internal” users as well as providing users access to the Internet. NIPRNet is comprised of Internet protocol routers owned by the United States Department of Defense (DOD). It was created by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to supersede the earlier MILNET.

2000
Intel announces that the new Itanium processor, under development since 1994, will initially be released with a maximum clock speed of 733MHz instead of the originally announced 800MHz.

Intel discloses details of its new NetBurst micro-architecture, the technical features contained in its upcoming Intel Pentium 4 processors.

Intel releases a 1000MHz Pentium III Xeon processor, featuring a 256KiB Level 2 Cache and a 133MT/s front side bus.

The Nintendo GameCube, codenamed Dolphin, which was first announced at the E3 tradeshow in 1999, is unveiled to the public just one day before Nintendo’s SpaceWorld trade show.

2001
The corporate credit and bank loan rating of Gateway, Inc. is reduced to junk status by Standard & Poor (S&P). Gateway is the fourth largest US manufacturer of personal computers.

Over fifty music industry publishers and songwriters announce that they have filed a copyright infringement suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against MP3.com, Inc..

2002
Version 4.8 of the Netscape Communicator web browser suite is released.

2005
Google releases version 2 of its Google Desktop Search as a public beta test. The new version monitors the user’s behavior and presents relevant information in a resizable and moveable vertical window called the Sidebar. The Sidebar can display e-mail, news, photos, stocks, and weather reports in real-time.

Microsoft announces that it has finalized a deal with Bungie Studios, to produce a film version of Halo for release in summer 2008. IMDB listing

Square Enix acquires the Taito Corporation, a video game developer and manufacturer of arcade hardware. The acquisition allows Square Enix to enter the arcade sector of the game industry.

2006
Version 0.9.4 of the Eterm color VT102 terminal emulator for Windows. Visit the application’s official website.

2007
The global botnet created by the Storm Worm, which was first discovered on January 17th, sends out a record fifty-seven million emails in a single day. According to researchers at Symantec, some machines infected with the Trojan horse are capable of sending as many as eighteen hundred messages in a five-minute period. The emails bear the subject line “230 dead as storm batters Europe,” which refers to the European windstorm Kyrill, during which the worm was originally propagated and from which the worm draws its name.