The Great Geek Manual

1181
A supernova is observed by Chinese astronomers in the constellation now known as Cassiopeia, and independently observed one day later in Japan. The star will remain visible for 185 days.

1753
Professor Georg Richmann of St. Petersburg, Moscow, is killed during an experiment with lightning, just a year after Benjamin Franklin’s own experiment involving a kite. Richmann had attached a wire to the top of his house and led it down to an iron bar suspended above “the electric needle” and a bowl of water partly filled with iron filings. Richmann was struck by lighting during a storm as he stood about a foot from the bar, closely observing the needle. “A globe of blue and whitish fire about four inches diameter from the bar struck Richmann’s forehead” with “an explosion like that of a small cannon.” His assistant, Sokolaw, who survives, is thrown to the floor, where he feels receives several blows to his back. After recovering, he finds burn marks and fragments of hot wire on the back of his clothes.

1926
The Warner Brothers studio gives the first public exhibition of the Vitaphone system for showing talking motion pictures. The exhibition features the first Vitaphone film, the silent feature Don Juan starring John Barrymore, which features a musical score and sound effects but no dialog, as well as several talkie short subject films featuring comedians and singers, and a greeting from motion picture industry spokesman Will Hays.

1928
The serial “Real Folks” premieres on NBC radio. It is among the first radio serials, and thus, one the very first regular series in the history electronic media. Radio serials will one day contribute greatly to bringing science fiction into the mainstream.

1945
The American B-29 bomber Enola Gay drops an atomic bomb, code-named “Little Boy,” on Hiroshima, Japan, destroying the majority of the city and killing between sixty and seventy thousand inhabitants, according to American estimates.

1961
The Soviet spacecraft Vostok 2 is launched from Gagarin’s Start at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, making cosmonaut Gherman Titov the second human being to orbit the Earth. Titov’s mission is to study the effects of prolonged weightlessness on human physiology over the course of a day in orbit. Unlike his predecessor, Yuri Gagarin, Titov’s mission isn’t wholly automated. He will take manual control of the craft for a short period.

1990
Fidonet news editor Vince Perriello announces in FidoNews that the IFNA (International Fidonet Association) has been officially dissolved, having failed to pass a referendum on its control of Fidonet.

1991
Tim Berners-Lee posts a brief summary of his idea for the World Wide Web project (specifically, the line mode browser) to the alt.hypertext Usenet newsgroup. It is the first public mention of the project. Later in the month, the post and conversation will spread to comp.sys.next, comp.text.sgml, and comp.mail.multi-media. In the post, Berners-Lee writes, “The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere. [...] The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!” Some sources also note this date as being the first time Tim Berners-Lee created a web page.

1996
America Online (AOL) acquires Imagination Network, one of the first online multiplayer gaming systems.

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin announces that a meteorite designated ALH 84001, which was discovered in Antarctica and thought to have originated on Mars billions of years ago, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.

Tim J. Stryker, a computer programmer and founder of Galacticomm and developer of both The MajorBBS and Worldgroup BBS software projects, commits suicide at the age of 41 in Colorado. Read more about the history of Galacticomm.

1997
After eighteen months of losses Apple Computer is rescued from its financial troubles when Microsoft invests in the company, buying one hundred thousand non-voting shares worth US$150 million in an effort to deflect criticism in its own anti-trust trial. One of the conditions of the investment is that Apple must drop its long-running court case alleging that Microsoft had copied the look and feel of its operating system with the design of Windows. In return, Microsoft also agrees to continue supporting MS-Office for the Mac for another five years. The alliance between the two companies is announced by Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo in Boston, Massachusetts.

At the Macworld Expo in Boston, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates“>Bill Gates announce a five-year alliance between Apple Computer with Microsoft“>Microsoft. Terms include: the two companies will cross-license all their existing patents along with any new patents over the next five years, Microsoft will release a version of Office for Macintosh over next five years, Apple will make Internet Explorer the default browser on all Macintosh systems, Apple and Microsoft will collaborate on Java compatibility, Microsoft will pay an undisclosed sum of money to Apple, and Microsoft will invest US$150 million in Apple stock and hold it for at least three years. Jobs also announces that he will join the Apple board of directors as the de facto head of the company along with Larry Elison of Oracle and that A.C. Markkula will step down.

1998
Bill Gates, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder of Microsoft, files plans with the Securities Exchange Commission to sell 1.5 million shares of Microsoft stock. The estimated value of those shares is over US$165 million. In a separate filing, Paul Allen, also a co-founder of Microsoft, submits plans to sell one million shares with an approximate market value of US$108 million.

1999
Buena Vista Pictures releases the suspense film The Sixth Sense, directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment to 2,161 US theaters. In it, a child psychiatrist struggling to marital issues attempts to help a boy cope with the ability to see the dead. Produced on a budget of US$40 million, it will gross US$26,681,262 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 47 mins

EBay experiences a system failure at approximately 6:30am caused by “network anomalies.”

SNK officially releases the NeoGeo Pocket Color handheld video game system in the US, featuring a 160×152 pixel color LCD screen displaying 146 simultaneous colors of a 4096 color palette, two buttons, and a joystick controls. The system can operate for about forty hours on two AA batteries. Price: US$69.95

2001
A couple are convicted of have been operating “the largest known commercial child pornography enterprise” ever are sentenced. Thomas and Janice Reedy are sentenced to to life in prison and fourteen years respectively. They collected upward of US$1.5 million monthly while operating Landslide Productions, Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas, which was proven to be selling subscriptions to child pornography sites operated in Russia and Indonesia.

Russian hacker Dmitry Sklyarov, age 26, is released from jail on US$50,000 bail and warned not to leave northern California after being arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at the Alexis Park Hotel on July 16th as he prepared to check out of the hotel and return to Moscow. Authorities allege that Sklyarov wrote a program that circumvents United States (US) copyright law by allowing users to access ElcomSoft’s proprietary e-book file format and was demonstrating it at the Def Con 9 hacker convention.

2002
Version 7.0 of the Delphi programming language is released.

2003
European antitrust regulators announce a preliminary decision that will require Microsoft to provide greater technical information to its server competitors and to reduce the ties between Windows and the Windows Media Player (WMP).

2004
Microsoft releases Windows XP Service Pack 2.

2005
The Space Shuttle Discovery undocks from the International Space Station in preparation to return to Earth. Read more at the BBC.

2006
The Bookmooch website is publicly launched by John Buckman. It first went into Beta testing July 23rd. Bookmooch is a community where users can swap used books. In it’s first year, it will receive attention from such media sources as CNet, The Inquirer, Yahoo Picks, and the USA Today newspaper. Visit Bookmooch.