1843
Charles Dickens publishes “A Christmas Carol.” Six thousand copies of the first edition will be sold.
1913
The horror film The Werewolf, directed by Henry MacRae and starring Clarence Burton, to US theaters. The silent short film is the very first film to feature a werewolf. The film is framed as an old Indian legend. In it, a jilted Navajo woman turned witch raises her daughter to reap a horrible vengeance on all men, in the form of a werewolf. IMDB listing Running Time: 18 mins
In order to settle an antitrust suit filed in Portland, AT&T pledges to dispose of its Western Union telegraph stock, provide long distance connection to Independent telephone systems, and not to purchase any more Independent telephone companies except as approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission in a letter to the Attorney General of the United States which will later be referred to as the “Kingsbury Commitment.” The letter will historically be considered the mark of the beginning of AT&T’s monopoly, as the settlement establishes AT&T as a government sanctioned monopoly.
1962
Relay I, the first US communications satellite to transmit facsimile, telephone, television, and teleprinter signals is launched on a Thor-Delta rocket from the Atlantic Missile Range from Cape Canaveral. It will transmit its first test patterns on January 3, 1963, once the solar cells had fully charged.
1972
Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the sixth and final Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or “Moonwalk” of Apollo 17. It will be the last manned mission to the Moon of the 20th century.
1975
The RCA Satcom I satellite is launched on a Delta 3000 from Cape Canaveral.
1977
Bill Gates, age 21, is arrested in Albuquerque, New Mexico for traffic violations.
Robert M. Metcalfe, David R. Boggs, Charles P. Thacker, and Butler W. Lampson received a patent for Ethernet, which they titled “Multipoint Data Communication System with Collision Detection” and described as an “apparatus for enabling communications between two or more data processing stations comprising a communication cable arranged in branched segments including taps distributed thereover.” The patent was assigned to the Xerox Corporation.
1982
Atari releases the 1200XL home computer, featuring a 1.79MHz MOS 6502C processor, 64KB RAM, and 256 color capability. Price: US$900-1000.
1985
Paramount Pictures releases the comedy film Clue, directed by Jonathan Lynn and starring Tim Curry, Martin Mull, Eileen Brennan, Lesley Ann Warren, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, and Madeline Kahn, to 1,006 US theaters. In it, six guests are invited to a strange house and must cooperate with the staff to solve a murder mystery. It is based on the board game Clue. It is notable for being the first film to open nationally with three different endings. Newspaper ads indicate which ending is playing at which theater, allowing audiences to choose. Produced on a budget of US$15 million, it will gross US$2,014,166 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG Running Time: 1 hr 36 mins
1992
Project Runeberg, an open and voluntary initiative to publish free electronic editions of Scandinavian literature on the Internet, is launched. The project is inspired by and modeled after the English-language Project Gutenberg. Visit the official Project Runeberg website.
1993
Cyrix and Texas Instruments (TI) file lawsuits against each other over Cyrix’s 486 processor design databases. Texas Instruments demands that Cyrix deliver the design databases, and Cyrix demands that Texas Instruments cease manufacturing and distributing Cyrix products.
1994
Apple Computer announces the Pippin video game system specifications, based on the Macintosh personal computer. It features a 66 MHz PowerPC 603 processor, a 14.4kbps modem, with a 640×480 resolution in 24-bit color on a television, and a CD-ROM disk system. A license is granted to Bandai of Japan to manufacture and sell units, tentatively called the Power Player.
1995
A fax sent to Atari sales reps and distributors announcing a new low price of US$99 for the Atari Jaguar.
Symantec licenses Java from Sun Microsystems. Visit the company’s official website.
Virgin Interactive releases the horror puzzle game The 11th Hour for DOS.
1996
Alps Interactive releases a limited quantity of the red edition of their newly licensed Alps game pad for the PlayStation video game console.
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) announces that it has sold 2,077,740 PlayStation video game consoles since the system’s launch.
Warner Bros. releases the sci-fi comedy film Mars Attacks!, directed by Tim Burton and starring an enormous ensemble cast of A-list celebrities ranging from Christina Applegate to Rod Steiger, to 1,955 US theaters. In it, the Earth is invaded by Martians with comically outrageous weapons and a cruel sense of humor. The film, which parodies the B-movies of the fifties, is based on the popular card series Mars Attacks. Produced on a budget of US$70 million, it will gross US$9,384,272 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 1 hr 46 mins
1997
Thirty-five websites are hacked by the group “Legions of the Underground” (L.O.U.). In each case, the homepage of the site is replaced with a message reading, “OWNED #BASH irc.hackersclub.com Legions of the Underground //OptikLenz||The Bookie\\ OptikLenz: Wh0z JOor D4ddy?” Visit an archived version of the message.
Version 0.01 of the Mystic BBS is released. http://www.mysticbbs.com/mystic/history.html
The website of the Stanford University Medical Media and Information Technology (SUMMIT) website is hacked and defaced anonymously. Visit an archived version of the defaced website.
The websites of Encore Computers, Ron Tyler, Saturn Industries, Valley Internet Services, Well Naturally, are hacked by the “cArPaRtS nInJa TaSk FOrc3″. Visit archived versions of the defaced website of Encore Computers, Ron Tyler, Saturn Industries webpage, Valley Internet Services, Well Naturally.
The websites of the Centerfold Alumni Association and Koni Group (UK) Ltd are hacked and defaced by “Morgasm”. Visit archived versions of the Centerfold Alumni Association and Koni Group websites.
1999
John Koskinen, chairman of the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, publicly pleads with hackers and programmers to show mercy in regard to any efforts to disable computers during the onset of the dreaded Y2K.
WebQuest International, Inc., creators of the iPONG Game Arcade announces that Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, has joined their Board of Directors.
The website of the Chinese National Library is hacked by “Bosnatek”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
Version 2.11 (patch 430) of the BSD Unix operating system is released.
2001
The C# (ECMA) programming language is released.
Capcom releases Breath of Fire for the Game Boy Advance in North America. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: E (Everyone)
2002
Nintendo releases The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker as Zeruda no Densetsu Kaze no Takuto (”The Legend of Zelda: Baton of Wind”) for the GameCube in Japan. It is the tenth game in The Legend of Zelda series. Visit the game’s official website.
2003
Sony releases the PSX in Japan.
Version 2 (v1.4.2_03) of the Java programming language is released.
2004
Oracle, a major developer of database management systems (DBMS) announces that it has signed an agreement to acquire PeopleSoft, a developer of human resource management systems (HRMS), for US$26.50 per share or approximately US$10.3 billion. Read the press release. Visit the company’s official website.
2005
An international collaboration of astronomers re-analyse archived Hubble Space Telescope pictures to map the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. The results seem to support the theory that both visible and dark matter are clumped into “web like” structures.
Scientists at the Salk Institute embed human nerve cells in the brain of mice. Even though they arrived at only 0.1 percent of the brain being made of human cells, this work spurs discussion of ethical limits of biological research.
2006
The Baiji Yangtze Dolphin is officially presumed extinct following the Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Expedition, an intense six week search specifically organized to determine the species’ fate. Scientists from six nations participated in the expedition, which combed 3,400 km (2,100 miles) of the heavily polluted Yangtze River in China from Yichang to Shanghai and the Yangtze Delta for thirty-nine days using two research ships equipped with high-performance optical instruments and underwater microphones. The expedition’s failure to detect any signs of the creature makes the Baiji the first large mammal to be forced into extinction through the destruction of its habitat by humans. Four hundred Baiji were present in the wild in the early eighties, but there haven’t been any sightings of the creatures since September 2004.
Chan Nai-ming, the first man in history to be criminally convicted for using BitTorrent looses his appeal. Chan was found guilty of copyright infringement for uploading the movies “Daredevil,” “Miss Congeniality,” and “Red Planet” on October 24, 2005, and he was sentenced to three months in prison on November 7, 2005 but released on bail pending this appeal.
Mozilla released the first beta of Thunderbird 2.0, the open-source developer’s next-generation e-mail client, featuring a revamped interface, a new system of message tags for organizing mail, and browser-like back and forward navigation.
2007
Hashtags, a method of labeling posts by topics to through the use of hashmarks, are used on Twitter to help people track the progress of the San Diego fires.
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