1880
The Edison Electric Illuminating Company is incorporated to provide electric light to New York City with one million dollars in capital. Within fourteen months, the service will have 508 subscribers and power 12,732 bulbs. The company will become the prototype for all other local illuminating companies established in the eighties.
1903
The first powered flight is made by the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright on the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina using a gasoline engine. The flight, made in the in the Wright Flyer lasts twelve seconds and spans a distance of 120 feet (or 36.5 meters.)
1953
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approves the revised RCA all-electronic colour television system and discontinues the CBS sequential color system. Color broadcasts will begin thirty days later. Radio Corporation of America (RCA) transmits its new NBC Chimes logo at 5:32pm to celebrate.
1958
Universal Pictures releases the science fiction film Monster on the Campus, directed by Jack Arnold and starring Arthur Franz and Joanna Cook Moore, to US theaters. IMDB listing
1969
The United States Air Force closes its study of the UFO phenomena, known as Project Blue Book, concluding that prior sightings had been the result of “a mild form of mass hysteria, individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or seek publicity, psychopathological persons, and misidentification of various conventional objects.”
1988
Square releases the roleplaying game (RPG) Final Fantasy II for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in Japan.
1989
The animated series The Simpsons premieres with the episode “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” on the FOX television network.
1990
According to an article written by Lorianne Denne in the December 17th issue of The Puget Sound Business Journal, Nintendo of America employs about 1,400 people in their Redmond, Washington headquarters. According to the same article, seventy percent of all American homes with children between ages 8 and 15 have Nintendo products, and, in 1989, sixteen cents of every dollar spent on toys went to Nintendo.
1993
In the United States, Kay-Bee Toy Stores stops selling the Digital Pictures game The Night Trap video game for personal computers and the Sega Genesis game system, in response to public complaints about violence contained in the game and a December 9, 1993 joint Senate Judiciary and Government Affairs Committee hearing on video game violence that prominently and infamously examined both Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. In particular, the game contains a highly controversial full-motion scene in which of a young girl in a nightgown is murdered. During the hearings, the game was described as “disgusting,” “shameful,” “sick,” and “ultra-violent.” F.A.O. Schwarz and Toys ‘R’ Us stopped selling the game a day earlier.
1996
At the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the “Option Red” supercomputer is activated. Equipped with 9072 Intel Pentium Pro processors with 600GB of memory and 2TB of disc storage, the computer is able to perform one trillion floating-point operations per second, making it the fastest computer in the world. The computer cost US$55 million dollar (US) computer.
Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) announces that hardware and software revenues for the PlayStation game console have exceeded US$1 billion since its launch through December 1, 1996.
1997
Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) files suit against six alleged software counterfeiters that have done business over the Internet.
The United States Justice Department asks Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to hold Microsoft in contempt for failing to obey court orders regarding their bundling of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system.
The website of Softex is hacked by “tattoo & mantis”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
1999
The Beijing Number One Intermediate Court of China throws out a case filed by Microsoft against the Yadu Group, accusing them of using pirated Microsoft Office and Windows applications on their office computers.
Michael Ian Campbell, age 18, of Cape Coral, Florida is arrested for allegedly transmitting a threat over the Internet to a student of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Campbell allegedly threatened to “finish” what gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had started using the handle “Soup81″.
A team of international scientists announce that it had successfully sequenced the first human chromosome.
Touchstone Pictures released the science fiction film Bicentennial Man, directed by Chris Columbus and starring Robin Williams, Sam Neill, Embeth Davidtz, and Oliver Platt, to 2,518 US theaters. The film was based on the novel The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov. Produced on a budget of US$100 million, it will gross US$8,234,926 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 2 hrs 11 mins
2000
Version 2.00 of the PureBasic programming language is released. It is the first non-beta version released to the public. Visit the language’s official website.
2001
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the Mobile Duron 1000 processor, featuring a 64KB Level-2 Cache and a 200MHz Front-Side Bus.
Yahoo! launches LAUNCH, an Internet radio service. Visit the official LAUNCH website.
2003
Linux kernel 2.6.0 is released. Many features from uClinux (designed for embedded microcontrollers) have been integrated into the kernel, along with support for NUMA (used in large, multi-processor systems). An improved scheduler and scalability improvements have also been implemented in this version to help ensure that Linux will maintain its reputation for running on everything from small embedded devices to large enterprise-class servers and mainframes. As always, support for new classes of hardware have been significantly improved. Kernal 2.6.0 contains 5,929,913 lines of code.
New Line Cinema releases the fantasy film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, directed by Peter Jackson and starring Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Bernard Hill, Christopher Lee, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, Miranda Otto, David Wenham, Brad Dourif, Karl Urban, John Noble, Ian Holm, and Sean Bean, to 3,703 US theaters. It is based on the book The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. Produced on a budget of US$94 million, it will gross US$72,629,713 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 3 hrs 20 mins
SpaceShipOne takes off on flight 11P, its eighth independent flight, its first powered flight, and the world’s first privately-funded manned supersonic flight. The mission is piloted by Brian Binnie.
2004
Cerulean Studios released version 3 of its Trillian instant messenger.
Version 1.1 of the QiLinux live! operating system is released. QiLinux is a Linux distribution created from scratch for desktop and server functions. Visit the system’s official website.
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