The Great Geek Manual

1046
Monks record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that “no man alive…could remember so severe a winter.” It is the first historical record of the beginning of the two hundred year period of exceptionally cold weather conditions which will follow, constituting a period which will later be dubbed the “Little Ice Age.”

1709
Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk is rescued from the desert island on which he has been shipwrecked. His story will later inspire the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

1880
The world’s first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana.

1893
The first close-up, a shot of a man sneezing, is filmed at Edison studio, in West Orange, New Jersey.

1931
A rocket is used to deliver mail for the first time by Friedrich Schmiedl in Austria. The rocket is a 880cm V7 able to carry one hundred letters from Schoeckel bei Graz to Sankt Radegund, over a distance of about two kilometers, before descending by parachute.

1935
A polygraph machine, or lie detector, is tested for the first time by detective Leonard Keeler in Portage, Wisconsin to examine two criminals named Cecil Loniello and Tony Grignano, who are subsequently convicted of assault at a trial in which the results of the polygraph test are introduced as evidence.

1946
The first Buck Rogers toy atomic pistol is manufactured for the American Toy Fair. Price: 89¢

1947
Edwin H. Land gives the first demonstration of instant photography at a meeting of the Optical Society of America. His 40 series, model 95 Polaroid Land Camera will go on sale on November 28, 1948, at a Boston department store for US$89.75. This first model will become the first commercially successful self-developing camera system. The sepia-colored photograph it took required about one minute to develop.

1955
The first presidential news conference ever aired on network television is given by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the ABC network.

1962
For the first time in four hundred years, the planets Neptune and Pluto align.

1964
The GI Joe action figure is first released by Hasbro.

1967
The Star Trek episode “Court Martial” first airs. (No. 20) In it, Kirk stands trial on charges of negligence after the death of a crewman. Memory Alpha entry

1983
According to Twin Galaxies, David Plummer, age 14, scores a record-setting 7,119,700 points on Atari’s Tempest after playing the game for six hours and thirty minutes at Midtown Amusements in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1996
After a loss of $61 million over the Christmas season, Apple Computer replaces Michael Spindler with Gil Amelio as CEO. Amelio will proceed to radically streamline the company’s operations. He will reduce the number of Macintosh motherboard designs from five to two, consolidate Apple’s six hardware architectures into a single core Mac system, and reorganizes the company into two divisions: AppleSoft for software development and Macintosh for hardware development. Visit the official website of Apple Computer.

1998
America Online (AOL) completes the acquisition of CompuServe and the sale of ANS Communications. Steve Case, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AOL sends an email to CompuServe members reading, “…Now that CompuServe has joined with us, I want to assure you that we will maintain CompuServe as a separate service, here and internationally, running on its own network…”

The website of PC Concepts is hacked by “zipoff & Hosser”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

1999
Del Rey releases the fantasy novel Nimisha’s Ship by Anne Mccaffrey as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0345388259) Length: 388 pages

Sun Microsystems begins shipping the SunPCi expansion card for Sun Ultra workstation computers, featuring an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) 300MHz K6-2 processor, the Caldera DR-DOS operating system, 256MB – 645MB RAM, Sound Blaster sound, serial/parallel/USB ports, and 24-bit graphics. Applications running on the card can access the workstation’s drives and network connection. Visit the official Sun Microsystems website. Price: US$495.

2001
Touchstone Pictures releases the comedy film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, to 809 US theaters in a nation-wide release. The film loosely follows the story of Homer’s Odyssey, and it is based on the 1989 novella A Dozen Tough Jobs by Howard Waldrop, which itself makes elaborate allusions to the story of Hercules in a plot set in depression-era Mississippi. It is the first full-length, live-action Hollywood film that is digitally enhanced from beginning to end. Cinesite, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Eastman Kodak Company, electronically altered nearly every frame of the film to give it an old-fashioned, nostalgic look, although the film was filmed in June and July. In one scene, a cow is struck by a vehicle. The computer animation is so life-like that the American Humane Society will demand to be shown how the effect was produced. Produced on a budget of US$26 million, it will gross US$3,647,208 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 1 hr 42 mins

2002
Michael R. Mennenga broadcasts his first show in the form of an internet radio broadcast on Book Crazy Radio. The program, which is half a hour long discussion of fantasy literature and writing, is the first in the series that will eventually become known as the Dragon Page podcast. Mennenga will be one of the pioneers of the podcast communication form, and the Dragon Page will become the longest-running book podcast on the web, featuring guests such as Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Jordan. Visit the official DragonPage website.

The website of the Colombia Department Nacional de Planificación is hacked by “KabraLzZ”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of the Partizan Football Club is hacked by “SoiraM”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2005
Hewlett-Packard announces the development of the first “crossbar latch” nanoscale transistor, which they claim

UPN announces that it is canceling the series Star Trek: Enterprise at the end of its fourth season.

2006
Tiger Telematics, the manufacturer of the Gizmondo handheld video game system, files for bankruptcy.

2007
Wizards of the Coast releases the Magic: The Gathering card set Planar Chaos. It is the second set in the Time Spiral block. The set features 165 cards in total, including: 40 common, 40 uncommon, and 40 rare cards. Visit the set’s official website.