1912
Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth (The Loves of queen Elizabeth), released under the title “Queen Elizabeth,” becomes the first foreign feature-length film released in the United States. The four-reel, fifty-three minute silent film tells the story of the affair between Elizabeth I of England and Earl of Essex. IMDb entry
1949
Thomas J. Watson Jr. of International Business Machines (IBM) predicts that all of the moving parts in machines will be replaced by electronics within just ten years during a sales meeting. Read more about Watson at the official IBM website.
1960
The first Etch-A-Sketch goes on sale. Within twenty-five years, over fifty million of the devices will be sold. Visit the official Etch-A-Sketch website.
NASA launches the Echo I communication satellite, the first passive satellite, aboard a Delta rocket. The satellite will be used to redirect radio, telephone, and television signals across continents. It consists primarily of a 30.5 meter diameter Mylar polyester film balloon with a highly reflective surface that will be visible to the naked eye from across the Earth. Before it burns up upon re-entering the atmosphere on May 24, 1968, it will be seen by more people than any other man-made object in space.
The USSR launches the Sputnik 5 spacecraft with two dogs, Belka (“Squirrel”) and Strelka (“Little Arrow”), forty mice, two rats, and a variety of plants. It is the first space mission to send animals into orbit and then successfully return them.
1978
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) announces the IBM 3663 Models 1P and 3P programmable terminals, the IBM 3651 Model 25 and Model 75 store controllers, and three new supermarket programs designed to customize checkout operations and in-store reports.
1982
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial breaks box-office records by as it surpasses US$100 million in box office sales within the first thirty-one days of opening. The film was produced on a budget of US$10.5 million.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) introduces the HP-86 microcomputer. Price: US$1,795
Hewlett-Packard (HP) introduces an upgraded HP-87 microcomputer, featuring increased memory.
1985
Private Sector BBS, the official bulletin board system (BBS) of 2600 Magazine, is seized by police in a raid for alleged “complicity in computer theft” under a new but untested New Jersey statute (2C:20-25). Police seize the server, along those of at least six of boards, after Middlesex County police uncovered a credit card ring on another, completely unrelated BBS. Following the seizure, the board’s operators alerted the media and bombarded the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office with requests for information until the prosecutor’s office scheduled a press conference for July 16. Read more at The Art of Hacking.
1988
The Phobos 2 space probe is launched by the Soviet Union on a mission to study Mars and its moons Deimos and Phobos. It will return thirty-eight photos with resolutions of up to forty meters before suffering a critical failure in March 1989. View a collection of the photos returned.
1989
The Star Tours attraction opens at Tokyo Disneyland in Japan.
1990
Nintendo releases the console roleplaying game (RPG) Final Fantasy video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in North America. The game will become a major influence on future games, popularizing the console RPG genre.
1991
Columbia Pictures releases the film Boyz n the Hood to theaters. The game Duck Hunt played on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) appears in the film.
Culture Brain releases the sports game Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 for the Super NES in Japan. It is the sequel to the
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game Baseball Simulator 1.000.
1993
Mike Feibus calls the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star initiative “a marketing gimmick with about as much meaning as a ‘Lite’ label on a package of bacon” in an article in Microprocessor Report.
1995
Tatu Ylonen of Helsinki University of Technology in Finland releases the first version of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol for establishing a secure connections between two computers over an encrypted channel as freeware. Ylonen developed the protocols after the university network fell victim to a password-sniffing attack. By the end of the year, the protocol’s user base will have exploded to twenty thousand users in some fifty countries.
1996
Atari receives the approval necessary to merge with Jugi Tandon Storage, Inc. (JTS) from the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), pending a shareholder’s vote. JTS is a manufacturer of storage hardware. Visit the official Atari website.
Netscape achieves its ten billionth hit when one of the company’s thirty-eight million users logs on to use the Netscape Navigator to browse the internet. Visit the official Netscape website.
1999
Packard Bell NEC introduces a line of inexpensive personal computers, ranging from a US$499 Celeron system to a US$999 Pentium III system.
Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) announces that its racing game Gran Turismo has surpassed the two million unit sales mark in the United States, making it Sony’s best-selling game title ever. The game has sold over 6.86 million units globally, including 2.38 million in Japan and 2.48 million in Europe. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: E (Everyone)
2000
The Brazilian website of Universidade de Sorocaba is hacked by the hacking group “cyb3r fuck3rs”. The website is hosted on a server running Windows NT. View an archived version of the defaced website.
EBay announces that the company has asked for a United States federal judge to bar Braxton Anderson, age 33, of Chicago, Illinois from using its auction service. Anderson allegedly disrupted the “normal course of conduct” with repeated use of foul language.
Microsoft acquires NetGames.
Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows, featuring improved support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Dynamic HTML (DHTML), and Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language.
Raymond Torricelli, age 20, of New Rochelle, New York is arrested for allegedly hacking into two NASA computers and using one of them to host a chat room on the topic of computer hacking.
2001
Capcom releases the 3D versus fighting game Heavy Metal: Geomatrix for the Dreamcast in Japan.
The hacker group “World of Hell” (WoH) defaces 679 websites in just one minute. The sites targeted include the official websites of Kate Moss Site and Ricky Martin, Applemactech.com, ComputerCrime.edu, Consolewar.com, Devspot.com, and i-surf.net.
Namco releases the arcade game compilation Pac-Man Collection for the Game Boy Advance in the US. The compilation includes: Pac-Attack, Pac-Man, Pac-Man Arrangement, and Pac-Mania for the Game Boy Advance. ESRB: E (Everyone)
THQ releases the roleplaying game (RPG) Summoner for the Mac OS. Visit the game’s official website.
2002
EA Sports BIG releases the snowboarding game SSX Tricky for the GameCube in Europe. It’s the second game in the SSX series. PEGI: 3+
The Stargate SG-1 episode “Nightwalkers” first airs. (No. 605) In it, SG-1 discovers that a series of bizarre behavior in a small American town is the result of Goa’uld occupation. GateWorld entry
2003
Touchstone Pictures releases the science fiction horror film Reign of Fire, directed by Rob Bowman and starring Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, Izabella Scorupco, Gerard Butler, Alice Krige, and Ben Thornton, to 2,629 US theaters. In it, a race of prehistoric dragons are reawakened deep in an English mine. As they reproduce, their feeding depletes the world’s resources, driving the human races towards extinction. Produced on a budget of US$60 million, it will gross US$15,632,281 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit this film’s official website. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins
2004
Apple’s iTunes Store sells its one hundred millionth song at approximately 1:25am EST, becoming the first legal music download service to reach the milestone. Due to a contest which offered a seventeen-inch PowerBook laptop computer, a 40GB iPod, and a gift certificate for ten thousand songs with a total estimated value of US$13,200 to the person who happened to purchased the record-setting song, approximately forty thousand songs (with a total estimated value of US$39,600) are sold in just the ten minutes before the purchase. Visit the official iTunes website.
Nintendo releases Pokémon Box: Ruby & Sapphire for the Nintendo GameCube in North America. ESRB: E (Everyone)
The Twelfth World Computer Chess Championship comes to an end, leaving Deep Junior the victor. Deep Junior was programmed by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky.
2005
Apple Computer releases the Mac OS X 10.4.2 operating system. Visit the official Apple OS X website.
Empire Interactive releases the racing game FlatOut for Windows, the PlayStation 2, and the Xbox in the US. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)
Investigators with the European Commission raid the offices of Intel and computer manufacturers in several countries as part of an antitrust investigation.
Metro 3D releases the racing game Rig Racer 2 for the PlayStation 2 in PAL“>PAL regions. PEGI: 3+
2006
Microsoft launches the “Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays” program, under which a new Xbox Live Arcade game will be released every Wednesday for the remainder of the summer. At the conclusion of the program, Microsoft will continue to release new games on Wednesdays. Visit the official Xbox Live Arcade website.
Sega releases the versus fighting game Virtua Fighter 5 to arcades in Japan. Visit the game’s official website.
Version 1.2. of the PC-BSD operating system (OS) is released. PC-BSD is a Unix-like operating system designed to be easy-to-install and read-to-use. Visit the official PC-BSD website.
2007
Hewlett-Packard (HP) announces the release of the HP 35s scientific calculator, featuring a “retro” design to commemorate the original HP-35, the world’s first scientific calculator, which was released in 1972. Visit the official HP 35s website.
Kuju Entertainment releases the shooting game Nucleus for the PlayStation 3 in Europe.
Netscape Communications releases version 9.0b2 (Beta 2) of the Netscape Navigator web browser. Visit the official Netscape Navigator website.
Square Enix releases the roleplaying game (RPG) Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors for the Wii in Japan. The game is a spin-off of the Dragon Quest series. Over 305,000 copies will be sold within a week of its release, 490,000 copies will be sold by December 2007. Visit the game’s official website. CERO: A (All ages)
Ubisoft releases the tactical shooter Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 for the Xbox 360 in Japan. It is the fourth game in the popular Ghost Recon series. Visit the game’s official website.
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