The Great Geek Manual

Today is the day the United States celebrates Independence Day, which is commonly referred to in the States simply as “The Fourth.” For those of you not acquainted with the holiday, today is the day we celebrate just how right we were in establishing our own nation by grilling up red meat outdoors over open flames, setting things on fire, and blowing things up.

1054
A supernova is observed by the Chinese and the Arabs. Rock paintings later discovered in North America suggest that Indians in Arizona and New Mexico observed it as well. It remains bright enough to be seen during the day for twenty-three days and at night for almost two years. Scientists will later speculate that the Crab Nebula in the constellation Taurus is the remnant of this supernova. The incident will remain the brightest supernova in history through the modern day.

1837
The world’s first long-distance railway, Grand Junction Railway, opens to run the eighty-two miles between Birmingham and Liverpool in the United Kingdom.

1862
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson tells Alice Liddell a story that will eventually grow into the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.

1865
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, is published. Read the complete text at Project Gutenberg.

1883
The first three-wire central-station incandescent-lighting plant in the US begins operations in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Built by the Edison Electric Illuminating Co., the plant is a simple wooden structure. An Armington & Sims steam engine drives two 110-volt direct-current generators. The electricity is delivered by overhead wires. Edison patented his three-wire system on November 20, 1882 to supersede the distribution system used at his first commercial central generating station in New York because it requires sixty percent less copper in its conductors. That means a smaller investment, which makes it economically possible to build generating plants in smaller communities.

1894
Elwood Haynes successfully tests his one-horsepower, one-cylinder vehicle at 6 or 7 mph in Kokomo, Indiana. He is an American pioneer whose vehicle is one of the first automobiles ever built. He is a trained engineer and chemist who will discover several alloys, including a stainless steel. He is the first person to use aluminum in the construction of an automobile engine.

1903
US President Theodore Roosevelt sends the first official message over the newly completed Pacific cable running between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila.

1934
Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb. In 1936, he will assign the patent to the British admiralty in order to maintain its secrecy.

1940
German occupation forces forbid Dutch citizens from listening to foreign broadcasts such as the BBC.

1943
The BBC begins broadcasting regular programming in Japan.

1950
Radio Free Europe, a radio and communications organization funded by the United States Congress to combat Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, transmits its first broadcast.

1956
The Whirlwind at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology becomes the first computer to use a keyboard to allow direct user input. Other computers accepted instructions issued using dial, punch cards, and switches. Completed in 1949, the Whirlwind was the first computer to operate in real time.

1968
The Explorer 38, an unmanned U.S. spacecraft, is launched to measure galactic radio sources and study low frequencies in space. It is one of a series of fifty-five scientific satellites launched between 1958 and 1975.

1971
Michael Hart, a student at the University of Illinois who will later found Project Gutenberg, uses some of the computer time he had been granted at the university’s Materials Research Lab to type in the text of The United States Declaration of Independence into the university’s mainframe. Because sending the 5KB file to the hundred registered users of the early internet would have crashed the fragile network, Hart instead listed the text’s location for others to find. In time, the document will be downloaded by six users. This is the first document of what will become Project Gutenberg, though it will later be dated December 1, 1971. Hart will continue to use his computer time to search out public domain books and to digitize them in the simplest way, using the plain text format called Plain Vanilla ASCII, so that they could be accessed by any machine, running any operating system. Read more about the history of Project Gutenberg.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Brian Cox scores a record-setting 2,807,010 points playing the Tokyo Denshi Sekkei arcade game Black Hole at the Starb Castle arcade in Smithfield, Rhode Island. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1985
Tim Stryker launches Galacticomm and its main product, the MajorBBS Software Package.

1996
Hotmail, the first webmail service, is commercially launched on Independence Day in the United States, symbolically representing freedom from Internet service providers. The company was started the year before by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. In January 1998, the company will be sold to Microsoft for US$400 million. Prior to Hotmail, Bhatia was a systems integrator at Apple Computer, where he coordinated the design and manufacturing of Apple Powerbook. He also worked for Fire Power Systems – a Silicon Valley start up. Read more about the history of Hotmail at Wired.

1997
The NASA Mars Pathfinder, an unmanned space vehicle, reaches the Martain atmosphere and lands to release the Sojourner rover. Its landing site was an ancient flood plain in Mars’ northern hemisphere called Ares Vallis, which is among the rockiest parts of Mars. It has taken seven months to travel there since its launch on December 4, 1996. Its primary mission is to study the Martian atmosphere and investigate the geology and chemical composition of the planet’s surface. The descent was braked by a heat shield, a parachute, and rockets. As part of the new NASA “cheaper, faster, better” effort, the Mars Pathfinder uses airbags to cushion its landing. It carries the Sojourner, a 22lb (10kg) wheeled rover designed to travel slowly across the surface of Mars taking photographs and collecting other scientific data, while testing autonomous-vehicle technology on the Martian terrain. It will run for eighty-four days, far exceeding its projected seven day lifespan. Visit the official Mars Pathfinder website.

1998
Japan launches Nozomi (“Hope”) from Kagoshima Launch Centre, to become the third nation (after Russia and the US) to reach for Mars. The spacecraft will make two fly-bys of the Moon in September and December in order to reshape its trajectory for an intended arrival in a highly elliptical Mars Orbit in October 1999. Unfortunately, the attempt will fail, and the plans will be changed to alter the spacecraft’s trajectory to reach Mars in 2003. The mission is designed to measure the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ upper atmosphere.

1999
Version 1.03 of HydraBBS is released.

2000
The Brazilian website of As Informatica Ltda is hacked by “O ANALISTA”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazilian website of Marinho Assessoria Empresarial Ltda is hacked by the hacking group “Crime Boys”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazilian website of Znet Tecnologia Aplicada is hacked by “fish”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Sony Entertainment Television Pvt. Ltd. is hacked by “GForce Pakistan”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Znet Tecnologia Aplicada is hacked by “fish”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2001
The eBay auction begun Sunday, June 24 for item #1249640557 is concluded and “Buyatari” wins Jerry Jessop’s Atari 2700 prototype for US$2626.00.

2002
The US Army releases the tactical first-person shooter America’s Army for the personal computer in the US. America’s Army was developed by the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, and is based on the Unreal Engine. It was financed by US tax dollars and distributed for free. It is the first computer video game to make recruitment an explicit goal and the first well-known overt use of computer gaming for political aims. The game is used as a playable recruiting tool and critics have charged the game serves as a propaganda device. It is often pointed out that the game bears resemblance to the movie The Last Starfighter and to the novel Ender’s Game Visit the game’s official website.

2003
Blizzard Entertainment releases Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne for personal computers in Europe. It is an official expansion pack to Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. ESRB: T (Teen)

2004
The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower is laid on the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. However, the act is largely symbolic, since actual construction won’t start for several weeks to come.

The Twelfth World Computer Chess Championship is held at Bar-llan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. It will be won by Deep Junior, programmed by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky.

2005
At 5:52 UTC, the Deep Impact collider hits the comet Tempel 1, creating a dustcloud that will be analyzed by telescopes worldwide. Over the next three months, the probe will study the composition of the interior of the comet. Visit the official Deep Impact website.

Errol Rose, the father of the 15 year-old boy, Christopher, who was killed the previous week for his iPod, receives a phone call from Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs. In an interview the following day, Rose will recount the event. “I didn’t know who he was,” Rose said. “He called me on my cellphone, at 4 maybe. Or maybe it was 5. He told me that he understood my pain,” Rose said. “He told me if there is anything–anything–anything he could do, to not be afraid to call him. It really lightened me a bit.”

Google announces that Gmail Deutschland will be rebranded to Google Mail. From that point forward, visitors originating from an IP address determined to be in Germany will be forwarded to googlemail.com where they could obtain an email address containing the new domain. The announcement comes after a dispute between Google and Daniel Giersch, who ran a company that printed and mailed e-mails to their intended recipients under the name “G-mail”. After the European Unions’ Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market ruled in favor of Giersch in 2007, Google would announce the launch of the same service as a April Fool’s joke.

2006
Space Shuttle Discovery is launched at 18:37:55 UTC on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS). (STS-121)

2008
Iain Dodsworth releases the TweetDeck Twitter client. Visit the official TweetDeck website.