The Great Geek Manual

1550
Chocolate is first introduced to Europe.

1668
Sir Isaac Newton receives his M.A. from Trinity College in Cambridge.

1742
The Prussian mathematician Christian Goldbach dates a letter to Leonhard Euler in which he presents his famous conjecture (later known as Goldbach’s conjecture). Goldberg’s conjecture proposes that “Every even natural number greater than 2 is equal to the sum of two prime numbers.” The theory will remain perpetually unproven due to the infinite nature of numbers, even through the computer age, despite the fact that it can be proven for numbers up to 4 x 10¹⁴.

1936
NBC makes its first attempt at actual programming after more than six years of testing. The program is a thirty minute variety show distributed by RCA licensees. The program features dance ensemble, film clips, monologue, speeches, and vocal numbers.

Several US patents are issued for the Phillips-head screw and screwdriver to inventor Henry F. Phillips. (US Nos. 2,046,343, 2,046,837 -40) The patents describe a fastening system involving a shallow cruciform recess and a matching driver with a tapering tip that conveniently self-centers in the screw head. Phillips founded the Phillips Screw Company to license his patents.

1944
Universal Pictures releases the horror film The Mummy’s Ghost, directed by Reginald Le Borg and starring Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Robert Lowery, and Ramsay Ames, is released to US theaters. The film is the sequel to the hit, The Mummy’s Tomb. IMDB listing

1947
Many believe this is the date on which a crashed UFO is found during the course of what will later become known as the Roswell UFO incident.

1960
Universal Pictures releases the horror film The Brides of Dracula, directed by Terence Fisher and starring Peter Cushing, Martita Hunt, Yvonne Monlar, and David Peel, to theaters in the United Kingdom. In the film, a young teacher on her way to a position in Transylvania helps a young man escape the shackles his mother has put on him. In so doing she innocently unleashes the horrors of the undead once again on the populace, including those at her school for ladies. Luckily, Dr. Van Helsing is already on his way. IMDB listing Length: 1 hr 25 mins

1977
The film The Spy Who Loved Me, directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Roger Moore as James Bond, Barbara Bach, Curd Jürgens, and Richard Kiel, is released to UK theaters. It is the 10th film in the James Bond franchise and the third to star Roger Moore. Produced on a budget of US$14, the film will gross US$46,838,673 domestically during its theatrical run. IMDB listing Length: 2 hrs 5 mins

1978
Universal Pictures releases the film Battlestar Galactica, directed by Richard A. Colla and starring Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, and Lorne Greene, is released to Canadian, European, and Japanese theaters. The film recut from the pilot of the American television series BattleStar Galactica, which was titled Saga of a Star World. In fact, the film was released to defray the cost of the three hour pilot episode, which was produced on a budget of US$7 million, the largest single-episode television budget ever. Cashing in on the sci-fi buzz generated by the recent release of Star Wars, the film will gross US$20 million at the box office. IMDB listing

1981
The first solar-powered aircraft, the Solar Challenger, crosses the English Channel.

Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) executives and students from the Lamplighter School in Dallas, Texas demonstrate the TI-99/4a home computer on the Mike Douglas Show. The Captain and Tenille listen as the computer plays their chart-topping song Love Will Keep Us Together synthesized by the computer’s Speech Synthesizer peripheral.

1988
The unmanned Russian spaceprobe Phobos 1 is launched on a mission to study Mars and its moons Phobos and Deimos.

1992
Federal District Court Judge Fern Smith awards Lewis Galoob Toys US$15 million in the company’s lawsuit against Nintendo over alleged violations of Nintendo’s copyright involving the Game Genie Video Game Enhancer.

1997
The comic strip Zits by Jerry Scott (writer) and Jim Borgman (artist) is first released. At its debut, the strip has the widest newspaper release of any comic strip in America, breaking the record previously set by the Muppet Babies comic strip in 1985. The humorous strip centers around Jeremy Michael Duncan, a high school freshman. The comic can be read daily at the King Features website as well as at the Arca Max Publishing website.

1998
Reuters news service reports that a Canadian-based Internet Service Provider (ISP) is angry over an error message that too frequently appears when installing the Internet components in Microsoft’s Windows 98 operating system. According to MDI Internet Inc., their customers are calling in with reports that installation errors are recommending users to shop for an alternative ISP. Microsoft refers to the situation as an “innocent mistake,” according to Reuters and plans to promptly update their software so that the errors appear to steer consumers only to “Microsoft-friendly” ISPs.

1999
Back Orifice 2000, freeware software for remote system administration frequently used by hackers, is released. It enables a user to control a computer running the Microsoft Windows operating system from a remote location. The name is a pun on Microsoft BackOffice Server software. Visit the software’s official website.

Elijah Wood becomes the first actor to be cast for the The Lord of the Rings trilogy. At the announcement of Wood’s casting, the Internet roils with criticism. Filming will begin on October 11, 1999. Elijah Wood’s IMDB listing

Next Generation Online reveals declarations from Nintendo that their new game system, tentatively code-named “Dolphin” and later sold as the GameCube, will not play open market Digital Video Disc (DVD) movies or audio Compact Discs (CD).

2000
Sony releases a portable version of its legacy PlayStation game console called the PSone in Japan. The system is internally the same as the original PlayStation, but it is held in a smaller case, with an external power supply, and slot for an optional clip-on screen. It is about one-third the size of the original 32-bit machine. In subsequent reports, analysts openly question how a machine with no built-in screen and no battery compartment can be reasonably marketed as “portable.” Price: ¥15,000 (US$142)

The system of Powergen, one of the leading energy firms and a major supplier of electricity and gas in the UK, is cracked and a large database of credit card numbers is left exposed and freely accessible on the Internet. Over seven thousand customers will be warned to cancel their credit cards after the incident.

2001
Amazon.com mistakenly posts Windows XP for sale on its site, and includes pictures of its box. Microsoft asks the ecommerce site to take down the pages, which it does, but Amazon will later make the same mistake a day before the operating system’s official release. These mistakes revealed Windows Vista pricing before it is official announced.

2003
Foam impact tests are performed by the Southwest Research Institute, using a foam block of similar size and mass at the same projected speed to that which struck Columbia, and it creates a hole 16.1 inches by 16.7 inches (41 cm by 42.5 cm) in the protective reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) panel. The tests clearly demonstrate that a foam impact of the type Columbia sustained could indeed have seriously breached the protective RCC panels on the wing’s leading edge, causing the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, as some had conjectured.

2004
Buena Vista Pictures releases the film King Arthur, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Mads Mikkelsen, Joel Edgerton, Keira Knightley, Ray Winstone, Stephen Dillane, Stellan Skarsgård, Til Schweiger, to US theaters. The makers of the film claim to present a historically accurate version of the Arthurian legends, supposedly inspired by new archaeological findings. The accuracy of these claims is subject to debate, but the film is unusual in representing Arthur as a Roman soldier rather than a medieval knight. Produced on a budget of US$120 million, the film will gross US$15,193,907 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 10 mins

DVD Jon releases FairKeys, a program that can be used to retrieve the keys needed by DeDRMS from the iTunes Music Store servers itself.

2005
The beta of version 2.00 of IM2, a freeware multiprotocol instant messaging application for Microsoft Windows, is released. The messenger can connect to AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, IRC, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger networks. Visit the software’s website.

Following a terrorist attack on London, the US television network ABC cancels a broadcast of the fantasy film Reign of Fire, which features a dragon destroying London among other cities.

Google acquires the Current Communications Group, a power-line broadband internet provider, for a US$100 million investment. Visit the official CURRENT Group website.

2006
Buena Vista Pictures releases the film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, directed Gore Verbinski and starring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, Stellan Skarsgård, Jack Davenport, Tom Hollander, and Naomie Harris, to 4,133 US theaters. The film is the sequel to the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Produced on a budget of US$225 million, the film will gross a record US$135,634,554 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 31 mins

The Wikimedia Foundation releases version 1.7 of MediaWiki, a web-based wiki software application. This version requires PHP 5 and features the ability to restore deleted files. Visit the software’s official website.

2008
Pioneer announces the creation of a sixteen layer read-only optical disc with a 400GB capacity.