The Great Geek Manual

763 BC
Assyrians record a solar eclipse that will later be used by historians to establish a timeline of Mesopotamian history.

1667
The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys, the personal physician to King Louis XIV. The patient is a fifteen year old boy, bled too many times to count by other doctors in attempts to treat a fever, who is given nine ounces of lamb’s blood. The boy will recover from the fever, but other attempts at transfusion will fail and the practice will soon be outlawed by the Parisian municipal council.

1752
Benjamin Franklin confirms his theory that lightning is electrical when he and his son conduct an experiment in which they fly a kite with a key attached to it during a thunderstorm. He will publish a article on the experiment in the October 19th 1752 issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette.

1869
John Wesley Hyatt and Isaiah Hyatt are issued a US patent for the first plastic, described as an “Improved Method of Making Solid Collodion.” (US No. 91,341) In their method, soluble cotton, pyroxyline, or prepared cellulose is placed into a strong cylinder or suitably-shaped mold. Then, “the employment of a very small quantity of ether or other appropriate solvent, and dissolving pyroxyline therewith, under a heavy pressure, so that a comparatively hard and solid product is obtained, with great economy of solvents and saving of time.” A filler may then be mixed with the pyroxyline such as ivory-dust, bone-dust, asbestos, flake-white, or any other desirable substance, according to the nature of the product required.

1911
The Computing Scale Company of America, The Tabulating Machine Company and The International Time Recording Company of New York merge and incorporate as the Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR), which will later be known as International Business Machines (IBM). In the decades that will follow, IBM will become a leader in PC production and innovation. In 1911, the company will develop the first fully electronic computer, the IBM 701.

1919
British Royal Airforce Pilot Captain John Alcock and navigator Lieutenant Arthur W. Browne successfully complete the first, non-stop, transatlantic airplane flight. They flew from Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland in sixteen hours and twelve minutes aboard a Vickers Vimy WWI bomber, winning the prize offered by the London Daily Mail. During their flight, they faced many problems. Their radio breaks down shortly after take off. Fog and drizzle prevent the fliers from seeing anything for much of the journey. They aim to land in a green field but instead land in a bog. The plane suffers some damage when it hits the ground and sinks into the bog. Luckily, both Alcock and Brown come away uninjured.

1920
Britain’s first advertised public broadcast program takes place. A song recital by Dame Nellie Melba is broadcast using a Marconi 15kW telephone transmitter at the Marconi works in Chelmsford, and the program is heard in many countries. This marks the birth of audio broadcasting.

1949
Jay Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), writes about the design of the first core memory in his notebook. After he used a magnetic core memory on the Whirlwind computer, it becomes a faster and more reliable standard for computers through the seventies.

1973
Fox releases the science fiction film Battle for the Planet of the Apes, directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy, John Huston, and Paul Williams, is released to US theaters. The film is the fifth and final entry in the Planet of the Apes series. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: G) Running Time: 1 hr 33 mins

1977
An area is set aside for microcomputer companies for the first time at annual The National Computer Conference in Dallas, Texas.

1978
Soyuz 29 carries two cosmonauts to the Salyut 6 space station for a 139 day visit.

1982
New York state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Galligan rules that New York City can limit the locations of video game arcades, stating that arcade games are not protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

1983
Microsoft, Spectravideo, and fourteen Japanese computer companies announce the MicroSoft eXtended BASIC (MSX) specifications for low-end, 8-bit home computers systems. The standard consists of a Zilog Z80, a TI TMS9918A video processor, a General Instruments AY-8910 sound processor, a NEC cassette interface chip, an Atari joystick interface, 64kB RAM, and Microsoft’s 32kB ROM-based extended BASIC.

1989
A hearing is held regarding the injunctions Tengen and Nintendo have brought against each other in an attempt to halt the manufacture and sale of their respective versions of the Tetrsi video game. Judge Fern Smith rules that neither Mirrorsoft nor Spectrum Holobyte had been granted the video game rights and therefore the rights could not have been legally transferred to Tengen. Nintendo is therefore granted a preliminary injuction blocking Tengen from selling its Tetris game cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), effective June 21.

1990
Warner Bros. releases the comedy film Gremlins 2: The New Batch, directed by Joe Dante and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, John Glover, Robert Prosky, Robert Picardo, and Christopher Lee, to 2,075 US theaters. Produced on a budget of US$50 million, the film will gross US$9,702,804 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 47 mins

1992
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Time’s Arrow, Part I” first airs. (No. 526) In it, Data’s severed head is discovered in a five hundred year old cavern near Starfleet Headquarters. Memory Alpha entry

1994
Creative Technology offers public shares for the first time on the main board of the Singapore Stock Exchange.

1997
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) publishes a freeware version of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) 5.0 for Windows 95, Windows NT, and Mac. Version 5 maintains backward-compatibility with versions 2.6x. It will become the new world standard after being illegally (and anonymously) export from the US.

1998
The Magic: The Gathering expansion set Exodus is released. The set’s expansion symbol is a bridge. It is the final set in the Rath Cycle block. The set includes 143 cards: 55 common, 44 uncommon, and 44 rare.

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) releases version 6.5 of the IRIX operating system. Visit the official IRIX website.

1999
International Business Machines (IBM) releases the world’s smallest harddrive, the MicroDrive, and world’s largest hard drive, the Deskstar 37GXP. The Deskstar has a 37GB capacity, which is a significant improvement over the current market leader (also an IBM), which has a 25GB capacity. It features a 5400-rpm motor, five platters, a 2MB cache buffer, and an ATA-4 interface for US$350. Meanwhile, the company’s new MicroDrive has a 340MB capacity and is only the size of a matchbox. It is designed for handheld devices and digital cameras. Visit the official IBM website.

Microsoft acquires OmniBrowse, Inc.

2000
The Brazilian website of Serra On Line Informatica is hacked by “c3zar”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

An Information Technology consultant breaches the security of the British internet service provider Redhotant to expose security lapses. He manages to obtain the names, addresses, passwords and credit card details of more than 24,000 people, including military scientists, government officials, and top company executives just to prove that it can be done. The hacker says that breaching the site’s security was “child’s play.”

Microsoft releases the Windows CE 3.0 operating system. The embedded operating system includes better real-time and multimedia capabilities, supports more languages, and is more easily broken up for use in pieces. It comes bundled with comprehensive development tools, Platform Builder 3.0 and eMbedded Visual Tools 3.0, which enable developers to build rich embedded devices with dynamic applications and Internet services.

Version 2.7 of the OpenBSD operating system is released. Visit the official OpenBSD website.

2001
Christine Gunhus, the wife of an US Senator, pleads no contest to charges of using a pseudonym to send e-mail messages through Hotmail disparaging her husband’s Democratic rival.

Paramount Pictures releases the film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, directed Simon West by and starring Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight, and Daniel Craig, to 3,308 US theaters. The film is based on the popular Tomb Raider video game series. Produced on a budget of US$94 million, the film will gross US$47,735,743 domestically in its opening weekend. The film will also have the highest highest box office gross for a movie headlined by a woman, surpassing the $40.1 million debut of Charlie’s Angels. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 40 mins

2002
Apple Computer launches the Switch ad campaign featuring what the company referred to as “real people” who had “switched” from Microsoft Windows to the Mac. The commercials would become an internet phenomena when the commercial spot starring fourteen-year old Ellen Feiss aired. Fleiss, who appeared in the spot looking ragged with bloodshot eyes and a slight slur to her speech, was widely speculated to have been high during its shooting. The speculation would precipitate a long-running association between Mac computers and drugs across the web. However, in a later interview with the Brown Daily Herald, Feiss would deny the speculation, explaining that she had only been invited to the shooting because she was a friend of the son of the director. She had not expected to be cast in a commercial, and at the late hour of the shooting, she had been suffering from severe seasonal allergies, exhausted, and on allergy medication (Benadryl). Despite the explanation, the association with drug culture would vault her into celebrity status, and she would be invited (but decline) to appear on both David Letterman and Jay Leno. Her popularity would eventually subside after Dell spokesman Ben Curtis, known as the “Dell Dude,” was arrested for attempting to buy a bag of marijuana on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on February 9, 2003.

Near earth asteroid 2002 MN misses an impact with Earth by only 75,000 miles (120,000 km), or about one third the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

2004
Apple Computer launches the iTunes Music Store in three European markets: France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The price for a single track will be 79 pence or 99 euro cents. One week later, 800,000 songs will have been sold to European customers, 450,000 in the UK alone. Visit the official iTune Music Store website.

Tim Berners-Lee becomes the first recipient of the Millennium Technology Prize for his contributions towards the creation of the World Wide Web. The prize is one million euros, or about US$1.5 million dollars. It’s given out in recognition of major technological innovations that contribute to the improved quality of human life, and it is sometimes likened in its importance to the Nobel Prize. The prize is paid from an independent fund established by Finnish industry and the Finnish government, and it is presented by the President of Finland every two years. Visit the official website of The Millennium Technology Prize.

Version 0.9 of the Mozilla Firefox web browser is released. It features a new default theme (Winstripe), comprehensive data migration, a new extension and theme manager, a reduced download size, a new help system, and a Linux installer. Visit the official Firefox website..

2005
Microsoft releases Windows XP N Edition, a version of the Windows XP operating system without the Windows Media Player. Visit the official Windows XP website.

Reports are released by Reporters Without Borders revealing that entries made by Chinese users of Microsoft’s MSN Spaces using certain keywords like “democracy,” “demonstration,” “freedom,” “human rights,” and “Taiwan independence” are being blocked by Microsoft as a concession to the Chinese government. Weblog entries containing one of the blacklisted words or pornographic content get a pop-up warning reading, “This message contains a banned expression, please delete this expression.” The move makes Microsoft the second company after Yahoo! to agree to self-censor its users’ activities. Read more at the BBC.

Version 1.2.1 of the operating system Damn Small Linux, a Linux distribution that emphasizes size over function. The developers of the system claim that it will never grow larger than 50MB. Visit the official website.

Version 3.2 of MetaBB, a phpBB forum, is released. Visit the official MetaBB website.

Version 6 of DivX is released. This version features a media container format in addition to a codec and a media player by adding . Visit the official DivX website..

Warner Bros. Pictures releases the film Batman Begins, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, and Morgan Freeman, to 3,858 US theaters. The film is based on the Batman comic franchise and specifically draws inspiration from Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: The Man Who Falls, and Batman: Year One. After the complete commercial and critical failure of Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin in 1997, this film begins the film franchise anew with a new, darker mood. Produced on a budget of US$150 million, the film will gross US$48,745,440 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit this film’s official website. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 20 mins

2006
Bill Gates announces that he will transition out of his day-to-day role at Microsoft over the next two years in order to dedicate more time to philanthropy via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He will divide his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy. Visit the official Microsoft website.

In Louisiana, Governor Kathleen Blanco signs bill HB1381 into law. The bill imposes fines of between US$100 and US$2,000 and up to one year in prison for selling games with violent content to minors. The bill was introduced by Democratic Representative Roy Burrell and passed through both the state House and the Senate unanimously. It will ultimately be ruled unconstitutional in November.

The Pirate Bay temporarily changes its logo to a phoenix to commemorate the website’s return to service after a May 31st raid conducted by Swedish police took the Bay’s server’s down for several days. Visit the official Pirate Bay website..

Version 3.0 of Pixen, an open-source raster graphics editor, is released for the Mac OS X. Visit the official Pixen website.

2007
20th Century Fox releases the science fiction action film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, directed by Tim Story and starring Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, Laurence Fishburne, and Julian McMahon, to 3,959 US theaters. It is based on the marvel comic Fantastic Four and a sequel to the 2005 film of the same name. Though the film was a blockbuster, it was a critical flop. Produced on a budget of US$130 million, it will gross US$58,051,684 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hr 29 mins

Microsoft releases a special commemorative Halo 3 Zune exclusively available at GameStop. The device features a black case with Halo-themed graphics, and it comes preloaded with promotional videos from Halo. Visit the official Zune website.. Price: US$246