Today, June 18, is Phi Day! Like Pi, Phi, also known as the Golden Ration, is an irrational number, equal to approximately 1.61803398874989484820458683436564. Phi is used a great deal in astronomy, but it’s found everywhere you look here on Earth, from architecture to shells and even the human body. Most importantly, it’s found in the proportions in the Greeks’ famous golden rectangle, and it’s derivable by many proofs, including the famous Fibonacci Sequence.
1858
Charles Darwin receives an academic paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that draws conclusions regarding evolution nearly identical to those Darwin made himself. The concurring opinion prompts Darwin to publish his own theory of evolution.
1908
A short, precise letter published in the journal Nature written by A.A. Campbell Swinton describes the essential characteristics of an all-electric television system.
1912
Peter Hewitt is issued a patent for a Mercury-vapor lamp. (US No. 1,030178)
1930
Groundbreaking ceremonies are held for the Franklin Institute. Visit the official Franklin Institute website.
1965
The first large solid-fuel rocket, a Titan 3C, is launched into orbit. Compared to previous liquid-propelled rockets, the solid-propellant rocket requires fewer parts, making it significantly more reliable, while its fuel provides more thrust than a liquid-propellant rocket of a similar size.
1979
Microsoft releases Microsoft BASIC for the 16-bit Intel 8086 microprocessor. The release of the high-level language will lead to the widespread popularity of 16-bit processors.
1981
The United States Department of Agriculture publicly announces the creation of the world’s first genetically engineered vaccine, which is designed to prevent hoof and mouth disease (FMD).
1983
The Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on its second flight. (STS-7) It is the seventh US shuttle mission, and it carries the first American woman into space, mission specialist Sally K. Ride. During the six day mission, the crew will deploy two communication satellites (ANIK C-2 for TELESAT Canada and PALAPA-B1 for Indonesia). They also conduct a number of experiments, including a study of effects of zero gravity on the social behavior of a colony of ants. Read more about Sally Ride at NASA.
1990
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Best of Both Worlds (Part 1)” is first aired. (No. 326) In it, Picard is abducted by the Borg, who are on a course to Earth. The episode is the finale of season three. It will be regarded as one of the most significant and highly regarded episodes of the entire series. Memory Alpha entry
1992
The Los Angeles Times runs a story on Kevin Chang, a high school senior who took the top prize in an area computer science competition with a program designed to improve traffic flow by automatically controlling acceleration and braking using an infrared sensor to monitors the distance between a car and obstacles.
1993
The board of directors of Apple Computer appoints Michael Spindler as CEO of the company to replace John Sculley, who the board felt had spent too much of the company’s assets developing Newton, which ultimately proved a failure. With the change of management, Apple abandons its “Star Trek” project, which had been aimed towards porting the Mac OS to Intel processors in order to compete directly with Microsoft.
1996
Ted Kaczynski, alleged to be the Unabomber, is indicted on ten criminal counts. Kaczynski, a former former child prodigy and mathematician, allegedly conducted a bombing campaign to advance a neo-Luddite agenda.
1997
Version 4.01 of Netscape Communicator is released. The Communicator suite consists of the webbrowser Netscape Navigator, the email client Netscape Mail, the newsreader Newsgroups, Netscape Address Book, and the HTML editor Netscape Composer. Visit the official Netscape Communicator website..
1999
In a nod toward his future with digital technology, George Lucas screens the film Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, which was released on May 19th, on digital projectors in four theaters.
2001
Palm introduces the Jordan m100 and Jordan m500 handheld computers. The devices are the result of a US$3.5 million three-year deal with basketball star Michael Jordan. The hardware is the same as regular Palm handhelds, except for the “Jordan” branding on the case. The devices come bundled with special edition software related to Jordan and basketball. Price: US$159 and US$425
2002
Atari and Infogrames release the role-playing game (RPG) Neverwinter Nights for Windows in North America. The game is based on the third edition Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game rules and the Forgotten Realms roleplaying game rules. The game is based in part on traditions established by the original Neverwinter Nights online game, the first graphical massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) in history, which was available through AOL from 1991 to 1997. The new version was developed by Bioware using a scripting language called NWScript that was also developed specifically for the game by BioWare. The language is based on the C programming language and is implemented in the Aurora toolset, though it excludes many functions of the C family, such as binary operators, logical operators, and mathematical functions. Neverscript, an open source third party editor, was created for and bundled with Neverwinter Nights for the Mac OS X and Linux because the Aurora toolset hasn’t yet been ported to those platforms. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)
Version 8.1 of the Slackware Linux distribution is released by creator Patrick Volkerding. Slackware is most notable for its policy of incorporating only stable releases of applications. It’s philosophy is to maintain its stability and simplicity, in an effort to be the most UNIX-like Linux distribution. Visit the official Slackware website or the official Slackware blog.
2004
Comicbook publisher CrossGen Entertainment files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in US Bankruptcy Court in Tampa, Florida. The company owes three million dollars to their top twenty creditors. In October Disney will purchase the company for one million dollars. Read a copy of the bankruptcy filing at Newsarama.com.
2005
Google Maps adds maps of the entire world with countries labeled. Previously, only Google Maps covered only the Canada, the UK, and the US. Visit the official Google Maps website.
2006
The first Kazakh space satellite, KazSat, is launched.
The website of Microsoft France is hacked by Turkish hackers calling themselves “redLine & rudeb0y & Ejder & The_Bekir & SaCReDSeeR & ASH”. The group left a message reading, “HACKED! Hi Master ( : Your System 0wNed By Turkish Hackers! next target: microsoft.com” View an archived version of the defaced website.
2007
Company co-founder Jerry Yang succeeds Terry Semel as CEO of Yahoo! Visit the official Yahoo! website..
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