The Great Geek Manual

1692
Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, Reverend Parris’ Caribbean slave, are accused of using witchcraft, beginning the Salem witch trials.

1872
Edward Drinker Cope reads his paper to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in which he gives the name Ornithochirus to the remains of an creature with large wings. However, Cope’s rival Othniel Charles Marsh beats him to print by publishing a paper in the American Journal of Science a few days earlier, using the alternative name Pterodactylis.

1873
E. Remington and Sons in Ilion, New York begin production of the first practical typewriter.

1896
Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity when he develops the photographic plate he had left in a desk drawer and finds that it has fogged with the image of the uranium compound crystals resting on it. Thus, the discovery is the result of a chance occurrence. He had originally stored objects together on February 26, after postponing his intended experiment on phosphorescent emissions stimulated by the sun. Instead, he found spontaneous and penetrating rays, independent of any input of energy. He will share the 1903 Nobel Prize with Pierre and Marie Curie for his work on radioactivity.

1921
Harry Houdini patents a diver’s suit. (US No. 1,370,316)

1929
The term “Super Computing” is coined by the New York World, in the title of an article about several large tabulators built by International Business Machines (IBM) for Columbia University.

1936
The first public videophone service is launched in Germany by Postminister Baron von Eltz-Rubenach at the Leipzig Trade Fair. Call booths are located at the fair ground and at the main post office in Augustplatz, Berlin, 160 kilometers away. The one hundred eighty line mechanical system is made available to Aryans between 8am and 10pm each day.

Warner Bros. Pictures releases the black-and-white horror film The Walking Dead, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Boris Karloff, Edmund Gwenn, and Marguerite Churchill, premieres in New York City. It was inspired by the 1939 film The Man They Could Not Hang. The film was produced on a budget of US$217,000. IMDB listing Running time: 1 hr 6 mins

1941
Radio station W47NV goes into operations in Nashville, Tennessee becoming the first commercial FM radio station in the United States.

1954
The hydrogen bomb, code-named Castle Bravo, is detonated in a test over the Pacific archipelago of Bikini Atoll, a part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. With a force equivalent to twenty megatons (million tons) of TNT, it is the most powerful of all US thermonuclear bomb tests. It is believed that the hydrogen bomb is up to one thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Radioactivity renders the islands an unsafe wasteland to which the evacuated indigenous people won’t be able to return to for decades to come. The natives were moved to the island of Rongerik, only to be moved to Ujelan a year later and then to Kili Island. Read more about the test at Znet, in the article entitled “Bikini and the Hydrogen Bomb: A Fifty Year Perspective” or at the Atomic Bomb Museum.

1960
John McCarthy releases the LISP Programmer’s Manual, marking the release of the first recursive and symbolic programming language. Considered the mother tongue of artificial intelligence (AI), LISP will be one of the most enduring high-level languages ever created. Read more about the history of LISP at John McCarthy’s Standford website.

1966
The unmanned Soviet space probe Venera 3 crashes into the night side of Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet.

1968
Huntington, Indiana becomes the first city in the United States to implement “911″ as the universal emergency telephone number. The system is implemented by AT&T, and Hunting was chosen be the first such city because it is the home town of Democratic US Representative John Edward Roush, who sponsored the legislation which enacted the system. On the same day, the Commission on Civil Disturbance, a committee convened by President Lyndon Johnson, issues a report on the riots that occurred the previous year in several major US cities that heightens the public awareness of the need for such an emergency number.

The Star Trek episode “The Omega Glory” first airs. (No. 52) In it, the Enterprise comes across the derelict Federation ship Exeter, and the crew discovers that its entire crew has been killed by a plague. Memory Alpha entry

1975
The first color television programs are broadcast in Australia.

1976
Less than two months after being married at the age of twenty-five, Steve Wozniak completes the basic design of his computer, and shows it to the Homebrew Computer Club meetings. Steven Jobs realized the design’s potential, and he convinces Wozniak not to give away schematics of the computer for free. Jobs will convince Wozniak to produce to printed circuit boards to sell.

1980
The Voyager 1 probe confirms that Janus, a moon of Saturn, exists. Visit the NASA’s official Voyager website.

1985
The Amusement Showcase International show, the world’s leading trade event for the coin-operated amusement industry, is held over three days, in Chicago, Illinois.

1990
In an early-morning raid, the Secret Service raids the offices of Steve Jackson Games, a maker of roleplaying games, in Chicago. Two of the workers, known online as “Erik Bloodaxe” and “Mentor”, are alleged to have ties to a hacker group that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating. The agents keep the employees out of the offices through the morning and into the afternoon. They seize the server which hosts the company’s bulletin board system (BBS), “Illuminati”, along with an employee’s work computer, miscellaneous computer equipment, and hundreds upon hundreds of floppy disks. The agents find the soon to be published rulebook for a game called “G.U.R.P.S. Cyberpunk.” The raiders mistake the book for a computer hacking tutorial and subsequently seize all the recent versions of the book, including a large section of the draft which had been made publicly available on Illuminati. Steve Jackson Games will later mount a campaign to retrieve the seized equipment. In the ensuing legal battle, the company will ultimately prevail, but their equipment will never be returned in its entirety. The incident will later be the inspiration for a card game called Hacker. Read a brief history of the Illuminati BBS at the Steve Jackson Games website.

1991
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation of Microsoft for alleged monopolistic practices becomes public knowledge. Visit the official FTC website.

1993
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Birthright (Part 2)” first airs. (No. 617) In it, Worf infiltrates a prison colony run by Romulans in order to find out if his father is alive. Memory Alpha entry

1994
The comedy television series Weird Science, starring John Mallory Asher, Michael Manasseri, Vanessa Angel, and Lee Tergesen, premieres on the USA Network cable network with the episode “She’s Alive”. The series is a spin-off of the 1985 film Weird Science. It will run for five seasons and eighty-eight episodes. TV.com entry

1997
Acclaim Entertainment releases the first-person shooter (FPS) Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for the Nintendo 64 in Europe. It’s based on the Acclaim Comics comic book series Turok. BBFC: 15

French electronics manufacturer Thomson puts demonstration DVD players into branches of Fnac entertainment department store in France with a suggested retail price of 4,990 francs (€755 or US$878). Visit the official Thomson website.

Nintendo releases the platform game Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64 in Australia and Europe. OFLC: G

Sony announces that it will cut the price of the PlayStation“>PlayStation twenty-five to thirty-five percent in Australia, France, Germany, and Great Britain.

1998
The website of Persatuan Hackers Indonesia is hacked by “CHRiZTiaNZ WaReZ”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Sprint International Global One is hacked by “Simon”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

1999
Compaq Computer begins shipping the Aero 2100 handheld computer, featuring a 256-color display, 8MB RAM, an integrated microphone and speaker, and the Windows CE operating system. A lithium-ion battery powers the unit for about ten hours. Price: US$449

The General Electric Company (GEC) acquires the US telecommunication network products company RELTEC.

Oracle begins shipping Oracle 8i database software, for a variety of operating systems. Visit the official Oracle website. Price: Starting at US$1,475 for a five user license.

2000
3Com holds an initial public offering (IPO) for its subsidiary Palm, Inc. on the NASDAQ market, making it a publicly traded company. Visit the official Palm website.

Electronic Arts (EA) announces that they have begun shipping Superbike 2000 for the PlayStation video game console and personal computers to North American retailers. EA boasts that the game makes extensive use of motion capture technology to capture players’ gestures and moves for use in the game.

The website of AntiOnline’s AntiCode is hacked by “ADM”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2001
Forty ecommerce and banking websites in twenty states are hacked by Eastern European organized crime (Russian) groups. More than a million credit card numbers are stolen in the incident.

2002
Electronic Arts (EA) releases Command & Conquer: Renegade for Windows in Europe. Visit the game’s official website. ELSPA: 15+

Electronic Arts (EA) releases Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in Europe. ELSPA: 11+

The Envisat environmental satellite successfully reaches an orbit approximately 500 miles (800km) above the Earth on its eleventh launch, carrying 9.5 tons (8,500 kg), its heaviest payload to date.

NASA launches the Space Shuttle Columbia on its last successful mission, during which it will perform maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope. (STS-109) On its next mission, which will be launched on January 16, 2003, the shuttle will be destroyed, killing all seven astronauts on board. (STS-107)

Ubisoft releases the platform game Evil Twin: Cyprien’s Chronicles for personal computers in Europe.

Version 1.6.7 of the Ruby programming language is released. Visit the official Ruby website.

2003
The Alias Systems Corporation is honored with an Oscar award for scientific and technical achievement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the development of Maya software. Visit Autodesk’s official Maya website.

Tor releases the The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0765305550) It is the first book in the Succession series.) Length: 304 pages

Wizards of the Coast publishes the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying supplement Arms and Equipment Guide as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 078692649X) Length: 160 pages

2004
The national registrars of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland adopt Punycode, a computer encoding syntax which translates Unicode strings into the character set which is permitted for network host names. Visit the Punycode translator at NameISP.com.

Version 8.4.6 of the Tcl/Tk programming language is released. Tcl/Tk is widely used in the programming of graphical user interfaces (GUI’s). Read more about the history of Tcl at the Tcl Developer Xchange.

2005
Capcom releases Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening for the PlayStation 2 in North America. The game is a prequel to the original Devil May Cry game. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)

Ubisoft releases the first-person shooter (FPS) Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 for the Xbox. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)

Yahoo! announces that it will begin including paid entries in its search engine results, though it is quick to assure consumers that it will continue to rely on free web crawl results for most of its content. Visit the official Yahoo! website.

2006
Msnbc.com publicly launches the Newsvine community website. Visit the Newsvine website.

Wikipedia reaches one million articles in the English language with the creation of an entry entitled “Jordanhill railway station”.

World of Warcraft reaches six million total subscribers worldwide.

2007
The American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) changes its name to the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in order to reflect the organization’s increasingly international membership. Read the official press release at the official AAAI website.

Leister Productions releases version 9 of the Reunion genealogy software for the Mac OS X.

Midway releases The Ant Bully for the Wii in Australia. It is based on the animated film The Ant Bully. Visit the game’s official website.

Namco releases the fighting game Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection for the PlayStation 3 in the US. It is the seventh game in the Tekken series. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)

Namco Bandai releases Dynasty Warriors: Gundam for the PlayStation 3 in Japan. It is based on the Gundam anime series. Visit the game’s official website. CERO: A (All Ages)

Nintendo releases the platform game Kirby: Squeak Squad for the Nintendo DS in Australia. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: E (Everyone)

Taito releases the train simulation game Densha de Go! for the Wii in Japan. Visit the game’s official website.

2008
America Online (AOL) discontinues the Netscape web browser. Visit the official Netscape website.