The Great Geek Manual

1807
Vesta 4, the only asteroid visible to the naked eye, thus the brightest on record, is first discovered by the amateur astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers from Bremen. Vesta is a main belt asteroid with a diameter of 525km and a rotation period of 5.34 hours. Pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 show Vesta’s complex surface, with a surprisingly diverse geology similar to that of terrestrial worlds, an exposed mantle, ancient lava flows, and impact basins. Though no bigger than the state of Arizona, it had once been a molten interior. This contradicts conventional ideas that asteroids are essentially cold, rocky fragments left behind from the early days of planetary formation.

1886
The first batch of Coca Cola is brewed over a fire in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia by Dr. John Pemberton as a cure for hangovers, stomach aches, and headaches. He markets the drink as a “brain tonic and intellectual beverage,” and first sells it to the public a few weeks later on May 8. Coke contains cocaine as an ingredient until 1904, when the drug will be banned by Congress.

1903
The first transatlantic news service begins between New York and London over Marconi’s wireless. On March 30 1903, The Times in London becames the first newspaper to establish an ongoing arrangement with the Marconi Telegraph Company for the regular transmission of news between the United States and the UK. Shortly thereafter, the New York Times requests that it be part of the arrangement. Despite extensive teething problems, the importance of wireless as a cheap form of communication will quickly become obvious

1910
In Monaco, the world’s largest oceanographic museum is opened part of the Oceanographic Institute, which was founded in 1906. The grandiose facade of the museum overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. It is established by donations from Prince Albert I of Monaco.

1941
Eighty percent of American AM radio stations change frequencies under the terms of the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement treaty (NARBA).

1956
Soviet scientists in the UK announce the development of a new form of electron microscope that enables atoms to be seen by the human eye for the first time.

1974
The NASA spaceprobe Mariner 10 takes the first close-up pictures of the planet Mercury. It was launched November 3, 1973. On its way to Mercury, Mariner 10 made its first flyby of Venus on February 5, 1974 and discovered evidence of rotating clouds. The mission requires more course corrections than any previous mission and is the first spacecraft to use the gravitational pull of one planet to help it reach another planet. In three flybys over Mercury, it maps about half of the planet’s surface, finding a thin atmosphere and a magnetic field. This craft is also the first to use the solar wind as a means of locomotion. When the probe’s thruster fuel runs low, scientists use the solar panels as sails to make course corrections.

1982
Allen Toney, age 23, scores 583,750 points on Atari’s Warlords after playing the game for one hour at Scratch & Tilt in Huntington, West Virginia.

1983
Federal Court Judge Albert Bryan issues a temporary restraining order barring Atari from requiring its distributors to deal exclusively in Atari merchandise.

Radio Shack introduces the TRS-80 Model 100, the industry’s first portable computer. The system features a 2.4MHz Intel 80C85 Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) microprocessor, 8 – 24KB RAM, a full-sized 56-key keyboard, an 8 line, 40 column Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), a built-in 300 baud modem, a parallel and serial interface, and a cassette tape interface to load and save programs at 1500 baud. The system also comes equipped with five built-in applications with 32K of ROM, including an address book, Microsoft BASIC, a schedule book, a telecommunications package, and a text editor. The system is based on the same platform as the NEC PC-8201 and the Olivetti M-10 portable computers, all three being manufactured by Kyoto Ceramics (Kyocera). The TRS-80 be highly successful, especially among businessmen and journalists, due to the unrivaled convenience of its light weight and bundled software package. Visit the offiicial RadioShack website. Price: US$799 (8K RAM) – US$1134 (24K RAM) Weight: 3.9 pounds

1989
The first private commercial rocket in the US makes a suborbital test flight.

The Pixar Animation Group wins an Academy Award in the best animated short film category for the film Tin Toy. It is the first completely computer generated film to win an Oscar. Pixar will go on to produced the first feature length computer animated film, Toy Story. Read more at Pixar’s official website.

1996
Sega Enterprises and Softbank establish Sega Entertainment in the United States for the purpose of preparing Sega products to run on personal computers. The division’s first title is expected to be released in June. Read more about Sega’s history at the official Sega website.

WMS Industries completes its acquisition of Time Warner Interactives, which it announced on March 5. The full price of the transaction will be between US$9.8 and $23.8 million, depending on the division’s gross profit over the coming four years. Upon the sale, Time Warner Interactive adopts the Atari Games name and logo, and Atari Games is made a division of Midway Games. Visit the official WMS Gaming website.

1999
The Melissa macro virus, which was first reported on March 26th, is officially estimated to have affected 100,000 email users worldwide. The worm continues to crash servers around the globe as it propagates.

The Microsoft Corporation announces plans to reorganize into five major divisions. Brad Chase and Jon DeVaan are assigned to head a new consumer and commerce group. Jim Allchin is assigned to head the business enterprise and the consumer Windows divisions. Bob Muglia is assigned to head the new business productivity group. Paul Maritz is assigned to head the developer group. A new home and retail products division is also created. Visit the official Microsoft website.

The website of the White House is defaced with red letters reading “Hackerz wuz Here.” Speculation flies thick and fast, much of it pointing to the same anonymous anti-NATO activists who will later damage a main NATO Web server, forcing it offline for at least a half-hour on March 30.

2000
Capcom releases the survival horror game Resident Evil Code: Veronica for the Dreamcast in the US. It is the fourth game in the Resident Evil series. ESRB: M (Mature)

International Business Machines (IBM) announces the Netfinity A-100 appliance server, a low-cost computer specifically designed to managing websites using Windows 2000. The system will be marketed to large corporations that operate their own websites. Visit the official IBM Netfinity website. Price: US$5,999 – US$16,000

Intel introduces the 566 and 600MHz Celeron processors, featuring multimedia instructions, a 66MHz bus, and a 128KB integrated Level-2 cache. Price: US$167 and US$181 respectively in 1000-unit quantities

Seagate Technology announces that the company will be acquired for US$20 billion and taken private by an investment group and merged with Veritas Software to focuse on manufacturing hard drives. Visit the official Seagate website.

2001
Pfizer announces plans to jointly establish an independent company named Amicore in partnership with International Business Machines (IBM) and Microsoft for the purpose of developing office management software for the medical industry in the United States. Specifically, the Amicore’s goal will be to automate administrative paperwork for physicians. Visit the official Amicore website.

Sony releases a cable that allows users to connect a PlayStation 2“>PlayStation 2 to i-mode phones for gaming.

2003
A anonymous hacker using the web handle Habibi-Xbox reveals a method for running Linux on an unmodified Xbox video game system by exploiting a buffer overflow flaw in the “save/load game” function of the first-person shooter 007: Agent Under Fire, as well as several other games. The method is first revealed in a message posted on the Xbox Hacker website. Michael Robertson, founder of Linux company Lindows, had encouraged such work with a two-part contest, each part carrying a US$100,000 prize. The first part of the contest required a team to run Linux on an Xbox to qualify for a prize.

2005
Vivendi Universal Games releases Red Ninja: End Of Honor for the Xbox in the US. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)