The Great Geek Manual

1607
William Shakespeare publishes King Lear. Many later historians will believe it to be the first book for which a copyright claim is made in the Entry Book of Copies at the Stationers’ Company in London.

1789
In the United States, Thanksgiving Day is first observed on the recommendation of President George Washington and with the approval of Congress.

1864
Charles Dodgson, who will later publish under the pen name Lewis Carroll, sends the handwritten manuscript of his fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures Underground to ten year-old Alice Liddell as an early Christmas gift. Dodgson had promised the girl that he would record the story after first told her and her two sisters the tale to pass the time while traveling via row boat from Folly Bridge, Oxford to Godstow on The Isis for a picnic outing. One year later, the manuscript would be published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

1865
Macmillan and Co. publishes the juvenile fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pen name Lewis Carroll in England. The novel included forty-two illustrations drawn by John Tenniel, who will be long remembered for the contribution. The novel, which tells the story a young girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a magical world populated with bizarre characters. It would become enormously influential in the fantasy genre. Queen Victoria enjoyed the book so much that she would send Dodgson a letter saying that she would be “pleased to accept any other works by the same pen.”

1881
The Western Electric Manufacturing Company abbreviates its name to “Western Electric” and acquires the only existing licenses to make Bell System telephone equipment through purchases and the expirations of existing contracts.

1885
The first photo of a meteor trail ever taken is taken in Prague, Czechoslovakia during the Andromedid meteor shower.

1887
Thomas Alva Edison applies for a US patent for an improved phonograph system that uses wax-coated cylinders and an electric motor-driven machine. (US No 386,974)

1922
Archaeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamun in over 3000 years. The find will be dubbed, “The greatest archaeological discovery of all time” by the media.

The film Toll of the Sea becomes the first widely released film to feature two-tone Technicolor. The film The Gulf Between, which used the same technology, was released over five years earlier, but it was never widely released and it wasn’t produced in Hollywood, as Toll of the Sea was. IMDB listing

1965
France launches its first satellite, Astrix-1, aboard a Diamant-A rocket from Hammaguir, Algeria, becoming the world’s third nation to enter space after the Soviet Union and the United States.

1966
President Charles de Gaulle inaugurates the world’s first tidal power station at Rance estuary, in Brittany. At high and low tide, the water builds up rapidly on one side of the dam. When the difference in the two sides’ levels is sufficient, the gates open and the water rushes into the dam, operating the turbines in either direction to generate up to five hundred million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power a year.

1976
The trade name Microsoft is registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. The name was first used by Bill Gates in a letter written to Paul Allen on November 29, 1975. Just weeks later, Gates will drop out of Harvard.

1981
According to Twin Galaxies, Dan Whitman, age 16, scores a record-setting 556,886 points on Atari’s Centipede after playing the game for one hour and five minutes at 2-Bit Bandit in Evansville, Indiana. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1984
In the Business Monday section of the San Jose Mercury News, technology editor Evelyn Richards, reports that Jack Tramiel was “making peace with retailers as soon as he arrived at Atari … That means Atari’s computers and video-game systems will be on retailers’ shelves in time for the Christmas shopping season.” The article also points out the difficult balance that Atari has had to find to optimize cash flow. “Tramiel’s challenge was to convince retailers to pay him what they owed, plus buy more goods.”

1986
Paramount Pictures releases the science fiction film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, directed by Leonard Nimoy and starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Majel Barrett, Grace Lee Whitney, Mark Lenard, and Jane Wyatt, to 1,349 US theaters. In it, Kirk and his crew go back in time to retrieve a set of humpback whales to save Earth from an alien probe seeking the species in a future in which they are extinct. In the film, Scotty, attempting to secure a supply of acrylic glass, enters the molecular formula for “transparent aluminum” into a Apple Computer Macintosh Plus using its keyboard after a failed attempt to speak to the system through its mouse. Produced on a budget of US$25 million, it will gross US$16,881,888 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins

1990
The first Delta II rocket is launched. Visit the rocket’s official website.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. acquires Music Corporation of America (MCA) for US$6.6 billion.

1995
The NetBSD Foundation releases version 1.1 of the NetBSD operating system. Visit the official NetBSD website.

1997
PGP Inc. publishes PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) 5.5.3 freeware for Windows 95, Windows NT, and Macintoshes. This version is no long backward-compatible with the keys PGP versions 2.6x. Shortly after it’s release, it will be illegally exported from the US.

Twentieth Century Fox releases the science fiction film Alien: Resurrection, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dominique Pinon, and Ron Perlman, to 2,415 US theaters. Two hundred years after her death, Ellen Ripley is revived, and she must continue her battle against the Aliens. Produced on a budget of US$75 million, it will gross US$16,474,092 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins

The website of China Agricultural University is hacked by “LSD”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

1999
GT Interactive released the first-person shooter Unreal Tournament for Windows in the US. ESRB: M (Mature)

Sega announces its plans to make the Dreamcast video game console the center of its Web strategy, focusing on multiplayer online gaming.

2000
The Brazilian website of Associacao Educacional Sao Jose is hacked by the hacking group “crime boys”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazilian website of Znica Telecomunicates e Informatica Ltd is hacked by the hacking group “prime suspectz”. The website is hosted on a server running Linux. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2001
Intel announces that its researchers have developed an innovative transistor structure with new materials that represent a dramatic improvement in transistor speed, power efficiency and heat reduction. The technology development is an important milestone in the effort to maintain the pace of Moore’s Law and remove the technical barriers that Intel and the semiconductor industry have only recently begun to identify. The Intel TeraHertz transistor solves a key barrier to bringing future chips into volume production that enable a whole new range of applications like face recognition and computing without keyboards as well as significantly improved battery life. Intel is expected to begin incorporating elements of this new structure into its product line as early as 2005.

Two former Cisco accountants are sentenced to thirty-four months for breaking into company computers to steal stock.

2002
Square and Enix announce they are merging to form Square Enix by April 1, 2003. Visit the company’s official website.

2003
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Carpenter Street” first airs. (No 311) In it, Archer, Daniels, and T’Pol travel back in time to 2004 Detroit after discovering that a group of reptilian Xindi have traveled there to create a biological weapon. Memory Alpha entry

Version 0.4 of the Desktop Light Linux (DeLi Linux) operating system is released. Visit the official DeLi website.