1851
British astronomer William Lassell discovers Ariel and Umbriel, satellites of Uranus. Both satellites names are featured in Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock. Ariel has a diameter of approximately 1,160 km, an orbital period of 2.52 days, and an orbital radius of 191,240 km from Uranus. Umbriel has a diameter of 1,170 km, an orbital period of about four days, and an orbit radius of 266,000 km.
1861
Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line across the United States, bringing an abrupt end to the legendary Pony Express, which was established just eighteen months earlier and which will close just two days later. The connection is inaugurated with the first transcontinental telegraph message, sent by Justice Stephen J. Field of California to President Abraham Lincoln. The final connection between the east coast and the west coast is made at Salt Lake City, Utah. Prior to the connection, it took ten days for a letter to sent from Sacramento, California to arrive in St. Joseph, Missouri.
1911
During one of twenty test flights, Orville Wright remains in the air nine minutes and forty-five seconds in a glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina setting a new world record that will stand for another ten years.
1926
Harry Houdini gives his last performance at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. He will die on October 31st.
1946
At an altitude of 65 miles (104km), camera aboard The White Sands rocket (V-2 No. 13) rocket takes the first photograph of Earth from space with a 35mm black-and-white camera.
1957
The United States Air Force (USAF) starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar program to develop a spaceplane that can be used for a variety of military missions, including reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and sabotage of enemy satellites. The program will be discontinued on December 10, 1963, before construction of the first craft had been completed.
1978
The first Czechoslovak satellite, Magion 1, is launched.
1984
On page five in the Wednesday, October 24 issue of the Wall Street Journal, writer Laura Landro, reports that Warner Communications has announced higher profits for the third quarter than analysts predicted. “Warner’s profit in the third quarter was $24.4 million, or 36 cents a share, compared with earnings from continuing operations of $4.9 million, or eight cents per share, a year earlier.” Warner cites the success of the blockbuster films, such as Gremlins, Purple Rain, and Tightrope, along with the profits made in the recording and publishing divisions as key contributors since “discontinuing” Atari, which had been turned over to Jack Tramiel just months prior. The article concludes by noting that Warner carries warrants from Tramel Technology, Ltd but also noting that there are doubts as to whether Atari’s future cash flow will ever allow Warner to collect on them.
1985
Apple Computer agrees to allow Microsoft to incorporate a number of Mac technologies into Windows in exchange for delaying its releases of the Windows version of Excel, in order to give Apple an opportunity to better position itself in the business market.
1994
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) publishes Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) 2.62, a freeware PGP version that will be ultimately become the official DOS PGP version.
1995
Atari hosts a Fun ‘N’ Games event for the press to show off progress on upcoming software for the 64-bit Jaguar game system.
Craig Newmark, a former software architect for Charles Schwab, begins compiling an email distribution list of messages from local San Francisco Usenet users advertising and seeking apartments, events, and jobs publicly accessible. In September 1997, Newmark will post launch his project online as Craigslist.org, and the classified site will grow to become enormously popular.
The Federal Networking Council (FNC), which coordinates networking among US Federal agencies, unanimously passes a resolution defining the term “Internet.” The resolution reads, “Resolution: The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term “Internet”. “Internet” refers to the global information system that – (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.” The FNC is composed of representatives from the United States Department of Defense (DoD), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), among others.
1997
Columbia Pictures releases the science fiction film Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law, to 1,279 US theaters. In it, a man deemed to be genetically inferior assumes the identity of another man in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel. Produced on a budget of US$36 million, it will gross US$4,320,202 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 46 mins
1998
The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) reports that Jeanette Park, age 37. of Barrow, Cumbria, England, receives an advertisement from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) that mocking a doctor’s test results in a creative attempt to sell PlayStation accessories as she anxiously awaited cancer test results from her own doctor. The ill-timed advertisement was a part of a mass marketing campaign target current PlayStation owners. Park’s husband had purchased a PlayStation game console to help her to pass the time while she was in the hospital. Sony was surprised to receive fifty-three complaints, and the incidents triggered an investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority.
NASA launches the spaceprobe Deep Space 1 aboard a Delta II rocket as a part of the New Millennium program at 12:08GMT from Cape Canaveral. The primary goal of the mission is to test a number of new technologies that have the potential to lower the cost of future missions, most notably an electrostatic ion thruster using xenon propellant.
2001
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Terra Nova” first airs. (No. 106) In it, an early human colony on Terra Nova mysteriously disappeared 70 years ago and Enterprise is sent to find out what happened to them. Memory Alpha entry
2003
Apple Computer releases MacOS 10.3, an improvement on MacOS X, with major updates to “Aqua,” the user interface, and processor performance. Visit the official Panther OS website. Code-name: Panther Price: US$99.95
The Sober worm is first detected. It is written in Visual Basic and effects only Windows computers. Sober uses its own SMTP engine to spread itself to its victims as an e-mail attachment. When the receiver unpacks the file, which has a .bat, .com, .exe, .pif, or .scr file extension, and runs it, it adds keys to the Windows registry, deactivate previous Sober variants, and any of several popular antivirus applications, including HijackThis and Microsoft AntiSpyware.
2004
Polydeuces, a moon of Saturn, is discovered by the Cassini Imaging Team in images taken on October 21, 2004. Upon discovery, the body is temporarily designated S/2004 S 5. Visit the official website of the Cassini Imaging Team.
2005
A Bittorrent user named Chan Nai-ming, age 38, of Hong Kong, is convicted of breaching Chapter 528 of Hong Kong law, a copyright ordinance, by allegedly uploading torrent files for the films Daredevil, Miss Congeniality, and Red Planet to a newsgroup. The magistrate remarks that Chan’s act caused significant damage to the interest of the films’ copyright holders. He is released on HK$5,000 bail, awaiting a sentencing hearing, though the magistrate himself admits the difficulty of determining how he should be sentenced due to the lack of precedent for such a case. On November 7, 2005, Chan will be sentenced to a three month jail sentence, but will immediately be granted bail pending an appeal to the High Court. The appeal will be dismissed by the Court of First Instance on December 12, 2006.
Jon “NEVERDIE” Jacobs purchases a virtual “Asteroid Space Resort” in the MMORPG Project Entropia for a sum of one million Project Entropia Dollars (PED), the equivalent of US$100,000 in real-world currency. On December 14, 2004, Zachurm “Deathifier” Emegen had paid 265,000 PED (US$26,500) for Treasure Island, a virtual island. At the time, it had been the single largest real-world purchase of a virtual item in history. With this purchase, Jon Jacobs far surpasses that landmark purchase and puts Entropia on the map in North America, generating a great deal of attention in the media. Jacobs dubs the resort “Club NEVERDIE” after the nickname of his own in-game Avatar and announces ambitious plans to turn the resort into a venue for “Live Entertainment in Virtual Reality.” When Jacobs later finishes construction, the club will boast numerous profitable assets, including a thousand-unit apartment complex, twenty hunting biodomes, a commercial space ship dock, a shopping mall, and a stadium for championship sporting events.
MySQL AB releases version 5.0 of the MySQL relational database system. Visit the official MySql website.
2006
Microsoft announces the general release of its anti-spyware application Windows Defender for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP, but not Windows 2000, which had reached the end of its mainstream support period. Visit the application’s official website.
The Mozilla Corporation releases version 2.0 of its Mozilla Firefox web browser. This version introduces a features that allows users to restore their browser’s tabs to their previous state if the user’s session is interrupted. It also includes updates to the browser’s extension manager, GUI, and tabbed browsing. Visit the official Firefox website.
2007
China launches its first lunar orbiter, the Chang’e 1 .
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