Geek events to celebrate on April 14: 1828 – Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary. 1894 – Thomas Edison demonstrates the kinetoscope, a device for peep-show viewing using photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor to movies. 1956 – In Chicago, Illinois, videotape is first demonstrated. 2003 – The Human Genome Project […]
Geek events to celebrate on March 25: 1807 – The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger carrying railway in the world. 1948 – The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma. 1979 – The first fully functional space shuttle […]
Geek events to celebrate on February 4: 1936 – Radium becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically. 1957 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), logs its 60,000th nautical mile, matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne‘s novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. 2004 – Facebook, a mainstream […]
Geek events to celebrate on February 3: 1966 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon. February 3 birthdays of geeky note: 1905 – Arne Beurling, Swedish-American mathematician (d. November 20, 1986). In the summer of 1940 he single-handedly deciphered and reverse-engineered an early version of the […]
Geek events to celebrate on January 31: 1930 – 3M begins marketing Scotch Tape. Geeks and nerds everywhere could finally make their broken glasses last a little longer. 1958 – The first successful launch of an American satellite (Explorer 1) into orbit.
Geek events to celebrate on January 30: 1982 – Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which is 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple boot program called “Elk Cloner”. (This is more of an anniversary than something to celebrate, unless you’re one of those ass-hats who writes computer virii for your own […]
Geek events to celebrate on January 29: 1936 – The first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced. Sports statisticians snort in approval.
Geek Events to celebrate on January 25: 1947 – The first commercially available video game, called the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, was patented by Thomas T. Goldsmith and Estle Ray Mann. Dedicate your day to worshipping CRT and all that has come after this incredible invention! Or learn more about the history of video […]
Geek events to celebrate on January 24: 1984 – The first Apple Macintosh goes on sale. January 24 birthdays of geeky note: 1754 – Andrew Ellicott, a U.S. surveyor who surveyed the boundaries of the District of Columbia, continued and completed Pierre (Peter) Charles L’Enfant‘s work on the plan for Washington, D.C., and mentored Meriwether […]
Geek events to celebrate on January 23: 1986 – The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first members. This is an important step in the validation of music geeks’ obsession.