January 10
Geek events to celebrate on January 10: 1962 – Apollo Project: NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket booster. It became better known as the Saturn V moon rocket, which launched every Apollo moon mission.
‘no holiday’ Archive
January 9
Geek events to celebrate on January 9: 1793 – French inventor and aviation pioneer Jean-Pierre Blanchard becomes the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States. I doubt he could have predicted his invention would lead to aviation geekery such as the Balloon Federation of America or the British Balloon and Airship […]
January 8
January 8 birthdays of geeky note: 1923 – Joseph Weizenbaum, German-American author, computer scientist and leading critic of Artificial Intelligence (d. March 5, 2008). He published a natural language processing program in 1966 called ELIZA that became the forerunner of AI technology. Author of Computer Power and Human Reason and subject of the documentary film […]
January 7
Geek events to celebrate on January 7: 1610 – Galileo Galilei observes the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time. He named them and in turn the four are called the Galilean moons. January 7 birthdays of geeky note: 1502 – Pope Gregory XIII (d. 1585). The Gregorian calendar is named after him […]
January 5
Geek events to celebrate on January 5: 1896 – An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Roentgen has discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays 1940 – FM radio is demonstrated to the Federal Communications Commission for the first time. 1972 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a Space Shuttle program. […]
January 4
Geek events to celebrate on January 4: 1958 – Sputnik 1 falls to Earth from its orbit. 1959 – Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon. January 4 birthdays of geeky note: 1643 – Sir Isaac Newton, English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian and natural philosopher (d. March 31, […]
January 3
Geek events to celebrate on January 4: 1496 – Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine. 1957 – The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch. 1977 – Apple Computer is incorporated. 1999 – The Mars Polar Lander is launched. January 3 birthdays of geeky note: 1892 – J.R.R. Tolkien, father of modern […]
January 2
Geek events to celebrate on January 2: 1860 – A new small planet named Vulcan is hypothesized to exist in orbit between the Mercury and the sun. The planet’s existence was questioned until it was finally negated in 1915 by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Vulcan was later chosen as the fictional home planet for […]