On this day in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to enter outer space and orbit our planet. Tonight, science and space fans worldwide celebrate this milestone of human exploration with Yuri’s Night. Mika McKinnon tells us more about the man, his voyage, and the ways we honor him today.
February 1st, 1994, was the date of birth for Green Day’s Dookie, a 14-track, sub-40-minute bundle of blistering, hook-heavy joy. In the 20 years that it’s been blaring from alternative radio stations, Discmans, and warbling car stereos, it helped define the sound of the 1990s, and it’s still steering the music we listen to today.
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Watch the Mac evolve over the the course of 30 years.
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Look around at the people on a train, at a bus stop, or in an airport. Chances are, lots of them are playing some kind of game on their smartphones. But in any crowd, you’ll likely see someone poring over a different pocket diversion — the crossword puzzle, still going strong today on its 100th birthday. It’s been a fascinating century.
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On November 2nd, 1983, the world’s first minivan rolled off of Chrysler’s assembly line. It was the vehicle that saved Chrysler from financial doom — and in the process, shaped the automotive landscape for thirty years to come.
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A rogue computer program broke loose and spread uncontrollably. By the end of its rampage, the virus conquered a full ten percent of the world’s internet-connected machines. An unfathomable 6,000 computers had crashed.
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Today is the anniversary of brave Felix Baumgartner’s space jump. His heart was racing at 185 beats per minute when he jumped from an altitude of 127,852 feet, then started to spin at 60 revolutions per minute and kept spinning for 13 seconds after jumping, reaching a maximum vertical speed of Mach 1.25. An incredible feat.
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Forget the MP3 player, or even the Walkman — the real instigator of the portable audio revolution is the compact cassette, which just marked its 50th birthday. Philips formally launched the format on September 13th, 1963, bringing recorded sound to a truly portable (and more accessible) form factor. The technology didn’t just kickstart the markets for media players, field recorders and boomboxes; it led to bootlegs, mixtapes and other ways to shake up the audio status quo. The cassette has largely disappeared outside of nostalgic reissues and transforming robot toys, but its effects are still visible after half a century of progress.
[Image credit: Tony Unruh, Flickr]
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Storage
Source: Philips
It’s hard to believe August 5th marks Curiosity’s first year on Mars — it seems like only yesterday that we were on tenterhooks during the rover’s precarious landing on the red planet. Within that time, it hasn’t only fulfilled its initial mission of finding evidence of extraterrestrial water, but it has also discovered traces of carbon-based materials and captured an astounding number of Mars close-ups. To celebrate everything Curiosity’s done thus far, NASA JPL will broadcast its first anniversary event via Ustream on August 6th, 10:45AM EDT.
The program kicks off with a series of pre-recorded interviews with the mission’s team, but a live stream with NASA officials and the crew aboard the ISS will follow. Folks itching to pick their brains can ask them questions in advance via Curiosity’s Twitter or Google+ accounts, or during the event by using the #askNASA hashtag. Even if you’re not a fan of the rover, you might still want to tune in — NASA will also be chatting about its preparations for the first human mission to Mars and to an asteroid.
Filed under: Misc
Source: NASA (Twitter), (Ustream), Space
Without Nintendo’s Famicom there would be no NES. And without the NES, chances are, the video game industry as we know it would never have existed. It’s hard to appreciate history while you’re living it, but thirty years ago today on July 15, 1983, Nintendo’s Japan-only Family Computer debuted and set off a domino effect that would make video games a global, billion-dollar industry and rank Nintendo as synonymous with gaming itself. Rather than look back with the rosy tint we have for the NES’ early days, Ars Technica‘s gone the informed route to celebrate the system’s anniversary. From a condensed account of the console’s origins (i.e., failed Atari distribution deal, revised prototypes, soft US launch in 1985) to a walkthrough of the silicon circuitry and hardware add-ons (like the Famicom Disk System and Modem) that only saw the light of day in Japan, the retrospective covers all the bases of gaming’s golden era. There’s a whole lot more Nintendo trivia packed into the retrospective (did you know the original Famicom’s controllers had inbuilt mics?), so be sure to check it out and pour one out for that famous grey box.
Lead Image: iFixit
Source: Ars Technica
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