The first Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee sometime between December 1865 and August 1866 by six former members of the Confederate army. Its original purpose was to be a fraternal social club with plenty of parody thrown into the initiation ceremonies. However, members began to take the organization seriously…
Seems as if Egyptians were casting icosahedra dice long before D&D came into existence. This die is a twenty-face die dating between 304 and 30 B.C. It is held in the The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The piece was formerly in the collection of Reverend Chauncey Murch (died 1907) who obtained the d20 between 1883…
Here’s a picture of Albert Einstein taken in 1882. He was a remarkably mature three-year old. My guess is he’s looking at the camera calculating the focal distance and running a table of apertures in his head in order to determine the correct shutter speed for the perfect shot.
MIT pranks, or “hacks” as they are known in MIT lore, showcase MIT students’ scientific knowledge, mechanical engineering skills, anti-authoritarian whimsy, and geeky sense of humor. The tradition dates back to the 1870’s when students sprinkled iodide of nitrogen over the grounds of a military drill field causing mini explosions when fellow classmates conducted their…
Donkey Kong was released by Nintendo in 1981. In the game, Jumpman (renamed Mario soon later) must rescue a damsel in distress, Lady (now named Pauline) from a giant ape named Donkey Kong. The hero and ape later became two of Nintendo’s most popular characters.
Galaxian was developed by Namco in 1979 and was released in the United States in 1980. It was designed to be an improved version of the popular Space Invaders game and went on to become one of the most popular games during the golden age of arcade video games.
Dig Dug was a arcade video game produced by Namco in 1982. The objective of Dig Dug is to eliminate underground-dwelling monsters by inflating them until they pop, or by dropping rocks on them.
Phoenix was a arcade video game developed by Amstar Electronics in 1980. It featured the typical (for the day) top-down fixed shooter similar to Space Invaders. It, along with Galaxian, was one of the first color games and was noted as being the first video game to feature a “boss” character presented in a separate game challenge.…
Williams Defender came out in 1980 with over 60,000 game cabinets made When it came out people thought that it was no possible to pass 70k, later folks would be turning the game over and experiencing the “no die” mode.
