Well hello there! It's The Nerd's Almanac for Friday, August 12, 2011.
It's the peak of the Perseids meteor shower, so put down that gadget and get outside! Oh what, you've got Google Sky Map? Well fine, then. Grab your gadget and get outside!
Gazing back into history, it was on this date in 1977 that the space shuttle Enterprise had its first free flight, separated from its carrier aircraft. The Enterprise was built for atmospheric test flights and never flew in space.
But the big news of today, as if you didn't already know, is it's the 30th birthday of the IBM PC! The model 5150 had a 4.77 MHz (yes mega) Intel 8088 and up to 256 kB (yes kilo) of memory... and this baby could run you around twenty grand!! Ouch!
Well that's The Nerd's Almanac for today. Nerds of the world, we salute you!
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseids
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Enterprise
No comments:
Post a Comment