| Thursday, October 29, 2009 |
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Answer of the DayWhen was the Internet born? On this date in 1969, the first host-to-host message was sent from professor Leonard Kleinrock's lab at UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute over the ARPANet, the forerunner of the Internet. The ARPANet was made up of Interface Message Processors at those two sites, with two more sites added a short time later, at UCSB and the University of Utah. The major innovation was a distributed network of computers that had no single point of failure. If one computer went down, the network overall still worked. By 1971, the first email program was being used and two years later, the ARPANet went international, when connections were made to Britain and Norway. The @ symbol was adopted in 1972 and a year later 75 percent of ARPANet traffic was email.
Quote"The day I made that statement about inventing the internet, I was tired because I'd been up all night inventing the camcorder."
Word of the dayscaramouch
A stock character in commedia dell'arte and pantomime, depicted as a boastful coward or buffoon.
This week: words you wouldn't want to be called.
Today's History
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| John Glenn |
- Republic of Turkey: was established when forces led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, "the father of modern Turkey," wrested control from the Ottoman Empire (1923)
- Black Tuesday: the US stock market crashed and the Great Depression began (1929)
- Star of India: giant star sapphire was stolen, along with other fabulous gems, from the American Museum of Natural History (1964)
- John Glenn: the first American in orbit took flight aboard the Discovery shuttle, becoming, at 77, the oldest person to visit space (1998)
Today's Birthdays
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| Melba Moore |
- James Boswell (1740-1795): biographer of Samuel Johnson; plus, writer Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)
- Melba Moore (64): R&B singer; musician Peter Green (63) also celebrates his birthday today
- Dan Castellaneta (52): the voice of Homer Simpson; other performers who share this birth date include Fanny Brice (1892-1951), Richard Dreyfuss (62), Kate Jackson (61), Rufus Sewell and Joely Fisher (both 42), Winona Ryder (38), Tracee Ellis Ross and Gabrielle Union (both 37), Milena Govich (33) and Brendan Fehr (32)
