In the tradition of great dynamic duos, City of Heroes implemented a feature where superhero characters could recruit a sidekick (or “lackey” if they are a supervillain) who benefits from combat and level bonuses provided he stays within a certain distance of his mentor. This allows casual or inexperienced players to team up with veterans and enjoy the game without having to grind their way up to high levels. Guinness World Records Gamers’ Edition 2009.

Jack Kilby (US), together with Robert Noyce (US) discovered that large numbers of transistors and their connections could be etched onto a piece of silicon. Kilby went on to conceive and patent the microchip in 1958, less than a year of joining as a researcher with Texas Instruments. Kilby continued refining his invention, producing the world’s first pocket calculator, the ‘Poketronic’. Without Kilby’s invention, no personal computer, fax machine, cellular phone, satellite television or any mass communication system would exist.  

The first modern trading card game, Magic: The Gathering, was set loose upon the world on 5 August 1993. Created by Professor Richard Garfield and published by Wizards of the Coast, Inc, Magic: The Gathering can be said to be the origin, indeed the very Genesis, of TCGs as we know them. The game, which remains enormously popular, combines the excitement of cards with the thrill of trading and collecting. Players engage in mortal combat to reduce their opponent’s score from 20 to 0 with Continue reading →

Supercentenarians are people who have attained an age greater than 110. Mary P Romero Zielke Cota (USA, b.1870) died in 1982 aged 112 years 17 days; her daughter, Rosabell Zielke Champion Fenstermaker (USA, b. 1893), was equally long-lived and died in 2005 aged 111 years 344 days.

The earliest internal combustion-engined motorized bicycle was a wooden-framed machine built at Bad Cannstatt, Germany between October-November 1885 by Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) and first ridden by Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929). It had a top speed of 19 km/h (12 mph) and developed 0.37 kW (0.5 hp) from its single-cylinder 264cc four-stroke engine at 700 rpm. Known as the `Einspur’, it was lost in a fire in 1903.

The first run and gun game to use characters from a movie was Rambo: First Blood Part II on the SEGA Master System. The game was originally released in Japan under the title Ashura and had nothing to do with Sylvester Stallone’s action movie. When SEGA released the title in America, it licensed the movie brand and swapped the Asian lead character for a Stallone sprite. In Europe, the game was released in its original form as Secret Command,because a Rambo game was already being Continue reading →

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (USA, 1937) was the first movie with an official soundtrack.

Steven Spielberg (USA) and Electronic Arts signed a long-term deal in October 2005 to jointly create three new originalvideo-game franchises. Boom Blox is the first of these. There are currently no details on the other two planned franchises. Although EA’s Boom Blox wascreated in collaboration with Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg, it wasn’t the esteemed film-maker’s first foray into game development. That honour falls to The Dig, released by LucasArts in 1995, which was based on an original story idea by Spielberg and credits him Continue reading →

On 23 November 2006, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, a retired member of the Russian security services (FSB), died from radiation poisoning in London, UK, becoming the first known victim of lethal Polonium 210-induced acute radiation syndrome. Despite investigations the murder case remains unresolved.

In 1972, Rick Rashid and Gene Ball wrote the first networked multiplayer space battle game called Alto Trek, based on Star Trek.