1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (which would later become known as “spam“) is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
Earliest documented spam (although the term had not yet been coined) was a message advertising the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation computers sent by Gary Thuerk to 393 recipients on ARPANET in 1978. Rather than send a separate message to each person, which was the standard practice at the time, he had an assistant, Carl Gartley, write a single mass email. Reaction from the net community was fiercely negative, but the spam did generate some sales.
2000 – The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
Geocaching was originally similar to the 160-year-old game letterboxing, which uses clues and references to landmarks embedded in stories. Geocaching was conceived shortly after the removal of Selective Availability from the Global Positioning System on May 2, 2000, because the improved accuracy[2] of the system allowed for a small container to be specifically placed and located. The first documented placement of a GPS-located cache took place on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, Oregon. The location was posted on the Usenet newsgroup sci.geo.satellite-nav as 45°17.460′N 122°24.800′W. By May 6, 2000, it had been found twice and logged once (by Mike Teague of Vancouver, Washington). According to Dave Ulmer’s message, this cache was a black plastic bucket that was partially buried and contained software, videos, books, food, money, and a slingshot. A geocache and plaque called the Original Stash Tribute Plaque now sit at the site.
The activity was originally referred to as GPS stash hunt or gpsstashing. This was changed shortly after the original hide when it was suggested in the gpsstash eGroup that “stash” could have negative connotations and the term geocaching was adopted.
Over time, a variety of different hide-and-seek-type activities have been created or abandoned, so that “geocaching” now may refer to hiding and seeking containers, or locations or information without containers.
2012 – Adafruit hits 500K YouTube views!
Adafruit hit 500,000 YouTube views back in 2012 – today we are at over 26 million! Check out our YouTube Channel here.
2015 – “We are what we celebrate” – May 2015 magazine covers (good news!) @smithmegan @WhiteHouseOSTP @marissamayer
Each month we try and take a photo of what’s on the cover of magazines in our “We are what we celebrate” series of posts. Most of the time, it’s not so good other times it’s a little better. This month… progress!