Happy birthday, internets!

From an article by Ruth Brown @ Crikey.com.au .....

"Today is the internet’s 40th birthday. Well, maybe: 2 September marks 40 years since a bunch of geeks gathered in a lab at UCLA and successfully sent some data between two primitive computers through a five-metre cable. Some will probably celebrate the date of 29 October the same year, when the US Department of Defence hooked up the first two nodes of the ARPANET and the Stanford Research Institute."

.... keep reading at crikey.com.au/../happy-birthday-internets


pic from Crikey

40th anniversary, Apollo 11 moon landing.

Well it's 40 years today since the moon landing, and yours truly was one of the millions across the world, who watched this event on TV in glorious black and white (at age 7).

It was big, so big in fact that the only televised event with more of a world wide impact since was the 9/11 World Trade Center Attacks in 2001. As big as this was however, public interest was fickle and moved on quickly, to the point that by the following year (1970) I remember there were those that initially thought the Apollo 13 drama was just NASA publicity stunt (which of course it wasn't).

It seems however suspicion of NASA is enduring, as there is still a crackpot minority that choose to believe the moon landings were faked, in spite of the fact that these conspiracy theories have been thoroughly debunked. In 2004 the US announced plans for a manned return to the moon by 2020. It will be interesting to see if these plans become reality, some 51 years after the original landing.