Tag: History

History of Nintendo

Hiroshi Yamauchi, who ran Nintendo for more than 50 years, passed away this morning. He played a great role in bringing the game consul to the American marketing and in the creation of Super Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda. To take a look back at his life and his role in the company, here is an overview of the history of Nintendo (Part I), first published in Uncle John’s Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader.

History of NintendoNO SALE

Back in 1981, Atari was the world leader in video games. In 1983 Nintendo offered to sell Atari the licenses to their Famicom game system, but they couldn’t come to an agreement, so Nintendo decided to go it alone.

They renamed the American version the Advanced Video System (AVS) and in January 1985, introduced it at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, one of the largest such trade shows in the world.

They didn’t get a single order.

Nintendo’s problem wasn’t so much that the AVS was a bad system, but more that the American home video game industry was struggling. After several years of impressive growth, in 1983 sales of video game consoles and cartridges suddenly collapsed without warning. Video game manufacturers, caught completely off guard, lost hundreds of millions of dollars as inventory piled up in warehouses, never to find a buyer. Atari’s loss of $536 million prompted Warner Communications to sell the company in 1984.

Mattel sold off its version, Intellivision, the same year and shut down their entire video game division. Many other companies went out of business.

Poet James McIntyre: The Chaucer of Cheese

Raise your hand if you like cheese! Wow…if we are counting correctly, that’s millions and millions of people. Poet James McIntyre loved cheese. Here is his story, as published in Uncle John’s Funniest Ever Bathroom Reader.

The Chaucer of Cheese

Have you heard of one James McIntyre?
His unusual verses set the world afire.
Think of this while eating your Cheerios:
In the 1800s, he was the bard of southwestern Ontario. His work is published this day still,
If you read his poems, they’ll make you ill.

The Chaucer of Cheese: Poet James McIntyreABARD IS BORN

James McIntyre (1827–1906), known to his admirers as the “Chaucer of Cheese,” was born in the Scottish village of Forres. He moved to Canada when he was 14 and lived most of his life in Ingersoll, a small town in Ontario, where he worked as a furniture and coffin maker. But what earned him his reputation was his hobby—writing poetry. McIntyre wrote poems on a variety of topics: He described Ontario towns, saluted his favorite authors, and sang the praises of farming and country life. He even composed tributes to his furniture.

The “Hidden Toilet” at Drum Castle

Uncle John’s ancestral homeland might just be Scotland. Check out the recently discovered Drum castle toilet.

Hidden Drum Castle ToiletToilets were developed around the world, independently, thousands of years ago, but archaeologists keep finding older and older prototypes in Scotland. One of the oldest was found by archaeologists in the 1850s at Skara Brae, an ancient settlement on Mainland, the largest of the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland. Several stone huts among the ruins contained drains that extended outside their walls. Historians believe that the huts, which date back to 3,000 BC, were one of the first, if not the first, indoor bathrooms on Earth.

Happy Birthday California!

Happy birthday California (163 years old today!). Here are some amazing California facts from Uncle John’s Plunges into California.

 

16 CALIFORNIA EXTREMES

How much do you know about California’s highest, lowest, oldest, largest, and smallest stuff?

Happy Birthday CaliforniaTALLEST LIVING THING: Hyperion, a 379-foot Sequoia (California redwood) tree located in the Redwood National Park near Eureka. Hyperion’s location in the park is kept secret to prevent it from being damaged by tourists.

SMALLEST MOUNTAIN RANGE: The Sutter Butte Mountain Range near Yuba City. The buttes are a circular volcanic outcropping just 10 miles in diameter.

OLDEST LIVING TREE IN NORTH AMERICA: A 4,842- year-old bristlecone pine in Inyo National Forest outside Bishop.

Named Methuselah (after the oldest person whose age is referenced in the Bible), this pine was a seedling during the Bronze Age, when the Pyramids were going up in Egypt.

LARGEST LIVING TREE: General Sherman, a giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park, east of Visalia. Named for Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, this tree weighs more than 2 million pounds, is 275 feet tall, and is the largest tree on earth when measured by its estimated volume of 52,513 cubic feet.

BIGGEST SOLITARY BOULDER: Giant Rock in Landers in the Mojave Desert. At about seven stories high, it weighs more than 23,000 tons.

LONGEST RUNWAY: At Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. It’s 7.5 miles long, and the first space shuttle landed there.

WORLD’S TALLEST ONE-PIECE TOTEM POLE: Built in 1962, the brightly painted 160-foot-tall pole in the McKinleyville Shopping Center was designed by Ernest Pierson, who carved it from a single 500-year-old redwood.

OLDEST CONCRETE BRIDGE STILL IN USE: Fernbridge in Humboldt County. Built in 1911 of reinforced concrete, it crosses the Eel River and is 1,450 feet long.

HIGHEST LANDING PAD ON A BUILDING: The U.S. Bank Tower in downtown L.A. is 1,018 feet high, making it the world’s tallest building with a helipad on the roof. It’s also America’s tallest building west of Chicago.

NORTH AMERICA’S BEST VIEW OF THE WORLD: The 3,849-foot summit of Mt. Diablo in Contra Costa County. It reveals more of the earth’s surface than any other peak in the world, except Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa. Mt. Diablo looks west to the Farallon Islands in the Pacific, east to the Sierra Nevada mountain range, south to the Santa Cruz Mountains, and north to the Cascades.

NORTH AMERICA’S HIGHEST CONCENTRATION OF LAVA TUBE CAVES: Lava Beds National Monument near Tulelake.

Will the Real J.D. Salinger Please Stand Up?

The world’s most reclusive author is releasing a bunch of new books.
Can you figure out which ones they are?

j.d. salinger catcher in the ryeCatcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger was as famous for being a recluse who never published much after his famous 1951 novel as he was for that seminal book. After Salinger died at age 91 in 2010, there was wide speculation that if he’d been writing during all those years holed up in his house in New Hampshire, scores of books might finally see the light of day. And now, they are. Salinger’s estate has been settled, and it includes detailed instructions regarding how he wanted five completely unseen books to be released.

Fans have wondered for years what those books might be, and Uncle John is no exception. In Fake Facts, our book of completely made-up and silly trivia that sounds true but isn’t, we included a piece about imaginary lost works of Salinger called “The Salinger Vault.” Can you guess which of the following are books from the real Salinger vault that will soon be published …and which came from the phony Salinger vault in Fake Facts?

Taking it to the Grave

Undertakers will honor most funeral requests (as long as they’re legal). Check out these strange things people are buried with.

Strange Things People Are Buried WithRECLINER. Reuben John Smith (d. 1899) liked to relax in life, so he asked that his eternal resting place be a leather recliner and that a checkerboard be placed in his lap. (Smith also asked to be buried with a key to his tomb in case the undertakers made a mistake.)

WHISTLE. In To Have and Have Not (1944), Lauren Bacall delivers a famous line to real-life future husband Humphrey Bogart: “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together…and blow.” After Bogart was cremated, Bacall put a golden whistle in the urn with his ashes.

PIPE AND TOBACCO. Sixteenth-century explorer Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with popularizing tobacco smoking in England, a habit he picked up on his travels to the New World. His last request before being executed for treason in 1618: one final smoke. Raleigh’s will provided for “ten pounds of tobacco, and two pipes” for any smoker who attended his funeral, and requested that he be buried with his favorite pipe and some tobacco, in a coffin lined with wood from his cigar boxes.

Musical Word Origins

Because we always wanted to know where the word “music” came from. Here are some musical word origins.

musical word originsDRUM. This word comes from the Middle Dutch term tromme, which is believed to be onomotopaeic in origin. It became the English drum, as a noun, in the early 1500s.

PSALM. The old Greek verb psallein meant “to pluck a stringed instrument.” That became psalmos, which meant something along the lines of “the sound of a harp,” and then came to mean a song, especially a sacred song of the Jewish tradition, as in the psalms of King David.

DOO-WOP. This music style, begun in the 1950s and characterized by rich vocal harmonies, was named for the nonsense syllables sung behind the lead. First song that actually had the phrase “doowop” in it: “When You Dance,” a 1955 hit by the Turbans. It didn’t become an official word, however, until 1969.

Random Origins: The Flashlight, 911 Call System, and the Slurpee

Once again Uncle John answers the question: Where does all this stuff come from?

THE FLASHLIGHT

radom origins FlashlightA few years after D-cell batteries were invented in 1896 came the first battery-powered hand lights. The first one— called the “Electrical Hand Torch”—was invented by American Conrad Hubert. Because early batteries were weak and the contacts faulty, the lights flashed a lot, hence the name “flashlight.”

Even after the batteries and contacts were improved, the name stuck. (In the U.K., flashlights are still referred to as “torches.”)

THE 911 EMERGENCY CALL SYSTEM

random origins 911 emergency systemThe 999 emergency phone number was set up in England after a 1937 house fire killed five people. It wasn’t until 1967 that the FCC and AT&T worked together to create the system in the United States. They chose “911” because “999” took too long to dial on a rotary phone. But AT&T was taking a long time to implement the system, so Bob Gallagher, president of the Alabama Telephone Company, ordered his plant manager, Robert Fitzgerald, to set up the nation’s first 911 service in Haleyville, Alabama. By the mid-1970s, most of the U.S. could dial 911.

Odd Holiday: Chinese Valentine’s Day

It’s almost August 13: Have you bought your Magpie Festival face powder yet?

Chinese Valentine's DayThe Western holiday of Valentine’s Day has its roots in a martyred Catholic priest who performed marriages when they were illegal. It also incorporates elements of Roman mythology, particularly Cupid, the Roman god of love.

China operates from different historical and mythological traditions, so it celebrates Chinese Valentine’s Day in a completely different way and at a completely different time. Instead of February 14, China has the Qixi Festival, or the Magpie Festival, celebrated in the summer, and this year it’s on August 13.

A Brand New State? The 51st State

There are fifty nifty United States…but who might be the 51st state? We don’t know, of course, but here are some real possibilities.

51st statePuerto Rico? Puerto Rico sends a representative to Congress (although they don’t get to vote, and its residents pay federal income tax and may join the U.S. Armed Forces. Puerto Ricans are classified as U.S. citizens, but cannot vote in a presidential election. Reason: The island is a U.S. territory, not a state. At least not yet. In 2012, the island held a referendum regarding statehood. A whopping 61 percent of voters said they were in favor of becoming the 51st state, and legislation was drawn up and sent to President Obama and Congress in May 2013.

The Last Telegram

Here at the BRI we love to write about technology that was once cutting-edge,
and has now become obsolete and vanished from the scene. But we
seldom get an opportunity to witness the actual departure.

Last TelegramIn less than a week, the last telegram will be sent. The telegraph was the world’s first mass communication tool. First developed in the 1840s, sending series of electric pulses in Morse code (different combinations of pulses that corresponded to letters of the alphabet) along long stretches of electrical wire made instant communication a reality. The first telegram, sent on May 24, 1844, read, “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT?”

What’s On Tap? 5000-Year-Old Beer Recipe

Beer has been around for centuries—lots of world cultures have developed some variation on fermented grain and water. But the brews our distant forefathers drank were probably a lot different than the ones we drink now.

5000-year-old beer recipeWhile the ale that was enjoyed centuries before the birth of Julius Caesar may have been tastier than other beverage choices of the day, it was still incredibly sour, with a flavor closer to vinegar than Hefeweizen. That’s according to a team of University of Chicago archaeologists and brewers from the Great Lakes Brewing Company. Using a 5,000-year-old beer recipe outlined in “Hymn to Ninkasi,” an ode to the Sumerian goddess of beer, they brewed up a batch of era-appropriate beer. To help ensure authenticity, they even used recreations of ancient wooden tools and ceramic fermentation pots based on artifacts found in Iraq in the 1930s, malted the barley on a roof, and hired a baker in Cleveland to prepare the bappir (“beer bread”) they used as the source of their yeast. And they heated the beer during the brewing process the old fashioned way: over a manure-fueled fire.

Word Origins: Meet Your New Words

Dictionary New WordsThe Oxford English Dictionary is the de facto official record of the English language. Like every living language, English is constantly evolving, with new words seemingly entering the vernacular everyday—most of them slang phrases, computer and Internet terms, or portmanteaus, which are new words combined out two or more existing words.

Whenever the OED is updated, usually each June, editors announce the newest words added to the 800,000 word-plus dictionary. They’re not super-new—they’re generally words that have been around for about 10 years and are still common. This year, OED editors added more than 1,200 new words to the dictionary, and, by extension, officially to English. Here are some notable additions.

My Body Lies Over the Ocean: Let’s Dig Up Jimmy Hoffa (Again)

Jimmy HoffaJimmy Hoffa was a well-known union leader in the 1960s and ’70s, but he’s far more famous for being a missing person (and maybe for his ties to organized crime). On July 30, 1975, Hoffa had dinner at the Raleigh House Restaurant in suburban Detroit. Then he completely disappeared. After no trace of him showed up for seven years, he was declared legally dead in 1982. But nearly 40 years later, federal agents—and conspiracy theories—are still looking for him. Here’s a brief timeline of the very long search.

Life After Death: Finding Out Who Is Inside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

tomb of the unknown soldierThe Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is both a moving tribute to those who have died in American wars and a reminder of how war steals human dignity. An unidentified soldier from each of the major American conflicts of the 20th century have been laid to rest in the monument at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Represented are World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

The remains of the Vietnam War veteran were placed in the Tomb on Memorial Day 1984 in a ceremony attended by President Reagan, who awarded the unidentified soldier a posthumous Medal of Honor. But CBS News reporter Vince Gonzalez thought it would be more honorable to find out the unknown soldier’s identity of the latest unknown.

Giant Rubber Duck News: Power to the People

In May, we told you about a public art event very close to our hearts here at the BRI: Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s unveiling of a 54-foot-tall giant rubber duck in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor. It looks just like the rubber ducky seen on the covers of all of our books…only much, much bigger. On June 4, 2013, the duck made news in China—and around the world—again.

June 4th is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In 1989, thousands of protestors occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, protesting China’s Communist government. The government responded by sending in 300,000 troops to quell the protests. Six thousand protestors were killed. The tragedy spawned a lasting, powerful image: a single, Chinese man, standing in front of a row of tanks.

In China, publicly commemorating the massacre (officially known as “The June 4th Incident”) is forbidden, so many people protest online. But criticizing the government online is also illegal in China. So what do protesters do? This year they made pictures.

Giant Rubber Duck ChinaOne person recreated the famous photo (the original of which is illegal to distribute in China) entirely with Lego blocks. Another person doctored the photo and replaced the tanks with images of the Giant Floating Duck.

Once the Internet-regulating authorities figured out what was going on, the Giant Floating Duck-as-tank photo was banned. Nevertheless, the duck is now a symbol of quiet protest in China.

The real duck, fully inflated, is scheduled to arrive in Pittsburgh in September.

A Weird But Great App: No More Kissin’ Cousins in Iceland

iceland cousins appThe United States is a melting pot. More than 300 million people live here, and most of us are either immigrants from another nation or the descendants of immigrants who came here within the last 200 years or so, from all over the world. The tiny European island of nation of Iceland is not quite so diverse. Distant and remote from mainland Europe, the country hasn’t expanded its genetic pool much over the last millennium. Result: All 300,000-odd residents of Iceland are related to each other.

The government of Iceland has intricately detailed its national genealogy, setting up a database that lists more than 720,000 people born in Iceland, including 95 percent of everyone born there since 1703, but going back 1,200 years. For example, everyone in Iceland—everyone—is related to a man named Jon Arason, who died in 1550.

With everyone related, that makes dating a little awkward—nobody wants to date their first cousin. Your eighth cousin? Well, that might be okay, but first cousin? Gross. That’s why an Icelandic computer programmer named Arnar Freyr Aoalsteinsson developed an app called IslendingaApp. Essentially an interactive version if the Icelandic genealogical registry, two people who have the app tap their phones together, and the app will tell them how closely they’re related. The app’s slogan: “bump the app before you bump in bed.”

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