Day: October 29, 1955

Categories
Doctor Who Television

Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet, Part 4

  • October 29, 1966

Doctor WhoThe 134th episode of Doctor Who airs on the BBC. This concludes the first story to feature the Cybermen, and is the first episode in the show’s history in which the Doctor regenerates. The new Doctor, Patrick Troughton, is glimpsed briefly at the end of the episode.

In perhaps the most painful example of episode wiping in the show’s history, this episode is now missing from the BBC’s archives, though the scene of the Doctor’s first regeneration has since been recovered.

More about Doctor Who in the LogBook
Order VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store

Categories
Video Games

Radar Scope

  • October 29, 1980

Radar ScopeHaving just opened up its American branch, Japanese video game manufacturer Nintendo introduces its first arcade game, the virtually-unknown space shooter Radar Scope. The game fails to make a splash, and many of the Radar Scope cabinets in Nintendo’s warehouse are later converted into their next (and far more profitable) game, which involves a plumber saving a woman from a gorilla.

More about Radar Scope in Phosphor Dot Fossils

Categories
Video Games

Electronic Games Magazine

  • October 29, 1981

Electronic GamesReese Communications publishes the first issue – and, if it doesn’t sell well, likely the only issue – of Electronic Games Magazine, the first periodical devoted to video games and other electronic forms of entertainment. Video Magazine columnists Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz (operating under the pseudonym Frank Laney Jr. in order to protect his more “serious” writing work) propose the magazine after a string of successful video-game-focused issues of Video, and, with Katz’ wife Joyce Worley joining in the writing and editing duties, become the first video game journalists, inventing such now-common terms as “playfield”, “screenshot”, and “Easter egg”. Though the first issue could have been a one-off experiment, the magazine goes monthly by the end of spring 1982.

Categories
Atari VCS Video Games

Fast Food

  • October 29, 1982

Cosmic CreepsTelesys releases the video game cartridge Fast Food for the Atari 2600 home video game system, just in time for the Christmas buying season. A glut of new releases for the 2600 by the end of the year, many from third-party companies like Telesys, causes some consumer confusion which has unexpected consequences for the entire industry.

More about Telesys in Phosphor Dot Fossils

Categories
Television

Hammer House Of Mystery And Suspense: Paint Me A Murder

  • October 29, 1984

Hammer House Of Mystery And SuspenseThe sixth episode of the Hammer Studios-produced horror anthology series Hammer House Of Mystery And Suspense airs on ITV; the series will be shown later in the U.S. under the title Fox Mystery Theatre. Michelle Phillips (Knots Landing) and W. Morgan Sheppard (Max Headroom) guest star.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could help change that.

Categories
Galileo Uncrewed Spaceflight

Galileo gawks at Gaspra

  • October 29, 1991

GaspraNASA/JPL’s Galileo space probe, looping repeatedly through the inner solar system to gain a speed boost from a series of gravity assists from Earth and Venus, passes the asteroid 951 Gaspra, the first human-made spacecraft to visit such a body. Where humanity’s previous knowledge of asteroids was limited at best, Galileo’s findings are startling, with photos showing a small rocky body pummeled by ancient impacts, almost to the point of shattering it. Also discovered is a magnetic field generated by the core of the asteroid itself, something planetary scientists did not expect to find at all. Galileo will loop back toward Earth, picking up a critical speed boost to Jupiter from one last flyby of its home planet.

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight Discovery Space Shuttle

STS-95: John Glenn returns to space

  • October 29, 1998

Space ShuttleThe first American to orbit Earth returns to orbit aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. During a ten-day mission with the SPACEHAB laboratory module installed in the cargo bay, the crew conducts medical experiments with Mercury astronaut John Glenn, comparing his results against the results of identical experiments performed with one of his crewmates, to determine the effect of weightlessness on older space travelers. At the age of 77, Glenn is the world’s oldest space traveler (and is still a sitting member of the U.S. Senate at the time of his flight). Discovery’s crew on her 25th flight is Commander Curtis Brown, Pilot Steven Lindsey, mission specialists Scott Parazynski, Stephen Robinson and Pedro Duque, and payload specialists Chiaki Mukai and John Glenn.