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In the 1930s, Swiss pharmacologist, Albert Hofmann, worked at the Sandoz laboratory in Basel, Switzerland, to produce beneficial compounds derived from the rye fungus, ergot. Sandoz had been working on ergot derivatives for some years, with its chemists isolating ergotamine, a drug still sometimes used for migraines today, in 1918.
Ergot had been a double-edged sword in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. It helped ease the process of childbirth and its vasoconstrictive properties reduced post-birth bleeding, though with dangerous side effects. These same properties meant that if people consumed contaminated grain, the result was sometimes widespread poisoning and death.
Hofmann was working to isolate a beneficial compound found in ergot, ergobasine, for further medical use in obstetrics. He continued working with lysergic acid compounds in search of other interesting pharmacological properties. In 1938, he produced the twenty-fifth substance in a series of lysergic acid derivatives. Its official name was lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated as LSD-25.
In the initial testing, Hofmann and his team set out to discover its effect on the uterus. Although it has a significant impact, it was only 70% as effective as ergobasine. The research report also noted the restlessness of the experimental animals while on LSD-25. This restlessness didn’t arouse any particular interest, and Hofmann moved on with his investigations.
In the years that followed, Hofmann was successful in creating other ergot-derived medications. Despite this, he could not let LSD-25 go, feeling it could have other properties that he’d missed. So, in the spring of 1943, he repeated his earlier synthesis.
In the final step of this chemical process, Hofmann got his first hint of LSD’s potency. On April 16, as he was purifying the sample, he was interrupted by unusual sensations: restlessness, a dreamlike state, and closed-eye visuals of kaleidoscopic patterns. What had caused this? He reasoned that he must have accidentally ingested some of the chemical. Due to the toxicity of ergot compounds, Hofmann ran a meticulously neat lab. So he knew it must have been a microscopic trace of LSD-25 that led to these effects. How strong was it?
On April 19, 1943, armed only with his lab journal, Hofmann decided to test this substance on himself. He settled on taking 250 micrograms, thinking that this would be barely noticeable. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Within two hours of embarking on this experiment, he was getting far more than he bargained for. Overwhelmed, disoriented, and feeling utterly out of his depth, he asked his lab assistant to bring him home. Because of the wartime restrictions on vehicle use, they journeyed through Basel by bicycle, inaugurating what would come to be known as ‘Bicycle Day’.
Once he had somehow made it home, Hofmann feared he was losing his sanity or even his life. Familiar objects in his living room, once friendly, turned into demonic, grotesque forms. Even worse were the changes Hofman perceived in himself. He became consumed by a demon. It triumphed over his will. He did not know if he had died, or gone to another world, or another time.
As he passed the peak of the experience, his sense of dread lessened. He would later recount that he began to enjoy the visuals that appeared when he closed his eyes: “Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux.” By the next day, Hofmann had recovered from his experience, aware that he’d made a momentous discovery.
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Yeah, calling me a total fuckup isn't offensive at all.
To tell the origin story of video games, we must look at the early days of computers. In the 1950s, engineers began to use rudimentary machines to design simple games to play. A big breakthrough came in 1962 when MIT student Steve Russell, along with friends, created Spacewar! This title featured controllable spaceships that had to avoid a star’s “gravity” while also engaging in battle against one another.
Though having no real commercial success (its popularity was limited to the relatively small programming community of the era), Spacewar! was so impactful that it is now in the Library of Congress. In the following decade, more innovation took place, with a preponderance of hugely popular games (and their theme songs) like Pong, Space-Invaders and Pac-Man. But it wouldn’t stop there. In this article, we’ll examine the origins of the video game industry and track its massive development. Today, it is a billion-dollar tech enterprise, providing unique experiences made even more immersive when enjoyed with gaming headsets like the Yamaha YH-G01.In 1972, North America was introduced to Pong.
While today the title may seem overly simple, at the time it was mesmerizing. The game was essentially a digital version of table tennis, with a line down the middle and two digital “paddles” on either side of the screen that the player could move up and down. (Move it fast enough and you could even put a digital spin on the pixelated ball!) Like real ping-pong, the objective was to hit the ball back and forth until you could make your opponent (which could be another person or the computer) miss.
Six years later, the alien-fighting Space Invaders was released, followed in 1980 by Pac-Man. While these games were engaging and innovative, what made them supremely popular was the invention of the video arcade. The concept of the mechanized “penny arcade” had begun in the early 20th century. But the digital video game-based arcade began to pop up in the 1970s and was a magnet for young people.
Patrons would pump quarters into their favorite video games, which were housed in tall cabinets. As such, gaming was largely a public endeavor — kids would gather around and watch a friend try and beat a high score. At around the same time, the home gaming console was gaining ground in the market. By the mid-70s, Atari® was offering gamers the chance to play their favorite titles — like Pong — in the comfort of their living room.
But that was just the beginning. When the 1980s hit, video games were peaking in popularity. In fact, there was so much money and interest in video games that the market famously oversaturated and crashed in 1983. Some even pinpoint the fall to one specific title — one that’s considered by many to be the worst video game of all time: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Its creation was rushed, pushed to release by Christmas the year of the famous Steven Spielberg film of the same name. There is even an urban legend that thousands of its unsold cartridges remain buried somewhere in New Mexico!
But with the (temporary) downfall of arcades and video games came the potential for a rebound. Enter Nintendo® with its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and its now-signature game, Super Mario Bros™, both of which were released in 1985. Gamers of today owe a great deal to the sibling Italian plumbers — Mario and Luigi — and their dedication to saving Princess Peach. NES games like Paperboy (1985), The Legend of Zelda™ (1986) and others sold like hotcakes. Nintendo released the first major handheld gaming system, Game Boy™, in 1990. Thanks to its success, the business of gaming grew immensely. Arcades were still relatively popular, but the focus was now more on home consoles and the burgeoning computer game market. With the advent of smaller yet ever more powerful “personal computers,” gamers at home were privy to titles with more advanced graphics like Wolfenstein 3D, a first-person point-of-view “shooter” game released in 1992 on CD-ROM.
Around this time, too, video game consoles rose in popularity. After NES, consoles like Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo found their ways into millions of homes, followed by the Nintendo 64 system, which featured the first-person shooter, GoldenEye 007 (1997). New video games with characters like Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) became household names. In addition, sports titles like Madden NFL ’94 (1993) and NBA Jam (1993) became prevalent. Not to be outdone, one-on-one fighting games like the bloody Mortal Kombat (1992) and Street Fighter II (1991) were fan favorites, played in arcades and at home.
Today, gamers enjoy more options as ever before. There are handheld systems much more advanced than Game Boy, such as the Nintendo Switch™, which came out in 2017. There are also myriad titles of varying skill level available to gamers via their tablets and smartphones. Offerings like Angry Birds (2009) and Candy Crush Saga (2012) have generated millions of dollars and occupied almost as many hours of players’ free time.
Those who want more bang for their buck can dive into the über-realism of Second Life or the endlessly fascinating Minecraft™series on their computers. Also available is the latest innovation from Sony: the company’s PS5 (PlayStation 5®). Even virtual reality gaming is growing, with titles like Beat Saber. Today, there are modern “open world” games that offer expansive, multi-faceted stages to navigate, and multiplayer games that give the chance for players to work in teams or compete against each another. Advanced titles like Red Dead Redemption II may even leave some speechless with their hyper-realistic details and advanced plots. No doubt about it: We’ve come a long way since Pong!
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They used to tell us this back in South Africa before we did border patrol. “Kill or be killed!”
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Black Hawk Down Country.
McDonald’s (or McDonald's Corporation) is today’s largest chain of fast food restaurants in the world. They serve hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken, French fries, soft drinks, milkshakes, and other desserts.
The first Mc Donald’s restaurant was opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald. Their father held a food stand in Monrovia, California called "The Airdrome", where he sold cheap hamburgers and orange juice. In 1940, brothers moved the restaurant to San Bernardino, California and called it "McDonald's Bar-B-Q" where they sold mostly barbeque. When they realized that most of their profits came from hamburgers they streamlined the making of hamburgers and started selling a smaller menu with just hamburgers, cheeseburgers, French fries, shakes, soft drinks, and apple pie. They also shortened their name to "McDonald's," and reopened on December 12, 1948.
In 1952 they started franchising. In 1954, Ray Kroc bought a franchise and from then McDonald’s starts its expansion. By 1958, McDonald's Corporation had 34 restaurants and by 1959 - 102. Ray Kroc bought out McDonald brothers in 1961. In 1962, McDonald's got its, today’s famous, Golden Arches logo and Ronald McDonald, a red-haired clown, appeared in 1963. McDonald’s had skillful marketing and was very fast in responding to customer demands. They experimented with new types of hamburgers constantly and some of the worked while other didn’t. Hamburger with slice of pineapple and a slice of cheese, a "hulaburger", - flopped while Big Mac (which appeared in 1968) became popular immediately and is popular even today.
In the late 1970’s began "Burger Wars". Other fast food chains, like Burger King and Wendy's, began spreading seeing their place in the market. They all maintained aggressive advertising campaigns and low prices to try and stay competitive but McDonald’s survived. They introduced McChicken, a chicken sandwich, in 1980 and Chicken McNuggets (after McChicken flopped) in 1983. Experts of that time thought that fast-food industry was saturated but McDonald’s continued its growth. They opened their 10,000th restaurant in April 1988. By the beginning of the ‘90s they had more than 3,600 outlets in 58 countries not counting those in United States (where they had some 9,000). But 1990s brought difficulties. Too many experiments flopped and advertising campaigns failed. McDonald’s had so many outlets that new started taking costumers from the old ones. Because of all that expansion in United States slowed down but McDonald’s managed to get out of the problem by introducing popular toys with meals (Teenie Beanie Babies and toys from Disney and Pixar movies). In 1998, company had the first decrease in net income since the 1965 when it went public and resulted in job cuts.
Beginning of 2000s brought more job cuts along with lawsuits and accusations of selling unhealthy food. McDonald’s restaurants were attacked around the world as symbols of globalization. Because of all of that McDonald’s concentrated on improving the image and started selling more healthy food. Today, McDonald’s is present in 119 countries where it has more than 35,000 restaurants and where more than 68 million customers are served daily.
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Pretty much a Documentary for 99.99% of the world.
I'm thinking about buying, but someone said NYC is smelly down there among the ants.
I'm thinking about buying, but someone said NYC is smelly down there among the ants.
Pokémon is a global phenomenon. With merchandise in the forms of trading cards, clothing, and plushies, as well as mobile apps, anime, manga, and food (yes, even food), the franchise is virtually everywhere these days. Sitting comfortably at the top of the list of highest-grossing media franchises of all time and at second place (behind Mario, of course) on the list of best-selling video games of all time, it’s become apparent that these cute pocket monsters are here to stay. Hell, Pikachu’s ears and cheeks have become just as recognizable as Disney’s Mickey Mouse ears, so yeah—Pokémon is that iconic. But, what is now considered a pop culture mainstay wasn’t always the case.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Pocket Monsters: Red & Green, Game Freak and Nintendo have released New Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl (a remake of the 2006’s Pokémon Diamond and Pearl)for the Nintendo Switch. So, to celebrate their celebration, we’re taking it back to the ’90s—the beginning of our Pokémon adventure—as we run down the history of the making of Pocket Monsters: Red and Green, and how it all began just 25 years ago.
Long before the company had evolved into an unstoppable Pokémon-churning behemoth, Game Freak started as a humble fan made gaming magazine. Satoshi Tajiri founded, crafted, hand-wrote, and edited the fanzine during the early 80s. From about 1981 to 1986, the fanzine simultaneously served as Tajiri’s love letter to video games out around that time and a strategy guide to accompany those games.
As faith would have it, Ken Sugimori, best known as the character and art designer for the Pokémon franchise, would find a copy of the fanzine in a local dojinshi shop and contact Tajiri with an interest in becoming an illustrator for the fanzine. The last piece of the Game Freak puzzle was Junichi Masuda. Masuda was approached by Tajiri in 1989, who asked if he wanted to join Game Freak as a composer. Around the same time, Masuda worked in a corporate office job and was looking to get away from that type of work. Masuda agreed to Tajiri’s offer and became one of the three founding members of the gaming company. The three men would turn Game Freak (the fanzine) into Game Freak (the company) in 1989. “Our conclusion was,” Tajiri said to TIME magazine in a 1999 interview, “there weren’t too many good-quality games, so let’s make our own.” The inception of Pokémon came shortly after that.
Tajiri first came up with the idea of Pokémon towards the beginning of 1990. Back then, though, it wasn’t called Pokémon; it was referred to as Capsule Monsters. Tajiri came up with the original name to pay homage to gashapon machines, a variety of Japanese vending machine-dispensed capsule toys. He couldn’t get the name trademarked, so he changed it to CapuMon for a brief time and finally landed on Pocket Monsters—known in the west as Pokémon, of course! Inspired by his childhood love of insect and fish collecting in his hometown of Machida, Tokyo, Tajiri wanted to capture the magic he felt as a bug-obsessed youth and replicate that feeling in a video game. He also found inspiration in the GameBoy’s ability to communicate with other GameBoys via link cable; it reminded him of his bug trading and collecting days harkening back to his youth.
As envisioned by Tajiri, Pocket Monsters: Red and Green was meant to draw from that nostalgia, preserving the wonders of exploring the countryside and instilling it in a new generation of kids, who were growing up in an increasingly urban Japan. The game’s premise was simple: you play as a young boy tasked with collecting all 150 Pokémon in hopes of completing your Pokédex. Along the way, you would also be tasked with battling, trading, and catching new creatures in the hopes of becoming a Pokémon Master. In a quirky, romantic kind of way, Pocket Monsters: Red and Green was ultimately a love letter to Tajiri’s childhood.
But Tajiri wasn’t the only one drawing inspiration from childhood to aid in the creative process. Sugimori designed most of the Pokémon during the early days of development, and he was inspired by his love for Godzilla and Ultraman. Because of this, a lot of the early designs for the Pokémon are relatively large, hulking, brute monsters that look as if they could
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