Zork is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for mainframe computers. Developed between 1977 and 1979 at MIT, and inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), it was split into three episodes for personal computers (PCs) by Infocom. In Zork, the player searches for treasure in the abandoned Great Underground Empire, moving between the game's hundreds of locations and interacting with objects by typing commands in natural language that the game interprets. Zork was a massive success, with sales increasing for years as the market for PCs expanded. The first episode sold over 38,000 copies in 1982, and around 150,000 copies in 1984. Infocom was purchased by Activision in 1986, leading to new Zork games beginning in 1987. Critics regard it as one of the greatest games ever and foundational to the adventure game genre. In 2007, the Library of Congress deemed Zork as one of the ten most important video games of all time.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1842:
First Anglo-Afghan War: William Brydon, an assistant surgeon in the British Army, was the sole European of the 14,000 people retreating from Kabul to Jalalabad who evaded capture or death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brydon
1915:
About 30,000 people were killed when an earthquake struck the Province of L'Aquila in Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1915_Avezzano_earthquake
1963:
Togo's first president, Sylvanus Olympio, was assassinated by military officers in a coup d'état led by Emmanuel Bodjollé, Étienne Eyadéma, and Kléber Dadjo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Togolese_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
2012:
The Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground on a reef and capsized off Isola del Giglio, Tuscany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Concordia
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
cryptovirus: 1. (biology) A kind of plant virus associated with latent infection of the host, and not transmissible by many means. 2. (computing) A type of malware that is used for extortion by encrypting user files and asking for payment in exchange for the decryption key. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cryptovirus
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave. --G. I. Gurdjieff https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G._I._Gurdjieff