Historic interpreter taught millions to program on Commodore and Apple computers.

On Wednesday, Microsoft released the complete source code for Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Version 1.1, the 1978 interpreter that powered the Commodore PET, VIC-20, Commodore 64, and Apple II through custom adaptations. The company posted 6,955 lines of assembly language code to GitHub under an MIT license, allowing anyone to freely use, modify, and distribute the code that helped launch the personal computer revolution.

"Rick Weiland and I (Bill Gates) wrote the 6502 BASIC," Gates commented on the Page Table blog in 2010. "I put the WAIT command in.". //

At just 6,955 lines of assembly language—Microsoft's low-level 6502 code talked almost directly to the processor. Microsoft's BASIC squeezed remarkable functionality into minimal memory, a key achievement when RAM cost hundreds of dollars per kilobyte.

In the early personal computer space, cost was king. The MOS 6502 processor that ran this BASIC cost about $25, while competitors charged $200 for similar chips. Designer Chuck Peddle created the 6502 specifically to bring computing to the masses, and manufacturers built variations of the chip into the Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and millions of Commodore computers. //

Why old code still matters
While modern computers can't run this 1978 assembly code directly, emulators and FPGA implementations keep the software alive for study and experimentation. The code reveals how programmers squeezed maximum functionality from minimal resources—lessons that remain relevant as developers optimize software for everything from smartwatches to spacecraft.

This kind of officially sanctioned release is important because without proper documentation and legal permission to study historical software, future generations risk losing the ability to understand how early computers worked in detail. //

the Github repository Microsoft created for 6502 BASIC includes a clever historical touch as a nod to the ancient code—the Git timestamps show commits from July 27, 1978.

Perhaps the most famous "holy relic" is the Shroud of Turin, an old linen cloth that retains a distinct impression of the body of a crucified mine (both front and back). The legend is that Jesus himself was wrapped in the shroud upon his death around 30 CE, although modern scientific dating methods revealed the shroud is actually a medieval artifact dating to between 1260 and 1390 CE. A 3D designer named Cícero Moraes has created a 3D digital reconstruction to lend further credence to the case for the shroud being a medieval forgery, according to a paper published in the journal Archaeometry.

Moraes developed computer models to simulate draping a sheet on both a 3D human form and a bas-relief carving to test which version most closely matched the figure preserved in the shroud. He concluded that the latter was more consistent with the shroud's figure, meaning that it was likely created as an artistic representation or a medieval work of art. It was certainly never draped around an actual body. Most notable was the absence of the so-called "Agamemnon mask effect," in which a human face shrouded in fabric appears wider once flattened.

Iran’s wind catchers stand as a reminder of how ancient civilisations have adapted to the region’s harsh desert environment.

A new portrait of the founding father challenges the long-held perception of Thomas Jefferson as a benevolent slaveholder. //

With five simple words in the Declaration of Independence—“all men are created equal”—Thomas Jefferson undid Aristotle’s ancient formula, which had governed human affairs until 1776: “From the hour of their birth, some men are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” In his original draft of the Declaration, in soaring, damning, fiery prose, Jefferson denounced the slave trade as an “execrable commerce ...this assemblage of horrors,” a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” As historian John Chester Miller put it, “The inclusion of Jefferson’s strictures on slavery and the slave trade would have committed the United States to the abolition of slavery.”

That was the way it was interpreted by some of those who read it at the time as well. Massachusetts freed its slaves on the strength of the Declaration of Independence, weaving Jefferson’s language into the state constitution of 1780. The meaning of “all men” sounded equally clear, and so disturbing to the authors of the constitutions of six Southern states that they emended Jefferson’s wording. “All freemen,” they wrote in their founding documents, “are equal.” The authors of those state constitutions knew what Jefferson meant, and could not accept it. The Continental Congress ultimately struck the passage because South Carolina and Georgia, crying out for more slaves, would not abide shutting down the market. //

But in the 1790s, Davis continues, “the most remarkable thing about Jefferson’s stand on slavery is his immense silence.” And later, Davis finds, Jefferson’s emancipation efforts “virtually ceased.”

Somewhere in a short span of years during the 1780s and into the early 1790s, a transformation came over Jefferson.

Ersatz-11 emulates an entire DEC PDP-11 system in software while running on low-cost PC hardware. It outperforms all of the hardware PDP-11 replacements on the market, outstripping them by a particularly wide margin in disk-intensive applications.

The PDP-11 was, and is, an extremely successful and influential family of machines which has spanned over two decades from the early 1970s through the mid 1990s. This note is an attempt to gather some of the knowledge on this family and present it for the benefit of those who are enthusiasts, curious, or downright confused as to what the -11 was and is, and how it related and still relates to its world.

What operating systems were written for the PDP-11?

Made by a pharmacist whose son was sick with croup, Vicks VapoRub saw skyrocketing sales during the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak.

For most people, memories of childhood coughs and colds are synonymous with a menthol-smelling ointment in a dark blue jar with a turquoise cap.

For more than a century, Vicks VapoRub has been a household name across continents. How it became one has roots in the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 20th century.

The ingenious American engineering behind early sequential signals in Ford Mustangs and Mercury Cougars

By rotating a cam assembly, three lobes completed circuits for individual bulbs: inner, middle, and outer.
The electric Ford Mustang Mach E SUV is the latest FoMoCo product to feature sequential turn signals, blinking taillights that show, by flashing individual LED bulbs, the direction you’re turning. But what if I told you this is old technology, nothing new, and first saw use in the mid-1960s?

First introduced on the 1965 Ford Thunderbird and popularized on the more powerful Ford Mustang and Mercury Cougar, sequential turn signals were a novel way to differentiate Ford products from the rest of the muscle cars.

The National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting has been around for more than 20 years, but a project supported by a $500,000+ grant has transformed its World War II-vintage building — the former VOA Bethany “relay station” transmitting plant — into a world-class repository of communications history and knowledge.

The 30,000-square-foot, two-story building was deeded over to the township of West Chester, Ohio, following the VOA’s closing of the station in 1994.

SUMMARY
The author reaches 1,800 years back into history, looking at the oldest, handwritten editions of the letters of Paul. Actual photographs of the manuscripts are included in this article.

Vintage Wings of Canada is a not-for-profit, charitable organization with a collection of historically significant aircraft and is run entirely by volunteers. It is our mission to acquire, restore, maintain and fly classic aircraft significant to the early history of powered flight in Canada, focussing largely on the aircraft of the Second World War. We run education and flying programs with our own aircraft and in concert with the aircraft collection of our founder, Michael Potter. It is our goal to inspire and educate future generations about the historical significance of our aviation heritage and to demonstrate that these aircraft are more than just metal, fabric, and wood artifacts. We seek to keep the souls of these aircraft alive through the thundering sound of engines, the smell of leather, glycol, oil and sweat, as well as the laughter of their pilots as they dance with them in their natural element in the skies over Canada.

There may be no more iconic aircraft in America than a Goodyear blimp. A blimp is a unique advertising extravaganza and a mainstay of live aerial television coverage at every imaginable sporting event. The Goodyear blimp represents the brand, but also is every bit of Americana as can be found in aviation.

This year, two of the Goodyear NT (new technology) airships — Wingfoot One and Wingfoot Two — are in attendance in a salute to the 100th anniversary of Goodyear’s airship operations. There are three Goodyear blimps in the United States; Wingfoot Three is in for maintenance. To honor the heritage of the program, Wingfoot One is flying a livery inspired by the original Pilgrim. In 1925, Pilgrim became the world’s first commercial nonrigid airship that used helium.

The great movies, directors, actors, and writers of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s produced what has since been called the Golden Era of Hollywood. Technological advances, especially sound and color, also contributed. Scripts came from great novels and works of history, and from compelling stories serialized in magazines. One of those who contributed mightily to the Golden Era, in particular to the movies of John Ford, was the writer James Warner Bellah. His stories were powerful, poignant, and filled with men of character and courage. He himself was a veteran of not only World War I but also World War II. //

From the late 1940s through the 1960s, Bellah published eight books and three dozen short stories and articles. He also wrote or co-wrote nine screenplays. He will probably be best remembered for his work with the legendary director John Ford. The two first met, not in Hollywood, but in India during World War II. Ford’s famous cavalry trilogy, Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950), came from the pen of James Warner Bellah. //

Probably the best of these films is The Sea Chase (1954), starring John Wayne and Lana Turner.

Hemmi Bamboo Slide Rule Company Ltd. in Japan is the oldest and most well known Japanese manufacturing company making slide rules. Jirou Hemmi and Company was founded in 1895 and, in 1912, was granted by the Japanese Patent Office Patent No. 22129 for their laminated bamboo construction method for slide rules. As a young company wanting exposure to a larger market, They started by selling distribution licenses to three other companies: the Fredrick Post Company of Chicago, Illinois, the Hughes-Owen Company of Canada and Tamaya & Company of Tokyo, Japan.

Re: I saw similar a couple times in that timeframe ...
My recollection, because I started to make phone bill payments in those years, was that the local operating telcos (first the “Baby Bells” and then their ever-merging successors) had two types of residential service on offer: one at a nominally lower base cost plus a charge for every local call, and one at a supposedly higher base cost that allowed unlimited local calling. Both, of course, charged a king’s ransom for a domestic long-distance call. An overseas long-distance call required a cardiologist when your bill arrived.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-80 was the last American-built aircraft to feature an analog cockpit. The aircraft entered commercial service with Swissair in October 1980, and became a mainstay of short-haul aviation across the world. The US-based manufacturer went on to build a total of 1,191 MD-80s, several of which are still in service today.

A decade ago, an employee stole 25 priceless documents from the Netherlands’ National Archives in the Hague. The trove included 16th-century records of clandestine government affairs, a 15th-century letter from a knight and documents from the Dutch East India Company.

Officials weren’t aware the documents had been stolen until recently, when they were returned by the Amsterdam police and art detective Arthur Brand, who is known for recovering lost and stolen artworks and artifacts. //

Officials at the archives knew that the documents were missing, but they assumed they had simply been misplaced. “We manage more than [90 miles] of archives, over 15 million photographs and 300,000 maps and drawings,” a spokesperson for the National Archives tells NL Times. “With such numbers, it is impossible to have a complete inventory of all the documents.”

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LOL — @SpeakerJohnson is OVER Jeffries' crap.

"Ronald Reagan said one time, 'No speech should be longer than 20 minutes.' Unlike the Democrat leader, I'm gonna honor my colleagues time and be a little more brief than that." 😂
0:20 / 0:20
1:55 PM · Jul 3, 2025. //

"My friends and colleagues, we are so blessed, we should not take it for granted. We live in the most free, the most successful, the most powerful, the most benevolent nation that has ever been on the face of the Earth. And there's a reason for that — the reason that we are the greatest nation is because we were built on the ultimate foundation. And the bold Declaration that my friend Hakeem Jeffries articulated earlier is true. We unite under that. The bold Declaration that we do hold these truths to be self-evident. What is a self-evident truth? It's something that's obvious. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' — it does not say 'born equal,' it says 'created equal.' And...it is our creator that gives us our rights.

"See? The powerful thing about that is we're the first nation in the history of the world that acknowledged that our rights do not derive from government — they come from God himself. You see those words up there — that motto — it says 'In God We Trust,' right above the Speaker's rostrum. You know, a previous Congress put that there in the early sixties....Congress voted to put that there as a rebuke to the Soviets' worldview at the height of the Cold War. Why? Because communism, socialism, find their root in Marxism, and Marxism begins with the belief that there is no God. It's wrong."

"This Congress made a stand those many years ago, and we should do it again — we're different, we're distinct, we're exceptional, because we acknowledge that right there, our motto. It doesn't say 'In Government We Trust,' it says 'In God We Trust.' And we better remember that. He has blessed us with this grand experiment in self-governance now for almost two-and-a-half centuries, and by God's grace, we are working hard, and we are delivering on our promise to Make America Great Again.

If you haven't ventured over to the America 250 link on Whitehouse.gov, this Independence weekend is the perfect time. In partnership with Prager U, the White House has launched the "Founders Museum," with videos that feature AI representations of the founders and revolutionaries of our republic. With the representation of each biography and their contributions to the founding of our nation, the AI animations put forth a challenge to the viewer on how one should carry forward liberty and what was fought and paid for through their sacrifice.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/america250/founders-museum/ //

The videos can be viewed individually, in their respective series (Founding Fathers, Ladies of the Revolution, Major Events, and Declaration of Independence Signers), or as a whole unit. The section also includes a learning option with downloadable biographies, portraits, and documents that allow one to create their own "Founders Museum."