the internet got two letters out before crashing

October 29, 2026

a few things worth knowing · thursday, october 29, 2026

The internet’s ancestor gets two letters out, a spacecraft stops by a very lumpy rock, and a department store discovers that people will queue for a pen. Three October 29 anniversaries, followed by a bat fact with no calendar obligations. Halloween can have one useful contribution.

today in history: october 29

1. the internet’s ancestor crashed halfway through hello

At 10:30 p.m. on October 29, 1969, UCLA programmer Charley Kline tried to log in to a computer at Stanford Research Institute, where Bill Duvall was at the other end. They were testing ARPANET, a predecessor of the modern internet. The intended command was LOGIN. The receiving system got LO, then crashed.

Leonard Kleinrock’s account includes a scan of UCLA’s handwritten log. The full login worked about an hour later. Fifty-seven years on, “something historic happened, then we had to troubleshoot it” remains a convincing technology story. Kleinrock’s account and the original log.

2. galileo’s jupiter trip included an asteroid appointment

On October 29, 1991, NASA’s Galileo made the first spacecraft flyby of an asteroid, passing roughly 1,600 kilometers from Gaspra. That was 35 years ago today. Jupiter was the main destination; the route still had room for an extremely consequential roadside attraction. NASA’s Galileo mission history.

The two views at the top of this post show the same asteroid. The left is approximately true color; the right has been enhanced to make subtle differences easier to see. Both were assembled from images taken through violet, green and infrared filters during that encounter. Gaspra did not change outfits between photographs. NASA’s explanation of the image.

3. a ballpoint pen once needed crowd control

Macro photograph of the metal tip and tiny writing ball of a modern ballpoint pen.

On October 29, 1945, Gimbels in New York began selling Milton Reynolds’s ballpoint pen. Thomas Whiteside’s 1951 account in The New Yorker describes 5,000 people waiting outside and 50 extra police officers sent to manage the crowd. The pen had a much more eventful retail debut than the one currently loose in your bag.

That date marks the Gimbels launch, not the invention of the ballpoint itself. It is a useful reminder that the object we now borrow and forget to return once arrived with launch-day hype. Whiteside’s account, “The Amphibious Pen”.

one evergreen detour: a bat wing is a very ambitious hand

A Mexican free-tailed bat in flight with its wings spread against a black background.

This one is not an October 29 anniversary. Bats belong to the order Chiroptera, a name meaning “hand wing.” Their wing membrane stretches between elongated finger bones, with movable joints that let them change its shape in flight. The National Park Service’s side-by-side anatomy diagram makes the family resemblance to a human arm unusually clear.

Bats are also the only mammals capable of true powered flight. Flying squirrels glide; bats supply their own propulsion. The NPS page includes short footage of bats pursuing moths, which is a better demonstration of their agility than any plastic decoration presently hanging over a doorway. NPS: how bats fly, with diagram and videos.

Image credits: Gaspra in approximately true and enhanced color, NASA/JPL/USGS, PIA00125, photographed October 29, 1991. UCLA Interface Message Processor, FastLizard4, CC BY-SA 3.0. Modern Bic Cristal tip (illustrative, not the 1945 Reynolds model), Stefan and Richard Hollos / Exstrom Laboratories LLC, CC BY 4.0. Mexican free-tailed bat, B.T. Hamilton / National Park Service, via USGS, public domain. Images displayed at reduced size; no creative alterations. No claim to original U.S. Government works.