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SNOBOL

SNOBOL

SNOBOL (StriNg Oriented symBOlic Language) is a computer programming language developed between 1962 and 1967 at AT&T Bell Laboratories by David J. Farber, Ralph E. Griswold and Ivan P. Polonsky. (The name is a jocular reference to COBOL and ALGOL, but the these languages have no other connection and no other notable similarities). During the 1950s and 1960s there was a flourishing of interest in special-purpose computer languages. SNOBOL was one of a number of text-string-oriented languages, and one of the more successful; others included COMIT and TRAC. SNOBOL was widely used in the 1970s and 1980s as a text manipulation language in the humanities, but in recent years, its popularity has faded as newer languages such as Awk and Perl have made string manipulation by means of regular expressions popular; it is now mostly a special interest language used mainly by enthusiasts, and new implementations are rare. However, SNOBOL's pattern matching algorithm is in many ways more powerful than regular expressions. The classic implementation was on the PDP-10; it has been used to study compilers, formal grammars, and artificial intelligence, especially machine translation and machine comprehension of natural languages. (The original implementation was on an IBM 360 at Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ.) SNOBOL was originally called SEXI - String EXpression Interpreter. The SNOBOL4 (StriNg Oriented symBOlic Language number 4) version is the fourth and final incarnation of such a series of special purpose programming languages for character string manipulation. The SNOBOL4 variant of the language supports a number of built-in data types, such as integers and limited precision real numbers, strings, patterns, arrays, and tables, and also allows the programmer to define additional data types and new functions. SNOBOL4's programmer-defined data type facility was advanced at the time (it preceded, and resembles, Pascal's "records" and C's "structs."). SNOBOL4 stands apart from the mainstream programming languages of that time by having patterns as a first-class data type (i.e. a data type whose values can be manipulated in all ways permitted to any other data type in the programming language) and by providing operators for pattern concatenation and alternation. Strings generated during execution can be treated as programs and executed. A SNOBOL pattern can be very simple or extremely complex. A simple pattern is just a text string (e.g. "ABCD"), but a complex pattern may be a large structure describing, for example, the complete grammar of a computer language. SNOBOL provides the programmer with a rich assortment of features including some rather exotic ones. As a result it is possible to use SNOBOL as if it were an object-oriented language, a logical programming language, a functional language or a standard imperative language by changing the set of features used to write a program. It also concatenates strings that are simply placed next to each other in a statement. It keeps strings in a memory heap, and frees programmers from concerns about memory allocation and management for strings. It is normally implemented as an interpreter because of the difficulty in implementing some of its very high-level features, but there is a compiler, the SPITBOL compiler, which provides nearly all the facilities that the interpreter provides. The Icon programming language is a descendant of SNOBOL4.

Hello World

OUTPUT = 'Hello World!' END

External links

- [http://www.snobol4.org/ Phil Budne's page of resources]
- [http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Snobol/ Open Directory Project Category for Snobol]
- [http://www.snobol4.com/ Catspaw, Inc. offers implementations of and support for SNOBOL4] Category:Programming languages Category:Text-oriented programming languages Category:SNOBOL programming language family ja:SNOBOL

Computer

A computer is a device capable of processing data according to a program — a list of instructions. The data to be processed may represent many types of information including numbers, text, pictures, or sound. Computers can be extremely versatile. In fact, they are universal information processing machines. According to the Church-Turing thesis, a computer with a certain minimum threshold capability is in principle capable of performing the tasks of any other computer, from those of a personal digital assistant to a supercomputer. Therefore, the same computer designs have been adapted for tasks from processing company payrolls to controlling industrial robots. Modern electronic computers also have enormous speed and capacity for information processing compared to earlier designs, and they have become exponentially more powerful over the years (a phenomenon known as Moore's Law). Computers are available in many physical forms. The original computers were the size of a large room, and such enormous computing facilities still exist for specialized scientific computation - supercomputers - and for the transaction processing requirements of large companies, generally called mainframes. Smaller computers for individual use, called personal computers, and their portable equivalent, the notebook computer, are ubiquitous information-processing and communication tools and are perhaps what most non-experts think of as "a computer". However, the most common form of computer in use today is the embedded computer, small computers used to control another device. Embedded computers control machines from fighter planes to digital cameras.

History of computing

Originally, a "computer" was a person who performed numerical calculations under the direction of a mathematician, often with the aid of a variety of mechanical calculating devices from the abacus onward. An example of an early computing device was the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek device for calculating the movements of planets, dating from about 87 BCE. The technology responsible for this mysterious device seems to have been lost at some point. The end of the Middle Ages saw a reinvigoration of European mathematics and engineering, and by the early 17th century a succession of mechanical calculating devices had been constructed using clockwork technology. A considerable number of technologies that would later prove vital for the digital computer were developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the punched card and the vacuum tube ((or valve). Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a fully programmable computer as early as 1837, but due to a combination of the limits of the technology of the time, limited finance, and an inability to resist tinkering with his design (a trait that would in time doom thousands of computer-related engineering projects), the device was never actually constructed in his lifetime. During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated, special-purpose analog computers, which used a direct physical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. These became increasingly rare after the development of the digital computer. A succession of steadily more powerful and flexible computing devices were constructed in the 1930s and 1940s, gradually adding the key features of modern computers, such as the use of digital electronics (invented by Claude Shannon in 1937) and more flexible programmability. Defining one point along this road as "the first computer" is exceedingly difficult. Notable achievements include the Atanasoff Berry Computer, a special-purpose machine that used valve-driven computation and binary numbers; Konrad Zuse's Z machines; the secret British Colossus computer, which had limited programmability but demonstrated that a device using thousands of valves could be made reliable and reprogrammed electronically; and the American ENIAC — the first general purpose machine, but with an inflexible architecture that meant reprogramming it essentially required it to be rewired. The team who developed ENIAC, recognizing its flaws, came up with a far more flexible and elegant design, which has become known as the stored program architecture, which is the basis from which virtually all modern computers were derived. A number of projects to develop computers based on the stored program architecture commenced in the late 1940s; the first of these to be up and running was the Small-Scale Experimental Machine, but the EDSAC was perhaps the first practical version. Valve-driven computer designs were in use throughout the 1950s, but were eventually replaced with transistor-based computers, which were smaller, faster, cheaper, and much more reliable, thus allowing them to be commercially produced, in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the adoption of integrated circuit technology had enabled computers to be produced at a low enough cost to allow individuals to own a personal computer of the type familiar today.

How computers work: the stored program architecture

While the technologies used in computers have changed dramatically since the first electronic, general-purpose, computers of the 1940s, most still use the stored program architecture (sometimes called the von Neumann architecture; as the article describes the primary inventors were probably ENIAC designers J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly). The design made the universal computer a practical reality. The architecture describes a computer with four main sections: the arithmetic and logic unit (ALU), the control circuitry, the memory, and the input and output devices (collectively termed I/O). These parts are interconnected by a bundle of wires (a "bus") and are usually driven by a timer or clock (although other events could drive the control circuitry). Conceptually, a computer's memory can be viewed as a list of cells. Each cell has a numbered "address" and can store a small, fixed amount of information. This information can either be an instruction, telling the computer what to do, or data, the information which the computer is to process using the instructions that have been placed in the memory. In principle, any cell can be used to store either instructions or data. The ALU is in many senses the heart of the computer. It is capable of performing two classes of basic operations: arithmetic operations, the core of which is the ability to add or subtract two numbers but also encompasses operations like "multiply this number by 2" or "divide by 2" (for reasons which will become clear later), as well as some others. The second class of ALU operations involves comparison operations, which, given two numbers, can determine if they are equal, and if not, which is bigger. The I/O systems are the means by which the computer receives information from the outside world, and reports its results back to that world. On a typical personal computer, input devices include objects like the keyboard and mouse, and output devices include computer monitors, printers and the like, but as will be discussed later a huge variety of devices can be connected to a computer and serve as I/O devices. The control system ties this all together. Its job is to read instructions and data from memory or the I/O devices, decode the instructions, providing the ALU with the correct inputs according to the instructions, "tell" the ALU what operation to perform on those inputs, and send the results back to the memory or to the I/O devices. One key component of the control system is a counter that keeps track of what the address of the current instruction is; typically, this is incremented each time an instruction is executed, unless the instruction itself indicates that the next instruction should be at some other location (allowing the computer to repeatedly execute the same instructions). Physically, since the 1980s the ALU and control unit have been located on a single integrated circuit called a Central Processing Unit or CPU. The functioning of such a computer is in principle quite straightforward. Typically, on each clock cycle, the computer fetches instructions and data from its memory. The instructions are executed, the results are stored, and the next instruction is fetched. This procedure repeats until a halt instruction is encountered. Larger computers, such as some minicomputers, mainframe computers, servers, differ from the model above in one significant aspect; rather than one CPU they often have a number of them. Supercomputers often have highly unusual architectures significantly different from the basic stored-program architecture, sometimes featuring thousands of CPUs, but such designs tend to be useful only for specialized tasks.

Digital circuits

The conceptual design above could be implemented using a variety of different technologies. As previously mentioned, a stored program computer could be designed entirely of mechanical components like Babbage's. However, digital circuits allow Boolean logic and arithmetic using binary numerals to be implemented using relays - essentially, electrically controlled switches. Shannon's famous thesis showed how relays could be arranged to form units called logic gates, implementing simple Boolean operations. Others soon figured out that vacuum tubes - electronic devices, could be used instead. Vacuum tubes were originally used as a signal amplifier for radio and other applications, but were used in digital electronics as a very fast switch; when electricity is provided to one of the pins, current can flow through between the other two. Through arrangements of logic gates, one can build digital circuits to do more complex tasks, for instance, an adder, which implements in electronics the same method - in computer terminology, an algorithm - to add two numbers together that children are taught - add one column at a time, and carry what's left over. Eventually, through combining circuits together, a complete ALU and control system can be built up. This does require a considerable number of components. CSIRAC, one of the earliest stored-program computers, is probably close to the smallest practically useful design. It had about 2,000 valves, some of which were "dual components", so this represented somewhere between 2 and 4,000 logic components. Vacuum tubes had severe limitations for the construction of large numbers of gates. They were expensive, unreliable (particularly when used in such large quantities), took up a lot of space, and used a lot of electrical power, and, while incredibly fast compared to a mechanical switch, had limits to the speed at which they could operate. Therefore, by the 1960s they were replaced by the transistor, a new device which performed the same task as the tube but was much smaller, faster operating, reliable, used much less power, and was far cheaper. transistor In the 1960s and 1970s, the transistor itself was gradually replaced by the integrated circuit, which placed multiple transistors (and other components) and the wires connecting them on a single, solid piece of silicon. By the 1970s, the entire ALU and control unit, the combination becoming known as a CPU, were being placed on a single "chip" called a microprocessor. Over the history of the integrated circuit, the number of components that can be placed on one has grown enormously. The first IC's contained a few tens of components; as of 2005, modern microprocessors such from AMD and Intel contain over 100 million transistors. Tubes, transistors, and transistors on integrated circuits can be and are used as the "storage" component of the stored-program architecture, using a circuit design known as a flip-flop, and indeed flip-flops are used for small amounts of very high-speed storage. However, few computer designs have used flip-flops for the bulk of their storage needs. Instead, earliest computers stored data in Williams tubes - essentially, projecting some dots on a TV screen and reading them again, or mercury delay lines where the data was stored as sound pulses traveling slowly (compared to the machine itself) along long tubes filled with mercury. These somewhat ungainly but effective methods were eventually replaced by magnetic memory devices, such as magnetic core memory, where electrical currents were used to introduce a permanent (but weak) magnetic field in some ferrous material, which could then be read to retrieve the data. Eventually, DRAM was introduced. A DRAM unit is a type of integrated circuit containing huge banks of an electronic component called a capacitor which can store an electrical charge for a period of time. The level of charge in a capacitor could be set to store information, and then measured to read the information when required.

I/O devices

I/O is a general term for devices that send computers information from the outside world and that return the results of computations. These results can either be viewed directly by a user, or they can be sent to another machine, whose control has been assigned the computer: In a robot, for instance, the controlling computer's major output device is the robot itself. The first generation of computers were equipped with a fairly limited range of input devices. A punch card reader, or something similar, was used to enter instructions and data into the computer's memory, and some kind of printer, usually a modified teletype, was used to record the results. Over the years, a huge variety of other devices have been added. For the personal computer, for instance, keyboards and mice are the primary ways people directly enter information into the computer; and monitors are the primary way in which information from the computer is presented back to the user, though printers, speakers, and headphones are common, too. There is a huge variety of other devices for obtaining other types of input. One example is the digital camera, which can be used to input visual information. There are two prominent classes of I/O devices. The first class is that of secondary storage devices, such as hard disks, CD-ROMs, key drives and the like, which represent comparatively slow, but high-capacity devices, where information can be stored for later retrieval; the second class is that of devices used to access computer networks. The ability to transfer data between computers has opened up a huge range of capabilities for the computer. The global Internet allows millions of computers to transfer information of all types between each other.

Instructions

The instructions interpreted by the control unit, and executed by the ALU, are not nearly as rich as a human language. A computer responds only to a limited number of instructions, but they are well defined, simple, and unambiguous. Typical sorts of instructions supported by most computers are "copy the contents of memory cell 5 and place the copy in cell 10", "add the contents of cell 7 to the contents of cell 13 and place the result in cell 20", "if the contents of cell 999 are 0, the next instruction is at cell 30". All computer instructions fall into one of four categories: 1) moving data from one location to another; 2) executing arithmetic and logical processes on data; 3) testing the condition of data; and 4) altering the sequence of operations. Instructions are represented within the computer as binary code - a base two system of counting. For example, the code for one kind of "copy" operation in the Intel line of microprocessors is 10110000. The particular instruction set that a specific computer supports is known as that computer's machine language. To slightly oversimplify, if two computers have CPUs that respond to the same set of instructions identically, software from one can run on the other without modification. This easy portability of existing software creates a great incentive to stick with existing designs, only switching for the most compelling of reasons, and has gradually narrowed the number of distinct instruction set architectures in the marketplace.

Programs

Computer programs are simply lists of instructions for the computer to execute. These can range from just a few instructions which perform a simple task, to a much more complex instruction list which may also include tables of data. Many computer programs contain millions of instructions, and many of those instructions are executed repeatedly. A typical modern PC (in the year 2005) can execute around 3 billion instructions per second. Computers do not gain their extraordinary capabilities through the ability to execute complex instructions. Rather, they do millions of simple instructions arranged by people known as programmers. In practice, people do not normally write the instructions for computers directly in machine language. Such programming is incredibly tedious and highly error-prone, making programmers very unproductive. Instead, programmers describe the desired actions in a "high level" programming language which is then translated into the machine language automatically by special computer programs (interpreters and compilers). Some programming languages map very closely to the machine language, such as Assembly Language (low level languages); at the other end, languages like Prolog are based on abstract principles far removed from the details of the machine's actual operation (high level languages). The language chosen for a particular task depends on the nature of the task, the skill set of the programmers, tool availability and, often, the requirements of the customers (for instance, projects for the US military were often required to be in the Ada programming language). Computer software is an alternative term for computer programs; it is a more inclusive phrase and includes all the ancillary material accompanying the program needed to do useful tasks. For instance, a video game includes not only the program itself, but also data representing the pictures, sounds, and other material needed to create the virtual environment of the game. A computer application is a piece of computer software provided to many computer users, often in a retail environment. The stereotypical modern example of an application is perhaps the office suite, a set of interrelated programs for performing common office tasks. Going from the extremely simple capabilities of a single machine language instruction to the myriad capabilities of application programs means that many computer programs are extremely large and complex. A typical example is the Firefox web browser, created from roughly 2 million lines of computer code in the C++ programming language; there are many projects of even bigger scope, built by large teams of programmers. The management of this enormous complexity is key to making such projects possible; programming languages, and programming practices, enable the task to be divided into smaller and smaller subtasks until they come within the capabilities of a single programmer in a reasonable period. Nevertheless, the process of developing software remains slow, unpredictable, and error-prone; the discipline of software engineering has attempted, with some partial success, to make the process quicker and more productive and improve the quality of the end product.

Libraries and operating systems

Soon after the development of the computer, it was discovered that certain tasks were required in many different programs; an early example was computing some of the standard mathematical functions. For the purposes of efficiency, standard versions of these were collected in libraries and made available to all who required them. A particularly common task set related to handling the gritty details of "talking" to the various I/O devices, so libraries for these were quickly developed. By the 1960s, with computers in wide industrial use for many purposes, it became common for them to be used for many different jobs within an organization. Soon, special software to automate the scheduling and execution of these many jobs became available. The combination of managing "hardware" and scheduling jobs became known as the "operating system"; the classic example of this type of early operating system was OS/360 by IBM. The next major development in operating systems was timesharing - the idea that multiple users could use the machine "simultaneously" by keeping all of their programs in memory, executing each user's program for a short time so as to provide the illusion that each user had their own computer. Such a development required the operating system to provide each user's programs with a "virtual machine" such that one user's program could not interfere with another's (by accident or design). The range of devices that operating systems had to manage also expanded; a notable one was hard disks; the idea of individual "files" and a hierarchical structure of "directories" (now often called folders) greatly simplified the use of these devices for permanent storage. Security access controls, allowing computer users access only to files, directories and programs they had permissions to use, were also common. Perhaps the last major addition to the operating system were tools to provide programs with a standardized graphical user interface. While there are few technical reasons why a GUI has to be tied to the rest of an operating system, it allows the operating system vendor to encourage all the software for their operating system to have a similar looking and acting interface. Outside these "core" functions, operating systems are usually shipped with an array of other tools, some of which may have little connection with these original core functions but have been found useful by enough customers for a provider to include them. For instance, Apple's Mac OS X ships with a digital video editor application. Not all operating systems provide all of the above functions; operating systems for smaller computers typically provide fewer, such as the highly minimal operating systems for early microcomputers. Embedded computers may have a specialized operating system, or sometimes none at all. Instead, the custom programs written for their task perform all necessary functions that would be performed by an operating system in less specialized roles.

Computer applications

Embedded computer The first electronic digital computers, with their large size and cost, mainly performed scientific calculations, often to support military objectives. The ENIAC was originally designed to calculate ballistics-firing tables for artillery, but it was also used to calculate neutron cross-sectional densities to help in the design of the hydrogen bomb. This calculation, performed in December, 1945 through January, 1946 and involving over a million punch cards of data, showed the design then under consideration would fail. (Many of the most powerful supercomputers available today are also used for nuclear weapons simulations.) The CSIR Mk I, the first Australian stored-program computer, evaluated rainfall patterns for the catchment area of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, a large hydroelectric generation project. Others were used in cryptanalysis, for example the first programmable (though not general-purpose) digital electronic computer, Colossus, built in 1943 during World War II. Despite this early focus of scientific and military engineering applications, computers were quickly used in other areas. From the beginning, stored program computers were applied to business problems. The LEO, a stored program-computer built by J. Lyons and Co. in the United Kingdom, was operational and being used for inventory management and other purposes 3 years before IBM built their first commercial stored-program computer. Continual reductions in the cost and size of computers saw them adopted by ever-smaller organizations. Moreover, with the invention of the microprocessor in the 1970s, it became possible to produce inexpensive computers. In the 1980s, personal computers became popular for many tasks, including book-keeping, writing and printing documents, calculating forecasts and other repetitive mathematical tasks involving spreadsheets. spreadsheet (1989) marked the acceptance of CGI in the visual effects industry.]] As computers have become cheaper, they have been used extensively in the creative arts as well. Sound, still pictures, and video are now routinely created (through synthesizers, computer graphics and computer animation), and near-universally edited by computer. They have also been used for entertainment, with the video game becoming a huge industry. Computers have been used to control mechanical devices since they became small and cheap enough to do so; indeed, a major spur for integrated circuit technology was building a computer small enough to guide the Apollo missions and the Minuteman missile, two of the first major applications for embedded computers. Today, it is almost rarer to find a powered mechanical device not controlled by a computer than to find one that is at least partly so. Perhaps the most famous computer-controlled mechanical devices are robots, machines with more-or-less human appearance and some subset of their capabilities. Industrial robots have become commonplace in mass production, but general-purpose human-like robots have not lived up to the promise of their fictional counterparts and remain either toys or research projects. Robotics, indeed, is the physical expressions of the field of artificial intelligence, a discipline whose exact boundaries are fuzzy but to some degree involves attempting to give computers capabilities that they do not currently possess but humans do. Over the years, methods have been developed to allow computers to do things previously regarded as the exclusive domain of humans - for instance, "read" handwriting, play chess, or perform symbolic integration. However, progress on creating a computer that exhibits "general" intelligence comparable to a human has been extremely slow.

Networking and the Internet

In the 1970s, computer engineers at research institutions throughout the US began to link their computers together using telecommunications technology. This effort was funded by ARPA, and the computer network that it produced was called the ARPANET. The technologies that made the Arpanet possible spread and evolved. In time, the network spread beyond academic and military institutions and became known as the Internet. The emergence of networking involved a redefinition of the nature and boundaries of the computer. In the phrase of John Gage and Bill Joy (of Sun Microsystems), "the network is the computer". Computer operating systems and applications were modified to include the ability to define and access the resources of other computers on the network, such as peripheral devices, stored information, and the like, as extensions of the resources of an individual computer. Initially these facilities were available primarily to people working in high-tech environments, but in the 1990s the spread of applications like email and the World Wide Web, combined with the development of cheap, fast networking technologies like Ethernet and ADSL saw computer networking become ubiquitous almost everywhere. In fact, the number of computers that are networked is growing phenomenally. A very large proportion of personal computers regularly connect to the Internet to communicate and receive information.

Computing professions and disciplines

In the developed world, virtually every profession makes use of computers. However, certain professional and academic disciplines have evolved that specialize in techniques to construct, program, and use computers. Terminology for different professional disciplines is still somewhat fluid and new fields emerge from time to time: however, some of the major groupings are as follows:
- Computer engineering is that branch of electronic engineering devoted to the physical construction of computers and their attendant components.
- Computer science is an academic study of the processes related to computation, such as developing efficient algorithms to perform specific tasks. It has tackled questions as to whether problems can be solved at all using a computer, how efficiently they can be solved, and how to construct efficient programs to compute solutions. A huge array of specialties has developed within computer science to investigate different classes of problem.
- Software engineering concentrates on methodologies and practices to allow the development of reliable software systems while minimizing, and reliably estimating, costs and timelines.
- Information systems concentrates on the use and deployment of computer systems in a wider organizational (usually business) context.
- Many disciplines have developed at the intersection of computers with other professions; one of many examples is experts in geographical information systems who apply computer technology to problems of managing geographical information.

References

- [http://www.andrew.mallett.net/tech Learn to configure your computer at Andy's Tech Page] category: computer science ja:コンピュータ ko:컴퓨터 ms:Komputer nb:Datamaskin simple:Computer th:คอมพิวเตอร์

1962

1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). In Chinese Zodiac, the "year" of the Ox ended on February 4, 1962 and the "year" of the Tiger began on February 5, 1962.

Events

January

- January 1 - Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand
- January 3 - Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro
- January 4 - New York City introduces a train that operates without a crew on-board
- January 5 - The first record by The Beatles is released by Deutsche Grammophon
- January 8 - Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time (National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC)
- January 9 - Trade pact between Cuba and the Soviet Union
- January 10 - Avalanche on Nevado Huascarán in Peru; 4000 deaths
- January 11 - Volcano erupts in the Peruvian Andes and causes an avalanche that buries 3000
- January 12 - Indonesian army confirms that it has began operations in West Irian
- January 13 - Albania allies itself with the People's Republic of China
- January 16 - Military coup in the Dominican Republic
- January 19 - Counter-coup in the Dominican Republic - old government returns except for the new president Rafael Bonnely
- January 22 - The Organization of American States (OAS) suspends Cuba's membership
- January 24 - East German goverment readopts conscription
- January 24 - OAS bomb in French foreign ministry
- January 26 - Mafioso Lucky Luciano dies at the Naples Airport
- January 26 - Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon. The space probe later missed the moon by 22,000 miles
- January 27 - Soviet government changes all place names honoring Molotov, Kaganovich and Georgi Malenkov
- January 30 - Two of the high-wire "Flying Wallendas" are killed when their famous seven-person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit, Michigan

February

- February 2 - For the first time in 400 years Neptune and Pluto align
- February 3 - US announces its trade embargo with Cuba
- February 4 - The Sunday Times becomes the first paper to print a colour supplement
- February 4 - Latin American Gnostic master Samael Aun Weor declares the advent of the New Age of Aquarius
- February 5 - French President Charles De Gaulle calls for allowing Algeria to be an independent nation
- February 7 - The United States Government bans all US-related Cuban imports and exports
- February 9 - Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation opens
- February 10 - February 10 - Captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in Berlin
- February 12 - Six members of the Committee of 100 of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament are found guilty of a breach of the Official Secrets Act
- February 14 - First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes television viewers on a tour of the White House
- February 15 - Urho Kekkonen re-elected president of Finland
- February 16/February 17 - Heavy storm flood on Germany's North Sea coast, mainly around Hamburg, more than 300 people die, thousands losing their homes
- February 17 - Flooding in North Sea coasts
- February 20 - Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbits the Earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes becoming the first American to orbit the Earth
- February 23 - 12 European countries form European Space Agency

March-April

- March 1 - An American Airlines Boeing 707 crashes on takeoff at New York International Airport after its rudder separates from the tail, with loss of all life on board
- March 2 - Military coup in Burma
- March 8-12 - In Geneva, France and Algerian FLN begin negotiations
- March 15 - Katangan prime minister Moise Tshombe begins negotiations to rejoin Congo
- March 19 - Armistice begins in Algeria
- March 18 - France and Algeria sign an agreement in Evian ending the Algerian War. See Évian Accords.
- March 19 - Armistice in Algeria - however, Organisation de l'armée secrète continues its terrorist attacks against Algerians
- March 23 - Scandinavian States of Nordic Council sign Helsinki Convention on Nordic Co-operation
- March 24 - OAS leader Edmond Jouahud arrested in Oran
- March 26 - France shortens the term for military service from 26 months to 18
- April 3 - Nehru elected de facto prime minister of India
- April 4 - James Hanratty is hanged in Bedford Gaol for A6 murder - many believe he was innocent
- April 6 - Belgium reforms diplomatic relations with Congo
- April 7 - Author Milovan Djilas arrested in Yugoslavia
- April 8 - In France, the Évian Accords are adopted in a referendum with a majority of 90%.
- April 10 - In Los Angeles, the first game is played at Dodger Stadium.
- April 13 - OAS leader Edmond Jouhaud sentenced to death in France
- April 14 - Cuban military tribunal convicts 1179 Bay of Pigs attackers
- April 18 - Commonweath Immigration Bill in the United Kingdom removes free immigration from the citizens of member states of the British Commonwealth
- April 20 - OAS leader Raoul Salan arrested in Algiers
- April 26 - The Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon

May-June

- May 2 - OAS bomb explodes in Algeria - this and other attacks kill 110 and injure 147
- May 31 - Adolf Eichmann hanged in Israel
- May 5 - 12 East Germans escape via a tunnel under the Berlin Wall
- May 14 - Juan Carlos marries the Greek Princess Sophia in Athens
- May 14 - Milovan Djilas, former vice-president of Yugoslavia, is given further sentence for publishing Conversations with Stalin
- May 23 - Drilling for new Montreal, Quebec subway commences
- May 23 - Founder of the French terrorist Organisation de l'armée secrète, Raoul Salan, is sentenced to life imprisonment in France
- May 24 - In Olima, Peru, unpopular referee ruling in a Peru-Argentina soccer match leads to riot and panic - 300 dead, over 500 injured
- May 24 - Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule
- May 25 - Consecration of the new Coventry cathedral
- May 29 - Negotiations between OAS ja FLA lead to real armistice
- May 31 - Adolf Eichmann hanged in Israel
- June 3 - An air crash at Orly Airport in Paris - 130 dead, two stewardesses survive
- June 11 - President John F. Kennedy, gives commencement address at Yale University.
- June 11 - Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin become the only prisoners to apparently successfully escape from the prison on Alcatraz Island. There is no conclusive evidence that they survived the attempt.
- June 15 - Students for a Democratic Society complete the Port Huron Statement
- June 17 – OAS signs a truce with FLN in Algeria but a day later announces that it will continue the fight for French Algeria
- June 17 - Brazil beat Czechoslovakia 3-1 to win the 1962 World Cup
- June 25 - The United States Supreme Court rules in Engel v. Vitale that prayers in public schools are unconstitutional
- June 26 - Two-day steel strike begins in Italy in support of increased wages and 5-day working week
- June 30 - Last soldiers of the French Foreign Legion leave Algeria

July

- July 1 - Independence of Rwanda and Burundi
- July 1 – Supporters of Algerian independence win 99% majority in referendum
- July 1 - Another heavy smog over London
- July 2 - Charles De Gaulle accepts Algerian independence - France recognizes it the next day
- July 5 - Algeria becomes independent from France.
- July 6 - Irish broadcaster, Gay Byrne, presents his first edition of The Late Late Show. Byrne would go on to present the show for 37 years making it the longest running talk show in the world
- July 10 - AT&T's Telstar, the world's first commercial communications satellite, is launched into orbit - it is activated the next day
- July 12 - The Rolling Stones make their debut at London's Marquee Club, number 165 Oxford Street, opening for Long John Baldry
- July 13 - in what the press dubs "the Night of the Long Knives" United Kingdom Prime Minister Harold Macmillan dismisses one-third of his Cabinet
- July 17 - Nuclear testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada Test Site
- July 20 - French and Tunisia reform diplomatic relations
- July 22 - Mariner program: Mariner 1 spacecraft flies erratically several minutes after launch and has to be destroyed
- July 23 - Telstar relays the first live trans-Atlantic television signal
- July 28 - Locust swarm threatens Delhi
- July 31 - Algeria proclaims independence; Ahmed Ben Bella is the first President
- July 31 - Crowd assaults the rally of the right-wing Union Movement of Sir Oswald Mosley in London

August-September

- August 5 - Film actress and sex icon, Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her Los Angeles, California home after apparently overdosing on sleeping pills
- August 6 - Jamaica becomes independent
- August 5 - South African government arrests Nelson Mandela in Howick and charges him with incinement to rebellion
- August 15 - Netherlands recognizes that Irian Java is part of Indonesia
- August 16 - Algeria joins the Arab League
- August 17 - East German border guards kill 18-year-old Peter Fechter as he attempts to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin
- August 22 - Failed assassination attempt against Charles De Gaulle
- August 23 - John Lennon secretly marries Cynthia Powell
- August 24 - Group of armed Cuban refugee fire at hotel in Havana from a speedboat
- August 27 - NASA launches the Mariner 2 space probe
- August 31 - Trinidad and Tobago become independent
- September 1 - Referendum in Singapore supports Malayan Federation
- September 1 - Typhoon Wanda strikes Hong Kong, at least 130 died and more than 600 were wounded.
- September 2 - Soviet Union agrees to send arms to Cuba
- September 8 - Newly independent Algeria, by referendum, adopts a Constitution.
- September 12 - President John F. Kennedy declares the USA will get a man on the moon by the end of the decade
- September 16 - Malaysia formed with Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and North Borneo
- September 21 - Border conflict between China and India erupts into fighting
- September 21 - New Musical Express, a British music magazine, publishes a story about two 13 year old schoolgirls, Sue and Mary, releasing a disc on Decca, adding, “A Liverpool group, The Beatles, have recorded 'Love Me Do' for Parlophone, set for October 5 release.”
- September 26 - Civil war erupts in Yemen
- September 27 - Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring released, giving rise to the modern environmentalist movement
- September 28 - Prime minister Ahmed Ben Bella founds the first government in Algeria
- September 29 - The Canadian Alouette 1, the first satellite built outside the United States and Soviet Union, is launched from Vandenberg AFB in California

October

Vandenberg AFB
- October 1 - The first black student James Meredith registers in University of Mississippi escorted by Federal marshals
- October 5 - French National Assembly censures the proposed referendum to sanction presidential elections by popular mandate; prime minister Georges Pompidou resigns, but President de Gaulle asks him to stay in office
- October 8 - German Der Spiegel magazine publishes an article about Bundeswehr's bad preparedness - Spiegel scandal erupts
- October 8 - Algeria is accepted into United Nations
- October 9 - Uganda becomes independent within the British Commonwealth
- October 10 - Der Spiegel publishes an article on a NATO exercise criticizing the weakness of the West German army (the offices of the paper are occupied by the police on the 16th)
- October 11 - Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years
- October 12 - Infamous Columbus Day Storm strikes the U. S. Pacific Northwest with wind gusts up to 170 mph (270 km/h); 46 dead, 11 billion board feet (26 million m³) of timber blown down, $230 million U.S. in damages
- October 13 - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opens on Broadway.
- October 14 - Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U-2 flight over Cuba takes photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed. A stand-off then ensues the next day between the United States and the Soviet Union, putting the entire world under threat of a nuclear war
- October 26 - Spiegel scandal - German police occupies Der Spiegel offices in Hamburg
- October 28 - Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that he had ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba
- October 28 - a referendum in France favours the election of the president by universal suffrage
- October 31 - the UN General Assembly requests the United Kingdom to suspend enforcement of the new constitution in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), but the constitution comes into effect on November 1

November

- November 1 – Soviets begins dismantling their missiles in Cuba
- November 5 - Franz Josef Strauß, the West German defence minister, is relieved of his duties over the Spiegel affair because it is alleged that he was involved in police action against the magazine
- November 5 - Saudi Arabia breaks off diplomatic relations with Egypt following a period of unrest partly caused by the defection of several Saudi princes to Egypt
- November 5 - A coal mining disaster in Ny-Ålesund kills 21 people. The Norwegian government is forced to resign in the aftermath of this accident in August, 1963
- November 6 - Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation
- November 7 - Richard M. Nixon loses the California governor's race. In his concession speech, he states that this is his "last press conference" and that "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more"
- November 17 - In Washington, DC, US President John F. Kennedy dedicates Dulles International Airport
- November 20 - Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, US President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.
- November 26 - Spiegel scandal - German police ends its occupation of Der Spiegel offices
- November 27 - Charles De Gaulle tells Georges Pompidou to form a government
- November 29 - An agreement is signed between Britain and France to develop the Concorde supersonic airliner
- November 30 - The United Nations General Assembly elects U Thant of Burma as the new UN Secretary-General

December

- December 2 - Vietnam War: After a trip to Vietnam at the request of US President John F. Kennedy, US Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield becomes the first American official to not make an optimistic public comment on the war's progress
- December 7 - Prince Rainier III of Monaco revises the principality's constitution, devolving some of his formerly autocratic power to several advisory and legislative councils.
- December 8 - Closing of first period of Second Vatican Council
- December 8 - In Brunei sheik Azaharin rebels - it lasts only one day
- December 8 - North Kalimantan National Army revolts in Brunei – first stirrings of Indonesian Confrontation
- December 9 - Tanganyika (now Tanzania) becomes a republic within the Commonwealth, with Julius Nyerere as president
- December 11 - Formation in West Germany of coalition government of Christian Democrats, Christian Socialists, and Free Democrats
- December 14 - US spacecraft Mariner 2 flies by Venus, becoming the first probe to successfully transmit data from another planet
- December 19 - Britain acknowledges the right of Nyasaland (now Malawi) to secede from the Central African Federation
- December 19 - The last foreign-occupied territory of India, Daman and Diu integrated into India
- December 22 - "Big Freeze" in Britain - no frost-free nights until March 5 1963
- December 24 - Cuba releases last of the 1113 participants of the Bay of Pigs Invasion to USA in exchange of food worth $53 million
- December 30 - United Nations troops occupy the last rebel positions in Katanga; Moise Tshombe moves to South Rhodesia

Unknown dates

- Pantyhose becomes available for sale in U.S. department stores
- American ad man Martin K. Speckter invents the interrobang, a new English-language punctuation mark
- Sino-Indian War border dispute involving two of the world's largest nations (between India and the People's Republic of China)
- University of Szeged assumed the name of the great Hungarian poet, Attila József, who was a student here in the 1920s.

Births

January-February

- January 5 - Joe Monzo, American composer
- January 14 - Michael McCaul, American politician
- January 17 - Jim Carrey, Canadian actor and comedian
- January 18 - Jeff Yagher, American actor
- January 21 - Marie Trintignant, French actress (d. 2003)
- February 1 - Tomoyasu Hotei, Japanese guitarist
- February 4 - Clint Black, American musician
- February 5 - Jennifer Jason Leigh, American actress
- February 6 - Axl Rose, American singer (Guns N'Roses)
- February 7 - Garth Brooks, American musician
- February 7 - Eddie Izzard, British actor and comedian
- February 8 - Malorie Blackman, Chilldrens' author
- February 10 - Bobby Czyz, American boxer
- February 10 - Cliff Burton, American bassist (Metallica) (d. 1986)
- February 11 - Sheryl Crow, American singer
- February 11 - Scott Kolden, actor
- February 12 - Jimmy Kirkwood, Irish-born field hockey player
- February 12 - Nana Ioseliani, Georgian chess player
- February 13 - Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, American politician
- February 17 - Lou Diamond Phillips, American actor
- February 21 - Vanessa Feltz, British television presenter
- February 21 - Chuck Palahniuk, American author
- February 21 - David Foster Wallace, American writer
- February 22 - Steve Irwin, Australian herpetologist and television personality
- February 24 - Michelle Shocked, American musician

March

- March 2 - Jon Bon Jovi, American singer, songwriter, and actor
- March 3 - Jackie Joyner-Kersee, American athlete
- March 3 - Herschel Walker, American football player
- March 8 - Michael Graham, American singer, entertainer
- March 7 - Taylor Dayne, American singer
- March 12 - Darryl Strawberry, baseball player
- March 15 - Terence Trent D'Arby, American-born singer
- March 17 - Clare Grogan, Scottish actress and singer
- March 18 - Thomas Ian Griffith, American actor
- March 19 - Ivan Calderón, Puerto Rican Major League Baseball player (d. 2003)
- March 20 - Stephen Sommers, American film director
- March 21 - Matthew Broderick, American actor
- March 21 - Rosie O'Donnell, American comedian, actress, talk show host, and publisher
- March 23 - Steve Redgrave, English rower
- March 26 - John Stockton, American basketball player
- March 30 - MC Hammer, American rapper

April-May

- April 2 - Mark Shulman, American children's author
- April 9 - Imran Sherwani, British field hockey player
- April 10 - Steve Tasker, American football player
- April 11 - Vincent Gallo, American actor
- April 12 - Art Alexakis, American singer and musician (Everclear)
- April 15 - Nawal El Moutawakel, Moroccan hurdler
- April 16 - Ian MacKaye, American musician
- April 19 - Al Unser, Jr., American race car driver
- April 23 - John Hannah, Scottish actor
- May 3 - Anders Graneheim, Swedish bodybuilder
- May 9 - David Gahan, English singer (Depeche Mode)
- May 10 - David Fincher, American film director
- May 12 - Emilio Estevez, American actor
- May 13 - Eduardo Palomo, Mexican actor (d. 2003)
- May 17 - Lise Lyng Falkenberg, Danish writer
- May 20 - Mike Jeffries, American soccer coach
- May 24 - Gene Anthony Ray, American actor (d. 2003)
- May 26 - Bobcat Goldthwait, American actor and comedian
- May 27 - Ravi Shastri, Indian cricketer

June-August

- June 2 - Clyde Drexler, American basketball player
- June 5 - Jeff Garlin, American comedian
- June 8 - Nick Rhodes, English musician (Duran Duran)
- June 10 - Gina Gershon, American actress
- June 13 - Ally Sheedy, American actress
- June 19 - Paula Abdul, American dancer, choreographer, and singer
- June 29 - Amanda Donohoe, English actress
- June 30 - Tony Fernandez, baseball player
- July 3 - Tom Cruise, American actor
- July 5 - Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, Indonesian terrorist
- July 19 - Anthony Edwards, American actor
- July 31 - Wesley Snipes, American actor
- August 1 - Robert Clift, British field hockey player
- August 4 - Roger Clemens, baseball player
- August 5 - Patrick Ewing, Jamaican-born basketball player
- August 6 - Michelle Yeoh, Hong Kong actress
- August 9 - Kevin Mack, American football player
- August 20 - Sophie Aldred, British actress and television presenter
- August 24 - Craig Kilborn, American talk show host
- August 25 - David Packer, American actor
- August 29 - Rebecca De Mornay, American actress

September-October

- September 1 - Ruud Gullit, Dutch footballer
- September 5 - Peter Wingfield, Welsh actor
- September 11 - Elizabeth Daily, American actress
- September 15 - Earnest Byner, American football player
- September 17 - Baz Luhrmann, Australian film director
- September 24 - Jack Dee, British comedian
- September 25 - Aida Turturro, American actress
- September 26 - Melissa Sue Anderson, American actress
- September 26 - Tracey Thorn, British singer
- September 28 - Grant Fuhr, Canadian hockey player
- September 30 - Frank Rijkaard, Dutch football player and manager
- October 1 - Esai Morales, American actor
- October 11 - Joan Cusack, American actress and comedienne
- October 11 - Nicola Bryant, British actress
- October 13 - T'Keyah Crystal Keymáh, American actress and comedian
- October 13 - Kelly Preston, American actress
- October 13 - Jerry Rice, American football player
- October 16 - Flea, Australian actor and bassist (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
- October 16 - Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Russian baritone
- October 19 - Evander Holyfield, American boxer
- October 23 - Doug Flutie, American football player
- October 23 - Mike Tomczak, American football player
- October 25 - Nick Hancock, British actor and television presenter
- October 26 - Cary Elwes, British actor
- October 27 - Ang Peng Siong, Singapore Sportsman
- October 30 - Courtney Walsh, Welsh cricketer

November-December

- November 1 - Magne Furuholmen, Norwegian keyboardist (a-ha)
- November 3 - Marilyn, British musician
- November 4 - Jeff Probst, American television personality
- November 11 - Demi Moore, American actress
- November 19 - Jodie Foster, American actress and director
- November 21 - Steven Curtis Chapman, American musician
- November 24 - John Kovalic, Anglo-American cartoonist
- November 27 - Samantha Bond, British actress
- November 28 - Jon Stewart, American actor and comedian
- November 29 - Andrew McCarthy, American actor
- November 30 - Bo Jackson, American football and baseball player
- November 30 - Daniel Keys Moran, American writer
- December 5 - José Cura, Argentine tenor
- December 8 -

1967

1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January

- January 4 - Algerian revolutionary Mohammed Khider is shot in Madrid.
- January 6 - Vietnam War: USMC and ARVN troops launch "Operation Deckhouse Five" in the Mekong River delta.
- January 10 - Segregationist Lester Maddox inaugurated as governor of Georgia.
- January 13 - Military coup in Togo under the leadership of Etienne Eyadema.
- January 14 - The New York Times reports that the US Army is conducting secret germ warfare experiments.
- January 15 - Louis Leakey announces that he has found prehuman fossils from Kenya - he names the species Kenyapitchecus Africanus.
- January 15 - United Kingdom enters the first round of negotiations for EEC membership in Rome.
- January 16 - Italy announces support for United Kingdom's EEC membership.
- January 18 - Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler," is convicted of numerous crimes and is sentenced to life in prison.
- January 18 - Jeremy Thorpe becomes leader of the Liberal Party
- January 23 - In Munich, trial begins against Wilhelm Harster, accused of murder of 82,856 Jews (including Anne Frank) when he led German security police during the German occupation of Netherlands. He is eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison.
- January 26 - Parliament of the United Kingdom decides to nationalize 90% of British steel industry.
- January 27 - Apollo 1: US astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee are killed when fire erupts in their Apollo spacecraft during a test on the launch pad.
- January 27 - USA, Soviet Union and UK sign the Outer Space Treaty.
- January 31 - West Germany and Romania form diplomatic relations.

February

- February 2 - The American Basketball Association is formed.
- February 3 - Ronald Ryan becomes the last man hanged in Australia, executed for the murder of a prison guard, which he committed while escaping from prison in December 1965
- February 4 - Soviet Union protests the demonstrations before its embassy in Peking
- February 5 - Lunar Orbiter 3 is launched.
- February 5 - Italy's first guided missile cruiser, the Vittorio Veneto (C550), is launched.
- February 5 - General Anastasio Somoza Debayle becomes president of Nicaragua.
- February 6 - Aleksei Kosygin arrives in the UK for an eight-day visit. He meets the Queen on the 9th.
- February 7 - Chinese government announces that it can no longer guarantee safety of Soviet diplomats outside the Soviet embassy building
- February 7 - Serious brush fires in southern Tasmania claim 62 lives
- February 10 - The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified
- February 14 - King Constantine II of Greece flees the country when his coup attempt fails
- February 15 - Soviet Union announces that it has sent troops to near Chinese border
- February 18 - China sends three PLA divisions to Tibet
- February 18 - New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claims he is going to solve the John F. Kennedy assassination and that it was planned in New Orleans
- February 22 - Suharto takes power from Sukarno in Indonesia.
- February 22 - Donald Sangster becomes the new Prime Minister of Jamaica, succeeding Alexander Bustamante.
- February 23 - Trinidad and Tobago are the first Commonwealth nation to join the OAS.
- February 24 - Moscow forbids its satellite states to form diplomatic relations to West Germany
- February 25 - Chinese government announces that it has ordered the army to help in the spring seeding.
- February 25 - Britain's second Polaris missile submarine, HMS Renown, is launched.
- February 26 - Soviet nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalitinsk.
- February 27 - Dutch government supports British EEC membership
- February 27 - Dominica gains independence from the United Kingdom.
- February 27 - The Outer Space Treaty was signed in Washington, London, and Moscow (entered into force October 10, 1967).

March

- March 1 - The city Hatogaya, located in Saitama, Japan is founded
- March 1 - Brazilian police arrest Franc Paul Stangli, ex-commander of Treblinka and Sobibór concentration camps
-

SNOBOL

Hello World

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How computers work: the stored program architecture

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References

1962

Events

January

February

March-April

May-June

July

August-September

October

November

December

Unknown dates

Births

January-February

March

April-May

June-August

September-October

November-December

1967

Events

January

February

March