Today in History (UNIX Calendar) app for iPhone and iPad

In the early days of Unix, a date-tagged list of historical events was used by system administrators to add some interest to the systems Message of the Day. Whenever users logged in they would be presented with the latest system notices, perhaps some mildly amusing quotes and one or two lines of historical events, based on the current date.

The Today in History (UNIX calendar) includes many of the entries from the original list, more items which first appeared in usenet groups and is now updated with new events each year.

Other things unique to the UNIX calendar are references to dates found in fictional literature such as Lord of the Rings, perhaps undue emphasis on people and events that were part of popular culture in the 70s and technical minutiae about computers and operating systems that might not be found in other places.