The butterfly effect

8th Oct 1871

A fire breaks out in the barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary in south-west Chicago. Theories for its origin include a cow kicking over a lantern, a man knocking over a lamp while fleeing an illegal card game and a meteor shower setting fire to some hay.

8th-10th Oct 1871

The blaze escalates to become the Great Fire of Chicago, which spreads rapidly thanks to the fact that most of the city’s buildings, roads and pavements are made of wood. The conflagration destroys 17,500 buildings and leaves a third of the population homeless.

1871-1920

Wealthy Chicagoans needing a place to stay while the city is rebuilt head to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where they build homes and start social clubs. In 1911, Chicago banking millionaires Charles and Frances Hutchinson build a Horticultural Hall for gardeners.

1968

Gaming enthusiast Gary Gygax books the Horticultural Hall for the first official Gen Con wargaming convention. Nearly 200 people attend its second outing at the Hall in 1969, including Minnesota student Dave Arneson. Gygax and Arneson bond over a love of Napoleonic war games.

January 1974

Arneson and Gygax create role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, in which players invent their own characters who set off on adventures in a fantasy world, guided by a ‘dungeon master’. The game, launched in 1974, becomes a cultural and commercial hit.

1993

While playing Dungeons & Dragons in Mesquite, Texas, software designer John Romero makes a move which, according to dungeon master John Carmack, “causes the entire world to be overrun by demons”. Inspired, the pair create demon-fighting video game Doom, followed by Doom II.

1995

Massachusetts teenager Kevin Systrom gets his first computer and starts playing Doom II, which he later credits for inspiring him to learn how to write computer code. In 2009 he codes a photo-sharing app. In tribute to his love of whiskey, he calls it Burbn.

Mar 2010

Systrom attends a Silicon Valley party where he meets a pair of venture capitalists and shows them Burbn. They agree to fund the app’s development. Systrom quits his job to focus on his product and a stripped-back version is launched in October 2010 under the new name Instagram. Within a year it has more than ten million users. In May 2015, Coleen Rooney, one of the original ‘Wags’ (Wives and Girlfriends of England football team players) sets up a public Instagram account.

2019

Having set up a separate private account, Rooney begins to suspect one of its followers of sharing her personal details with The Sun newspaper. She secretly blocks all her other followers and posts fake stories to see if they are published. They are.

9th Oct 2019

Rooney takes to Twitter to reveal her subterfuge, claiming the source of the leak was Rebekah Vardy’s account. Vardy sues Rooney for libel.
Rooney’s amateur sleuthing earns her the nickname ‘Wagatha Christie’ in the press.

29th Jul 2022

After three years of legal wrangling, vast lawyers’ fees and a week-long trial that began with Rooney’s barrister saying “This whole court might just think: why on Earth are we here?”, high court judge Mrs Justice Steyn delivers her verdict, finding in favour of Rooney. In October Vardy is compelled to pay up to £1.5 million of Rooney’s legal fees.

Posted on Friday, June 28th, 2024 - Categories: #48 - Jul-Sep 2022, App Issues.