theLogBook.com is a chronicle of how we used to imagine the future – an ever-expanding
logbook of what our entertainment, our culture, and even our brightest minds thought would happen.
It’s nostalgia – and some real history – that gives factual context to the fiction, cultural
context to the factual, and always looks to the future.

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Published On: August 15, 2023

Babylon 5Warner Bros. releases the animated movie Babylon 5: The Road Home. direct to DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital. Written by series creator J. Michael Straczynski, and featuring surviving original series stars Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Peter Jurasik, Bill Mumy, Tracy Scoggins, and Patricia Tallman, with new actors voicing other familiar characters from the series. Read more

Published On: August 15, 2011

EurekaSyfy airs the 59th episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Ming-Na Wen (Agents Of SHIELD, The Book Of Boba Fett), Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000), and Tembi Locke (Sliders) guest star.

More about Eureka in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store

Published On: August 15, 2008

Star Wars: The Clone WarsWarner Bros. releases the CGI animated movie Star Wars: The Clone Wars, set during the Clone Wars between Star Wars Episode II and Episode III, and featuring the voice talents of Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, and James Arnold Taylor. Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Daniels, and Christopher Lee reprise the voices of their live action characters. This is also the launching point for the upcoming Clone Wars television series, animated in the same style. Read more

Published On: August 15, 2006

EurekaSci-Fi Channel airs the fifth episode of the quirky modern-day science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson, Debrah Farentino, Joe Morton, and Matt Frewer. (In the UK and elsewhere, this series is retitled A Town Called Eureka.) Saul Rubinek guest stars.

More about Eureka in the LogBook and theLogBook.com Store

Published On: August 15, 2002

CONTOURLaunched on July 3rd, NASA’s comet-chasing CONTOUR (Comet Nucleus Tour) space probe fails to respond to an all-important, critically-timed command that would send it toward its first rendevous with a comet. As NASA engineers attempt to regain contact, high-powered telescopes pick up what may be a cloud of the $159,000,000 space probe’s debris as it settles into a leisurely orbit around the sun. A definitive cause for the failure of the CONTOUR mission is never found.

Published On: August 15, 1991

Doctor WhoVirgin Publishing releases the second novel in the Doctor Who New Adventures series, “Timewyrm: Exodus” by early ’70s Doctor Who script editor Terrance Dicks. This book continues the four-part Timewyrm cycle and revisits the War Lord last seen in the 1969 TV story The War Games, and long before the TV episode Let’s Kill Hitler, places the Doctor in the company of Hitler. This is Dicks’ first Doctor Who prose which is not a direct adaptation of a television story. Read more

Published On: August 15, 1985

Alien NationGNP Crescendo releases the first-ever CD of Alexander Courage’s music from the original Star Trek television series, presenting selections from the two pilot episodes, The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before. This is the first time that music from the original series has been presented, other than countless recordings and remakes of the main title theme. Read more

Published On: August 15, 1981

VanguardChallenging players to fly their space fighter through an array of twisty mazes in an attempt to reach the final goal – destroying the “brain” of an enemy rocket – SNK’s Vanguard is released in American arcades. This is one of the first coin-op video games to present the player with an option upon running out of “lives”: allow the game to end, or insert another quarter or token to continue from the last position. Read more

Published On: August 15, 1979

WarriorCinematronics gives arcade players the chance to fall on their swords – or their opponent’s sword – in the first-ever head-to-head fighting video game, Warrior. Combining the company’s “Vectorbeam” vector graphics with a brilliantly colorful backdrop illuminated by blacklight, Warrior is a feast for the eyes and becomes an arcade cult classic. Read more

Published On: August 15, 1977

The WOW SignalRadio astronomers at Ohio State University observe a signal from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius that seems to jump out from the usual cosmic background noise. The 72-second signal is quickly dubbed the “Wow Signal” (thanks to a hastily scribbled note), and is considered by some to be a strong candidate for a message from an extraterrestrial civilization since its frequency falls almost exactly on the hydrogen line of the electromagnetic spectrum, a wavelength closely watched by the SETI program. But more powerful telescopes listening in on the same region of space in the years and decades to come pick up no further signals. Scientists involved in the initial analysis later admit that the “message” may be of Earthly origin, reflected back from an object in space.

Absolutely no generative AI was used in the creation of the content on this website.
It’s mostly just some guy named Earl.

EG