1899: Henry Bliss becomes the first pedestrian known to be killed by an automobile in North America.

Bliss, a Manhattan real estate salesman, had just stepped off a streetcar at West 74th Street and Central Park West (a few blocks south of the American Museum of Natural History) when he was struck by a passing taxicab. It knocked him unconscious, crushing his skull and chest. He died the following morning.

The driver of the cab, an electric-powered vehicle, was arrested and charged with manslaughter. The charges were dropped after it was determined that Bliss’ death was unintentional.

On the...

This gold-hued Nintendo World Championships cartridge is one of the most valuable videogames in existence.  Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

One Friday afternoon in 2010, Pat Contri got the Facebook message of every videogame collector’s dreams. A friend who worked at the local game store started texting him cryptic photographs of something a customer had just traded in.

He stared at the blurry, gray-and-green pictures. What at first looked like a row of shelves, he eventually realized, was a close-up of several exposed DIP switches. Just then, like a Tetris block dropping neatly into place, it...