If you would've told someone back in 1984 that Alexey Pajitnov would become world renowned, they would've likely laughed you right out of Russia. But on June 6th of that very year, said individual created what's easily the planet's most recognizable puzzle game: Tetris. We mean, who didn't have a childhood obsession with playing this very title on a TI-83 calculator while professors figured you were toiling away on classwork? Ah, good times. Feel free to share your best memories in comments below, and remember, there's no shame in tearing up. Or longing for a "T" to come along and fill that one last gap there on the right.

A wise man once said: "Life moves pretty fast -- if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

At Engadget, that's more than true. We're usually so busy with our heads down -- fingers furiously tapping away on keyboards, news flying in at a breakneck pace -- that we barely have time to take measure of it all. We've been so busy, in fact, that we somehow managed to miss our own 5th birthday... by over a month! If you want to date check that, you can read our very first post right here.

Luckily, we happen to have the most amazing group of readers in the world, and one of them, rock99rock, shook us out of our news-trance and reminded us that we should probably spare a little time for reflection.

So, we don't want to make a huge deal of it, but we do want to thank everyone who visits the site everyday and keeps making it what it is. We'd be nothing without the eyes and minds of the obsessive, brilliant, and frankly handsome fans that are as voracious about reading tech news as we are about writing it. You're the soul of Engadget, and we thank you from the bottom of our cold, robotic hearts.

-Team Engadget

Bonus round: Stay tuned for a contest in celebration of the big event coming later today -- and have some cake for us!

We're not quite sure how much related celebrating went on this past weekend, but the iconic Compact Disc managed to hit the big three-oh. The IEEE was credited with presenting its prestigious IEEE Milestone Award to Royal Philips Electronics for its contribution to the development of the CD, and as the story goes, the award coincides with the 30th anniversary of the "historic demonstration of the first CD prototype codenamed 'Pinkeltje' on March 8th, 1979." While many would argue that the CD is on its way out in favor of smaller, highly portable MP3 files, the disc has definitely left a lasting mark on the industry. To date, over 3.5 billion audio CD players have been sold alongside 240 billion discs. Oh, and not to be a Debbie Downer or anything, but what are the chances that we won't be throwing an "over the hill" party for this here format?

[Thanks, Sylva]

It seems like only yesterday that we were wrapping Engadget Mobile in swaddling clothes and showing it off to the grandparents. Now look at it: a gargantuan force of pure cellphone-news terror, stomping across the internet and taking no prisoners. How adorable. And to think, it all started three years ago today! Take a moment and head over to our favorite mobile phone site in the world and wish them a happy birthday -- they deserve it. Oh, you might be interested to know they're giving away an HTC S740 to celebrate, so it's not just cake and ice cream that's being slung over there.

Here's to the next three... hundred!

Hard to believe that Jack Kilby's unsightly concoction (pictured above) turned 50 yesterday, but it's true. Half a century ago, Mr. Kilby crafted the integrated circuit, which ended up having a monumental impact on taking computers from warehouse-sized to, well, not-warehouse-sized. As the story goes, the very first microchip was demonstrated on the 12th of September in 1958, and it passed its first test: "producing a sine wave on an oscilloscope screen." Safe to say we all know how things progressed from there. Here's to you, IC -- and here's to 50 more.

[Via MAKE]

Texas Instruments has a lot to do with the original microchip, if for no other reason than being the employer of inventor Jack Kilby. Now, however, TI is looking to produce chips and other related gizmos that require an infinitesimally small amount of energy to operate. The overriding theme guiding the engineers is "energy scavenging," which alludes to grasping power from even the most unlikely of places -- vibrations from a bridge as cars pass over, capturing wasted exhaust from a car or bottling up all that frustration your sibling shows when you own him / her again in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The possibilities are just about endless, with networked battery-free smoke alarms, solar-powered mobiles and gaming laptops that feed off of extraordinarily focused brain waves in the mix. Okay, so that last one is still eons from reality, but at least we're headed in that direction.

Happy 40th birthday, Intel! Now that you're over the hill, we'd suggest buying a Porsche, building completely custom one-off chips for Apple, or in some other way jeopardizing your financial well being in order to actualize pent-up childhood dreams, but we'd say AMD's recent struggles are just about the best present you could've asked for. Sure, the EU is trying its best to put a damper on things, but don't let that get you down, your best years are still to come. Maybe.

[Thanks, Kevin]

Odds are, you take your iPod or Zune for granted. You probably don't think about the crazy technological advancements we've made, but take a ten-year look back at the world's first MP3 player -- the MPMan F10 -- and you'll get a sense of just how far we've come. Manufactured by Korea's Saehan Information Systems, the device was launched in March of 1998 at CeBIT, and went on sale in the Summer through Eiger Labs for $250. The player featured 32MB of flash memory (which could be upgraded to 64MB via mail-in scheme), connected to PCs via parallel port, and had a miniscule LCD for playback info -- but it laid the groundwork for the tech we have today. Following the MPMan's release, Rio unleashed its PMP300, which received a warmer reception and all-but eclipsed the F10's status as "first" amongst players, likely due to the company's well-known (and groundbreaking) legal battle against the RIAA. Still, first is first, so help keep the MPMan's rich history alive, and celebrate its ten-year anniversary this month with campfire songs and story-telling. Check out the archived read link of the original Eiger Labs site for a wild and wacky trip through time.

[Via Register Hardware]

Ever wondered what it'd be like to have two birthdays in a single year? If so, just phone up, er, text SMS -- it's living the dream, baby! Apparently, the first "recorded text message" was sent from software engineer Neil Papworth to Richard Jarvis, a director at Vodafone, on December 3, 1992, which is arguably the birthday of SMS as we know it. Granted, the Short Message Service Center has been around just a hair longer, but without an official birth certificate tied to either, who are we to argue? So, here's to you (yet again), dear text messaging, but if you really try to sneak a third shindig in before the year's up, don't look to us to provide another round of hors d'oeuvres.

[Via TGDaily, image courtesy of The Sydney Morning Herald]

It may be underpowered, but it's got a big heart. Oh, and we hear it's doing alright for itself in this generation's console war, but that's all hearsay. That's right, Nintendo's Wii turns one year old today, and what a magical year it's been.

[Wii cake courtesy of Henry S.]

See that Wii or Xbox sitting under your TV? The PSP or DS tucked away in your messenger bag? That copy of Pac-man on your cellphone which cost five bucks and expires next month? Each of them owe a debt of gratitude to the granddaddy of all videogame consoles, the Atari 2600, which ushered in an era of unprecedented television usage, and which turns 30 years old this month. That's right, the first 2600 units rolled off the assembly line in October of 1977, delighting both children and kids at heart with games like Pitfall and Pole Position, and helping distract the nation after the untimely death of the King, the tragic crash of Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane, and Pele's retirement. So here's to you, dear 2600: Atari may only be a shadow of its former self today, but you've lived on in our fond memories, in retro Flashback products, and last but not least, in tricked-out mods from the great Ben Heckendorn.

Hard to believe that Wacom has been around for a quarter century, but this month marks its 25th year in business. To celebrate, the firm is introducing a trio of Intuos3 Special Edition pen tablets in a variety of sizes including 6- x 8-, 6- x 11-, and 9- x 12-inches. Each tablet touts "a refined and sophisticated black and gun metal gray color scheme," Wacom's Classic Pen to compliment the Intuos3 Grip Pen, an accessory kit, and a transparent overlay "to substitute with the traditional gray overlay." All three units play nice with both Macs and PCs and can be snapped up for $369, $409 and $489 from smallest to largest.

[Via PC World]

Just this summer we saw text messaging party down after turning 15, and now its time to get your weekend started right by celebrating 20 whole years of GSM. Reportedly, "15 phone firms signed an agreement to build mobile networks based on the Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications" on this day in 1987, and while it took "12 years for the first billion mobile connections to be made," things have pretty much taken off since then. So here's to 20 incredibly fruitful years, GSM, you've earned it.

[Thanks James; image courtesy of RetroBrick]

Just days after the IBM ThinkPad threw a shindig for its 15th, now we've reason to don our party hats once more for yet another notable birthday. The mobile phone industry is celebrating the 15th year of the Short Message Service Center (SMSC), which was the "principal application behind text messaging first brought to market by Acision in 1992." Over the years, the basic SMSC box has evolved into an IP-based SMS architecture, and while early iterations had a capacity of ten messages per second, current setups can handle a nearly infinite amount (good thing, huh?). So here's to you, dear SMS, and while we certainly hope you manage to hang around another 15 years or so, how's about cooling off the perpetual price increases along the way?

[Thanks, John]

If you were looking for any reason whatsoever to hop into a celebratory mood, why not join IBM (or would it be Lenovo these days?) in celebrating the 15th birthday of the ThinkPad. Of course, tech historians are likely to bicker over the ThinkPad's true day of emergence, but reportedly, the IBM 2521 (later renamed the 700T) ThinkPad holds the honors of being the first of its kind to ship in July of 1992. Interestingly enough, one could argue that this very machine was actually more akin to a tablet PC than a bonafide laptop, but it proudly donned the ThinkPad logo nevertheless. So, ThinkPad owners, today's your day to gift that oh-so-industrious machine of yours with a few extra moments of rest, but before you do, why not let us know what model you're partying with if you're in the club?

[Via jkOnThRun]