1935: The world's first modern frontal leukotomy is performed in a Lisbon hospital by Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz.

Moniz's leukotomy (or leucotomy, from the Greek for "cutting white," in this case the brain's white matter) soon became popularly known as the lobotomy. It was not, however, the surgical procedure now generally associated with lobotomies. Rather, Moniz drilled two holes in the patient's skull and injected pure alcohol into the frontal lobes of the brain to destroy the tissue, in an effort to alter the patient's behavior.

Within a year of Moniz's procedure at Lisbon's Santa Marta Hospital, American neurosurgeons Walter Freeman and James Watts had performed the first prefrontal lobotomy in the United States. Their approach, which they would continue refining in subsequent surgeries, also involved drilling holes, but instead of using alcohol they surgically severed the nerves connecting the prefrontal cortex to the thalamus.

With various refinements, this became standard operating procedure for the prefrontal lobotomy.

Lobotomies were performed on patients suffering from severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia and clinical depression, although its use on people identified as having social disorders was not unknown. That the lobotomy succeeded in altering a person's personality and behavior is beyond dispute, but the results were often drastic, and occasionally fatal.

The notion that a mental patient's behavior could be modified for the good by psychosurgery had its roots in the work of Gottlieb Burckhardt, a 19th century Swiss neurologist who performed a number of crude surgical lobotomies and declared the procedure generally successful. His documentation was almost nonexistent, however, and the view was never universally held in the medical fraternity.

Although Moniz would share the 1949 Nobel Prize in medicine for his pioneering work in psychosurgery, the lobotomy had not only fallen out of favor by the 1950s but was being excoriated as a barbaric practice. The Soviet Union banned the surgery in 1950, arguing that it was "contrary to the principles of humanity." Other countries, including Germany and Japan, banned it, too, but lobotomies continued to be performed on a limited scale in the United States, Britain, Scandinavia and several western European countries well into the 1980s.

The United States performed more lobotomies -- roughly 40,000 -- than any other nation. Some very conspicuous failures, including a lobotomy that reduced John F. Kennedy's elder sister, Rosemary, to a near-vegetative state, helped turn public opinion against the surgery.

Or, as the hard-drinking wit Dorothy Parker observed: "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy."

Source: Various

When Classmates.com told user Anthony Michaels last Christmas Eve that his former school chums were trying to contact him, he pulled out his wallet and upgraded to the premium membership that would let him contact long-lost fifth-grade dodge-ball buddies and see if his secret crush from high school had looked him up online.

But once he'd parted with the $15, Michaels learned the shocking truth: No one he knew was trying to contact him at all. Classmates.com's come-on was a lie, and he'd been scammed.

At least that's what the San Diego resident alleges in a lawsuit (.pdf) filed against one of the net's original social networking sites, whose banner ads featuring unflattering yearbook pictures remain a staple around the internet. If the lawsuit, which is seeking class action status, succeeds, it could raise the minimum standards of honesty for online businesses.

"Upon logging into his Gold Membership profile in order to view the classmate contacts … Plaintiff discovered that in fact, no former classmate of his had tried to contact him or view his profile," the complaint reads. "Of those www.classmates.com users who were characterized ... as members who viewed Plaintiff's profile, none were former classmates of Plaintiff or persons familiar with or known to Plaintiff for that matter."

The putative class action suit, filed in a California state court on October 30, says there are hundreds of thousands of Anthony Michaels around the country who were similarly duped. The lawsuit asks the court to force the company to refund millions in subscription dollars and fine the company for deceptive advertising.

Lawsuits that seem funny are not always a laughing matter, according to Scott A. Kamber, a plaintiff's attorney with KamberEdelson.

"Cases that seemingly have a similar chuckle factor are rooted in a real consumer fraud that influences a consumer purchase decision," Kamber said. "Sometimes people are defrauded and misled and obviously there is a financial benefit in companies making those claims or they wouldn't do it."

Classmates.com could have a good defense, according to internet law expert Mark Rasch, if someone was actually contacting Michaels but was defrauding Classmates.com by claiming to have gone to a certain high school.

"Or were they making statements they know to be false to induce a person to pony up the oney for a premium service to learn these statements weren't true?" Rasch asked. "A lot of this comes down to knowledge and intent on the part of Classmates.com."

Classmates.com was founded in 1995, years before Friendster, MySpace or Facebook grew popular, and is one of the net's largest advertisers, having spent $30 million in 2005, for example, on online advertising.

The company claims to have 40 million registered users, some of whom pay $15 every three months to be able to send and receive messages. The site's billing practices are complained about nearly daily on ConsumerAffairs.com.

The suit is not the first legal action accusing a prominent online company of deception. In 2003, Bonzi Software settled a class action lawsuit that alleged its banner ads (which mimicked Windows operating system warnings) were deceptive. And in January, Member Source Media agreed to pay $200,000 to settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint about the company's spam messages that promised consumers, "Congratulations. You've won an iPod video player."

While the FTC and state attorneys general have handled some deceptive advertising claims, in tight financial times the burden of online fraud fighting is increasingly falling on class-action attorneys, according to Kamber.

"Attorney General offices are seriously under budget pressure and federal enforcement in last eight last years has not been picking up the slack for the state budget issues," Kamber said. "That leaves class action attorneys on the front line of technology in the consumer area."

Neither Classmates.com nor Michaels' law firm, Kabateck, Brown and Kellner, responded to requests for comment.

Attorney Eric Sinrod, a partner at Duane Morris in San Francisco and a legal columnist at Findlaw, says that legitmate companies make a better target for lawsuits than outright scammers, like those sending fraudulent offers of long-lost Nigerian fortunes.

"Classmates.com is not some fly-by-night company -- it is a real service, not something being operated by unknown people offshore," Sinrod said. "So they are subject to U.S. law and regulators if they are conduct themselves improperly."

1856: Englishman Henry Bessemer receives a U.S. patent for a new steel-making process that revolutionizes the industry.

The Bessemer converter was a squat, ugly, clay-lined crucible that simplified the problem of removing impurities — excess manganese and carbon, mostly — from pig iron through the process of oxidation. Once the impurities were removed, either as gas or as solid slag, the properties of the molten steel were bolstered using certain alloys, then poured into molds and given shape.

Depending on the size of the converter, as much as 30 tons of molten iron could be processed in one go. Air was blown into the converter through a number of small channels and forced through the liquid to remove the impurities.

The Bessemer process, which could take as little as 30 minutes to complete, resulted in better quality steel that could be mass-produced. This made steel a viable (read: cheaper) building material and it soon became the standard in heavy construction projects, like skyscrapers and bridges.

The first Bessemer steel mill in the United States opened outside of Detroit in 1855, a year before the U.S. patent was issued. As a Great Lakes port city, and given its proximity to the fertile iron-ore-producing fields in the upper Midwest, Detroit became an early steel-producing town.

Bessemer, meanwhile, moved his mill operations to Sheffield in England's industrial Midlands, which became the British equivalent of Germany's Essen, seat of the Krupp steel dynasty.

Bessemer wasn't alone in working on this process. In fact, an American, William Kelly, developed a similar oxidation technique a few years earlier. He held a patent but was forced through bankruptcy to eventually sell it to Bessemer.

The Bessemer process was used into the 1960s, when it was finally replaced by newer technologies, including the Linz-Donawitz process.

Source: Various

During the nine years of Wired's Return to Sender contest, we received some weird stuff in the mail: broken hard drives, a 5-foot felt "long tail," a wooden DNA helix, and an 8-track player containing an Engelbert Humperdinck tape. The rules called for readers to send us any mailable object; if it came in an envelope or a box, it was disqualified. Winners had a photo of their entry published and received—drumroll, please—a Wired T-shirt. Oh, and immortal glory.

The most prolific contestant was Barry Wood, a 50-year-old government GIS specialist from Vero Beach, Florida. Wood had actually been running his own contest for years, encouraging friends to flummox the Postal Service by sending unusual items he called "permissible objects of postability," or POOP. Once he discovered Wired's contest, he sent us a dozen pieces of POOP, including a mailbox, a conch shell (both winners), buoys, and a pink plastic flamingo. He shelled out nearly $30 to mail an inflatable palm tree, which turned up still inflated. (Sadly, it didn't stay that way, as you can see in the archival video, circa 2006, embedded below.) One year he spent $4,000 on POOP, "but I really didn't care," Wood says, "because sending POOP is my hobby, I mean obsession."

Digital Screen, appeared in Wired Issue 8.08, August 2000.

Macintosh SE, appeared in Wired Issue 8.11, November 2000.

Etch a Sketch, appeared in Wired Issue 9.10, October 2001.

Bra, appeared in Wired Issue 10.03, March 2002.

Guitar, appeared in Wired Issue 10.04, April 2002.

Peeps, appeared in Wired Issue 10.07, July 2002.

Bicycle, appeared in Wired Issue 10.09, September 2002.

High heel shoe, appeared in Wired Issue 11.01, January 2003.

Coconut, appeared in Wired Issue 11.04, April 2003.

Duct tape, appeared in Wired Issue 11.07, July 2003.

Cellphone, appeared in Wired Issue 12.02, February 2004.

Surfboard, appeared in Wired Issue 12.08, August 2004.

Birdcage, appeared in Wired Issue 13.02, February 2005.

Orange, appeared in Wired Issue 13.07, July 2005.

Cowbell, appeared in Wired Issue 14.09, September 2006.

Dragon tail, appeared in Wired Issue 15.02, February 2007.

DNA, appeared in Wired Issue 15.03, March 2007.

Bearded mannequin, appeared in Wired Issue 15.11, November 2007.

Food container, appeared in Wired Issue 16.02, February 2008.

Dear Mr. Know-It-All Am I doing terribly wrong by the planet if I use alkaline batteries instead of rechargeables? I mean, recharging requires power, right?

The disposable-versus-rechargeable battery debate seems ripe for a contrarian conclusion. Sure, a rechargeable can replace dozens of Duracells, but you have to keep plugging it into the power grid, which usually means burning more and more coal.

But the fact is, it takes appreciably more energy to extract metal from the earth, making alkaline batteries the clear loser. A 2007 study by Bio Intelligence Service (admittedly sponsored by French rechargeable battery maker UniRoss) asserted that wearing out a single rechargeable has 28 times less impact on global warming than using alkalines.

Rechargeables are also easier to recycle, thanks to a federal law designed to keep potentially harmful metals—nickel, cadmium, mercury—out of landfills. If your local electronics retailer won't recycle them, the national Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation will help you find someplace that will.

Disposables have their place in mission-critical gadgets used on the go. But in general, on the food pyramid of batteries, alkalines are akin to fats and sweets—enjoy sparingly.

I'm convinced that a butterfingered airport security worker damaged my laptop during a search. Can I get Uncle Sam to pay for a fix?

There's a straightforward process for getting compensation via the Transportation Security Administration's Web site. But don't expect it to happen fast. You stand the best chance of success if you fill out a claim on the spot. The second you step away from the security area without filing a complaint (which sounds like what you did), your odds of obtaining a settlement drop significantly.

Any delay will make it harder to identify the worker involved and establish whether the alleged drop did actually occur. According to Lara Uselding, a TSA spokesperson, the video from security checkpoints is retained for only 30 days. Given that it takes up to three weeks to finally get to TSA's mailroom, you really have only nine days of leeway before all evidence of official clumsiness is deleted.

The TSA couldn't give any statistics on how many after-the-fact complaints result in payouts, but Mr. Know-It-All reckons your chances are slim. The next time you suspect a security employee of battering your precious hardware, conduct an inspection before waltzing off to the gate.

A genetic ancestry test revealed that 29 percent of my DNA is Native American, though I look like your basic white dude. Is it OK for me to mark "Native American" on my census form? Or, for that matter, on my grad school application?

It's always thrilling to discover that your backstory might be richer than you thought. But temper your excitement with the knowledge that DNA tests have serious limitations when it comes to discerning ancestry. While it's certainly possible that you have a Pequot or Cherokee blood, today's technology can't come close to proving such kinship.

Given the way you phrased your results, it sounds like you took an autosomal test, which looks at key markers on chromosomes inherited from both your parents. It is reputedly able to indicate descent from one of four population groups: European, African, East Asian, and Native American. These tests examine a broader swath of the genome than previously available Y-DNA or mtDNA analyses, which check ancestry from either your father or your mother.

Still, even autosomal tests have their limits. "Autosomal tests only examine hundreds or thousands of locations out of the billions of bases in the genome," explains Blaine Bettinger, a biochemist and associate editor at the Journal of Genetic Genealogy. So that Native American DNA cited in your results may well be the only such material in your entire genome, which is many million times bigger than what's been analyzed. As Bettinger notes, you could still be 99 percent European.

Even more vexing is the imprecision of what "Native American markers" really mean. They tend to show up in the results not only of Native Americans but people of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean extraction. So it could just be that you have a distant Greek forebear rather than a Navajo.

You also need to realize that genetic tests have no bearing on tribal citizenship policies. You might (inaccurately) claim to be 29 percent Native American, but no major tribe will enroll you as a member based on DNA alone. You must name an ancestor.

And you probably shouldn't mark "Native American" on any official documents, since universities and other institutions may ask for proof of tribal membership. Still, you're well within your rights to use your results as a genealogical starting point for further research. It's a worthwhile pursuit: Our genetic makeups are invariably more complex than conventional racial classifications. You may grumble over being a "basic white dude," but rest assured your ancestors spanned the globe. So even if, in the end, you do not have any Sitting Bull in you, there could be a little Genghis Khan.

Need help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at mrknowitall@wiredmag.com.