This Day in History (1996): Abqaiq school students put their yearbook on CD ROM

From the Feb. 7, 1996,  edition of The Arabian Sun

The entire 1995 Abqaiq School Yearbook will now fit in the palm of your hand. This one-of-a-kind feat is possible thanks to the ability of six students under the tutelage of Terry Cornelius, the school's computer teacher, and Bruce Drake, independent study director.

They went from designing and producing a multimedia yearbook to producing a compact disc that runs on an Apple Macintosh computer.

Drake assisted in supervising the project, and Richard Kenyon provided guidance.

Recalling how it call came about, Cornelius told how the students, then in seventh and eighth grade, decided to seek an alternative to foreign language courses. 

The school, always ready to explore new ground, formed an independent study class. Sarah Cornelius, Calvin Hardy, Matt Horn, Hamideh Hassouneh, Tan Salt, and Abdul Rahman Beiruti tuned into the spirit of adventure.

The final result of their effort, which took about 16 weeks to accomplish, was the CD. It contains not only information from the yearbook, but each student in the school had a chance to give a voice-over self introduction and talk about his or her favorite things.

"Not only did they enjoy making the disc, they enjoy watching it," says Cornelius. "There is an incentive in a student getting his work published."

The 1996 Yearbook will run on either a PC or a Mac.

Also on this date

2014 — Scientists announce that the Happisburgh footprints in Norfolk, England, date back to more than 800,000 years ago, making them the oldest known hominid footprints outside Africa

2013 — Mississippi officially certifies the 13th Amendment, become the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. 

2009 — Bushfires in Victoria, Australia, leave 173 dead in the worst natural disaster in the country’s history

1999 — Crown Prince Abdullah becomes King of Jordan after the death of his father, King Hussein

1995 — Ramzi Yousef, the man behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Pakistan

1992 — The Maastricht Treaty is signed, leading to the creation of the European Union

1991 — Jean-Bertand Aristide is sworn in as Haiti's first democratically elected president

1984 — Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk

1974 — Grenada gains its independence from the U.K.

1962 — The U.S. bans all Cuban imports

1940 — The second full-length animated Disney film, Pinocchio, premieres

1863 — the HMS Orpheus sinks off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand, killing 189

1497 — In Florence, Italy, supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burn cosmetics, art, and books in a "Bonfire of the vanities"

574 — Prince Hotoku of Japan is born