The Lord of the Rings timeline is hidden within your Mac

As we crawl ever closer to the December 14th release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Mac Observer reminds us that our Macs are fans of Middle Earth as well. Hidden within OS X's Unix architecture is a FreeBSD calendar easter egg that chronicles the Lord of the Rings saga.

You can view the full tally of fantastical event dates by heading to your Mac's Terminal utility and typing the following:

cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr

Once you hit enter, your computer will spit out a nicely detailed list of major dates associated with Lord of the Rings events. If you're not currently near your Apple desktop or MacBook, we've pasted the full calendar of events below for you to enjoy.

TUAW's resident Middle Earth historian, Steve Sande, pointed out to me that the listed birthday of both Frodo and Bilbo are incorrect on the easter egg's list. According to the original books, both hobbits were born on September 22nd, rather than the 14th as is listed below.

#ifndef _calendar_lotr_

#define _calendar_lotr_

01/05 Fellowship enters Moria

01/09 Fellowship reaches Lorien

01/17 Passing of Gandalf

02/07 Fellowship leaves Lorien

02/17 Death of Boromir

02/20 Meriadoc & Pippin meet Treebeard

02/22 Passing of King Ellesar

02/24 Ents destroy Isengard

02/26 Aragorn takes the Paths of the Dead

03/05 Frodo & Samwise encounter Shelob

03/08 Deaths of Denethor & Theoden

03/18 Destruction of the Ring

03/29 Flowering of the Mallorn

04/04 Gandalf visits Bilbo

04/17 An unexpected party

04/23 Crowning of King Ellesar

05/19 Arwen leaves Lorian to wed King Ellesar

06/11 Sauron attacks Osgiliath

06/13 Bilbo returns to Bag End

06/23 Wedding of Ellesar & Arwen

07/04 Gandalf imprisoned by Saruman

07/24 The ring comes to Bilbo

07/26 Bilbo rescued from Wargs by Eagles

08/03 Funeral of King Theoden

08/29 Saruman enters the Shire

09/10 Gandalf escapes from Orthanc

09/14 Frodo & Bilbo's birthday

09/15 Black riders enter the Shire

09/18 Frodo and company rescued by Bombadil

09/28 Frodo wounded at Weathertop

10/05 Frodo crosses bridge of Mitheithel

10/16 Boromir reaches Rivendell

10/17 Council of Elrond

10/25 End of War of the Ring

11/16 Bilbo reaches the Lonely Mountain

12/05 Death of Smaug

12/16 Fellowship begins Quest

#endif /* !_calendar_lotr_ */

The Lord of the Rings timeline is hidden within your Mac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.tuaw.com/2012/11/29/the-lord-of-the-rings-timeline-is-hidden-within-your-mac/

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