An outdoor hobby of traveling to a randomly generated GPS coordinate, computed each day from the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the date by an algorithm published in the xkcd webcomic's 426th strip on May 21, 2008, and documenting the trip afterward, usually with a photograph of a GPS device at the site and a written account. Participants often use the visit as an occasion for small acts of exploration or tidying, picking up litter or noting features at an otherwise unremarkable point, and the community marks May 21 each year as Geohash Day.
Facts
Established When (Circa) OriginGeohashing was inspired by the 426th xkcd webcomic strip, titled Geohashing, published on May 21, 2008, which described an algorithm generating a random GPS coordinate each day from the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the date. 1 Connections
Associated With
Geohashing was invented as a variant of geocaching, borrowing its GPS-coordinate-hunting format but generating a new random target location each day.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Geohashing - Wikipedia
Lead paragraph
Geohashing is an outdoor recreational activity inspired by the webcomic xkcd by Randall Munroe, in which participants have to reach a random location (chosen by a computer algorithm), prove their achievement by taking a picture of a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or another mobile device and then tell the story of their trip online.
History section, first sentence on xkcd 426
On May 21, 2008, the 426th xkcd comic was published.
History section, sentence describing the algorithm
Titled Geohashing, it described a way for a computer to create an algorithm that could generate random Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates each day based on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the current date.
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