In J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth books, powerful "royal-dragons" (including, Scatha and Glaurung) inhabiting the Withered Heath, a desolate region in the eastern range of the Grey Mountains, notoriously the abode of Dragons. They were so called, due their ability to "lay waste to entire regions" . In "modern times", a Cornell Grad student, Robert Morris, created the Internet Worm of November 2-3, 1988. Morris maintained that his ingenious "worm" program was meant to explore the Internet harmlessly, but due to bad programming, the worm self-replicated out of control, and crashed some six thousand Internet computers. It was christened the Great Worm as a play on Tolkien.