Now I have two questions for you; 1) who wrote the first (known) book on algebra? 2) who wrote the first algorithm intended for processing by a machine?

al-Kwarezmi, like the Empire. It is possible that he was translating Indian knowledge into Persian or Arabic. This was a texture event pop up in a video game.

I don't know the second one. My guess would be Babbage or Lovelace.

@Gopher: you’re right on both accounts. Ada Lovelace is usually attributed to being the author of the first computer algorithm, i.e. the world’s first programmer.

I try to have a "fact of the day". I'll offer three related questions that together constitute my "fact of the year" from 2016:

What city has served as the capital of the Persian/Iranian nation-state for the longest period of time over the last 2500-ish years?
What other city (now defunct) sat directly across the river from this city?
What present day large city is roughly 30 miles away from this city?

Can’t think of anything better than Persepolis or Babylon, but I have no idea of those were capitals for a very long time...

@d-ice, that's ok, part of me didn't really expect anyone to get it anyway. The person I refer to is Nestor Makhno. The Ukrainian War of Independence was an attempt after WWI to set up an independent Ukrainian government from the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian Republic was beset with corruption, internal strife, and continuing revolts by people who wanted to join the Soviet Union as well as anarcho-communists, led by Nestor Makhno.
In addition to being somewhat eastern, study of this part of history is fairly restricted to Ukrainians and anarchists because it's usually considered part of the wider Russian Civil War. So bonus points for guessing the relative time period.

@gopher27 This stumps me as well, but I think I remember something about that first city you describe being in or near Mazandaran for some reason? That doesn't seem right at all; I feel like it would be in Fars. As for the last question, I want the answer to be Tehran, though that seems mutually exclusive with my guess for the first question.