Here's a very good video I found on reddit by Douglas Crockford from Yahoo!, covering the history and basics of javascript. I found it quite interesting, perhaps you will too. Video below.
Update: There are slight errors with pausing/unpausing the video in Safari. If you experience it, as in the pause only working once, just click on the exact place you are on the trackbar once, and it'll work again. Shitty, but atleast it works.
Update 2: Here are the links for the next parts:
Part 2: http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?ei=UTF-8&b=24&vid=111594&gid=133414
Part 3: http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?ei=UTF-8&b=25&vid=111595&gid=133414
Part 4: http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?ei=UTF-8&b=7&vid=111596&gid=133414