  We review the fundamentals of vanilla and exotic microlensing. Deviations
from the standard form of an achromatic, time-symmetric lightcurve can be
caused by the parallax and xallarap effects, finite source size effects and
binarity. The pioneering experiments of MACHO, EROS and OGLE reported first
candidate events exactly ten years ago, so now is an opportune moment to
summarise the achievements of the First Heroic Decade. Three applications are
reviewed in detail -- namely (i) searches for compact dark objects in the
Galactic halo, (ii) probes of the baryonic mass distribution in the inner
Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy and (iii) studies of the limb darkening of
source stars. Finally, we suggest four projects for the Second Heroic Decade --
(i) K band microlensing towards the Bulge, (ii) pixel lensing towards the low
luminosity spiral galaxy M33, (iii) polarimetry of on-going microlensing events
and (iv) astrometric microlensing with the GAIA satellite.
