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World Wide Web Turns Twenty!

August 8th, 2011 by admin

Hard to believe the World Wide Web isn't even old enough to drink (in the USA at least)!

This past weekend was the twenty year anniversary of the first web site going live. August 6, 1991 the very first web site went up at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, it gave an overview of hypertext, technical details for creating your own page, and an explanation on how to search the Web for information.

Many other significantly important events, or at least memorable ones, occurred in 1991. Do you remember any of these?

  • Jan 16 - Operation Desert Storm begins with air strikes against Iraq.
  • Jan 16 - US serial killer Aileen Wuornos confesses to the murders of six men.
  • Jan 27 - The Buffalo Bills begin their 4 year streak of being the losing team at the Super Bowl.
  • Mar 03 - An amateur video captures the beating of motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles, California police officers.
  • Apr 17 - The DOW Jones Industrial Average closes above 3,000 for the first time ever, at 3,004.46 (today it's sitting around 11,000).
  • Jun 17 - The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act, which had required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.
  • Jul 01 - The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague.
  • Jul 22 - Boxer Mike Tyson is arrested and charged with the rape of Miss Black America contestant Desiree Washington 3 days earlier, in Indianapolis Indiana.
  • Jul 22 - Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is arrested after the remains of 11 men and boys are found in his Milwaukee, Wisconsin apartment.
  • Aug 06 - Tim Berners-Lee announces the World Wide Web project and software on the alt.hypertext newsgroup.
  • Aug 25 - Student Linus Torvalds posts a message to Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix about the new operating system kernel he has been developing.
  • Sep 10 - I turned 16.
  • Sep 22 - The Huntington Library makes the Dead Sea Scrolls available to the public for the first time.
  • Oct 29 - The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid
  • Nov 05 - The body of publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell is found floating in the Atlantic Ocean.
  • Nov 07 - Los Angeles Lakers point guard Magic Johnson announces that he has HIV, which lead to ending his NBA career.
  • Dec 04 - Journalist Terry A. Anderson is released after 7 years' captivity as a hostage in Beirut (the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon).
  • Dec 25 - Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the Sovient Union, from which most republics have already seceded, anticipating the dissolution of the 73-year-old state.
  • Dec 26 - The Cold War ends when the Supreme Soviet meets and formally dissolves the Soviet Union.

Posted in: random thoughts