The First Email, The First Tweet, And 13 Other Famous Internet Firsts

When was the first email sent, and who sent it?

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What was the first ad to ever run on a web page?

How about the first picture uploaded to the Internet?

Here are 15 famous Internet firsts that were monumental in shaping web history.

first picture online
The first photo ever uploaded to the Internet.
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The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson to himself in 1971. "The test messages were entirely forgettable. . . . Most likely the first message was QWERTYIOP or something similar," he said.

Ray Tomlinson first email
Ray Tomlinson sent to world's first email in 1971. He sent it to himself. Flickr via whlwcl

We can blame ARPANET for the first spam email, which was sent to 393 people on May 3, 1978.

Gmail delete spam
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The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Now it serves as a historic site.

symbolics first domain registered
Symbolics

The first website was dedicated to information about the World Wide Web and went live on August 6, 1991. Here's the url: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.

first web page website 1992
Info.cern.ch
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The first picture ever uploaded on the web was posted by Tim Burners Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) on behalf of a comedy band called Les Horrible Cernettes.

first photo uploaded online
Gizmodo via Motherboard

The first AOL Instant Message was sent by Ted Leonsis to his wife on Jan. 6, 1993. It read, "Don't be scared ... it is me. Love you and miss you."

Ted Leonsis
AP

His wife replied, "Wow ... this is so cool!" Leonsis later became AOL's Vice Chairman.

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Joe McCambley ran the first banner ad ever online. It went live in October 1994 on HotWired.com and it promoted 7 art museums, sponsored by AT&T.

first banner ad

The first item sold on eBay (back then it was AuctionWeb) was a broken laser pointer for $14.83 in 1995. The man who bought it told founder Pierre Omidyar he collected broken laser pointers.

laser pointer iphone
Daily Mobile
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The first book purchased on Amazon was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought in 1995.

amazon book
Amazon

The first sentence uttered on Skype was in Estonian in April 2003 by a member of the development team. It was 'Tere, kas sa kuuled mind?' or "Hello, can you hear me?" in English.

skype
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Mark Zuckerberg was the first person on Facebook with ID number 4 (the first three Facebook accounts were used for testing). The first non-founder to join Facebook was Arie Hasit (below), who is now in Israel studying to be a rabbi.

arie haset early facebook user
BuzzFeed

The first YouTube video posted was posted by co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. It was uploaded on April 23, 2005 and has been watched nearly 10 million times.

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The first tweet was written by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006.

first tweet jack
Twitter/@Jack

Bonus: The first commercial cell phone call ever made was in 1983. It was placed by Bob Barnett who was president of Ameritech. Video of the call is below.

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Bonus: The first-ever Business Insider article (then Silicon Alley Insider) was published on May 16, 2007 by Editor in Chief, Henry Blodget.

business insider first article
Business Insider

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