Tag Archives: 1989

15 things that happened the year the internet was born

Today is the 25th birthday of the World Wide Web! Happy Birthday Internet!

It was birthed by a man – Sir Tim Berners-Lee who changed it from a network used academics and computer programmers into something able to be used by anyone.

25 years later and most people can’t live without it. Before smart phones and tablets, one used to go home and surf the internet on the desktop PC. Now it’s available 24/7, on the move.

Get onto the road – check traffic reports on Twitter to find the best route to one’s destination.

Go to the mall – check the app to see which shops have specials.

Want to know what happened on this day 25 years ago – check the internet…ask Google.

So that’s exactly what I did! Here are 15 things that happened 25 years ago – aside from the birth of the WWW:

  1. The Berlin Wall came down
  2. 300 people were killed and more than 7000 were injured in Tiananmen Square
  3. Milli Vanilli won Grammys and AMA’s – we know what happened to them, don’t we?
  4. The Simpsons was first shown on TV
  5. The Exxon Valdez ran aground and caused a catastrophic oil spill in Alaska
  6. 96 Liverpool fans are killed in the Hillsborough disaster
  7. The Dalai Lama wins the Nobel Prize for Peace
  8. The USSR pulls its troops out of Afghanistan
  9. The European Community (now the EU) bans the production of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) by the end of the century
  10. Sky TV is launched in the UK
  11. Ted Bundy is executed
  12. The first GPS satellite is sent into orbit
  13. Nintendo begins selling the Gameboy
  14. Microsoft Office was first released
  15. The movie When Harry Met Sally was released into movie theatres

In compiling this fun post, the following webpages were consulted. Thank you Sir Tim Berners-Lee!

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/happy-birthday-world-wide-web-turn-25-n39571
http://www.thestar.com/life/technology/2014/03/11/happy_birthday_internet_a_look_back_on_the_year_the_web_was_born.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989
 http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1989.html