Jason English
What Was the First Video Uploaded to YouTube?
by Jason English - August 10, 2010 - 3:15 PM

In case it comes up, the first video uploaded to YouTube featured co-founder Jawed Karim discussing elephants at the San Diego Zoo.

The first book sold on Amazon was Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. And the first item sold on eBay was a non-functioning laser pointer.

Let’s turn this into today’s book giveaway. Got any other internet firsts we should know about? The person with the most interesting fact wins a copy of Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking: Uncork Your Creative Juices, by Michael Gelb.

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Comments (55)

  1. First video shown on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star

    posted by jdthinksso on 8-10-2010 at 3:26 pm

  2. First tweet ever:

    http://twitter.com/jack/status/20

    posted by Kevin on 8-10-2010 at 3:33 pm

  3. The first album that came out on CD was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”

    posted by KerriD on 8-10-2010 at 3:39 pm

  4. The first computer code I executed made the word “Hello World!” flash on the screen for an instant.

    posted by Witty Nickname on 8-10-2010 at 3:43 pm

  5. Hmm…. First Mental Floss Blog Post!

    posted by KJ on 8-10-2010 at 3:43 pm

  6. First tweet was by Jack Dorsey stating “just setting up my twttr”

    posted by Michelle on 8-10-2010 at 3:44 pm

  7. Symbolics.com is the first and oldest domain name on the Internet

    posted by Michelle on 8-10-2010 at 3:48 pm

  8. Gary Thuerk was the first spammer. In 1978 when only a few thousand people were on the Internet (or ARPANET at that time), he sent out an invitation to a corporate open house to 600 people at once. People were livid about his behavior.

    posted by Martin on 8-10-2010 at 3:48 pm

  9. The earliest MF post I can find is ‘The Original “Cat Power?” ‘ from March 1, 2006 by Mangesh.

    posted by KJ on 8-10-2010 at 3:48 pm

  10. Because he made contact with most of his post-1995 victims in on-line chat rooms, John Edward Robinson is sometimes referred to as “the Internet’s first serial killer.”

    posted by Michelle on 8-10-2010 at 3:50 pm

  11. First bank to offer internet banking to all of it’s members was Stanford Federal Credit Union in Palo Alto, CA.

    See Wikipedia link under my name.

    posted by Katie Rose on 8-10-2010 at 3:51 pm

  12. The First guy on Mars will be Philip J. Fry.

    posted by coffeeshoppigeion on 8-10-2010 at 3:51 pm

  13. The first computer virus was called Creeper, and appeared on ARPANET. It copied itself, and printed the message “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” The Reaper program was created to delete Creeper.

    “Troll” was first used on the internet to describe a commenter in 1992

    The first message sent on the internet was just ‘lo’ – it was supposed to be ‘log’, but the system crashed on the ‘g’.

    posted by joanna on 8-10-2010 at 3:54 pm

  14. The first birth shown live on the Internet was for a program by America’s Health Network in 1998

    posted by Marianne on 8-10-2010 at 4:11 pm

  15. The internet’s first first-person shooter game that allowed multi-player functions was DOOM, which was released in 1993. Two of us put it on several of the computers in the computer lab in 1996 and spent our days in Computer Applications and Keyboarding blowing each other away. Ah, the good old days!

    posted by Jessica Leigh on 8-10-2010 at 4:37 pm

  16. The first item sold on ebay was a broken laser shooter for $14.83. The buyer gave the reason for buying as “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.”

    posted by Gregg on 8-10-2010 at 4:39 pm

  17. First time I rode a motorcyle was in 1977 and I wrecked it and now have two bright shiny porcelain crows in place of my front teeth. (that was 32 years ago)

    posted by Hyacinth on 8-10-2010 at 4:44 pm

  18. The first Google April Fools’ joke was MentalPlex, a search that worked by reading the user’s mind instead of having them type in what they wanted to search for.

    posted by Kathryn on 8-10-2010 at 4:52 pm

  19. I vote for the first spammer…fun anecdote, Martin.

    posted by marty on 8-10-2010 at 5:02 pm

  20. Long before Google, the first Internet search engine was called Archie, which was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal.

    In a usenet posting from Alan in September of 1990, he referred to Archie as “pretty brain-damaged”, but it was a functional search engine.

    posted by Gordon Daily on 8-10-2010 at 5:07 pm

  21. The first webcam

    The first webcam began operating in 1991, the same year as Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web, and had its origins in an even more important topic in computer science: the flow of caffeine around a research group. The group, based in Cambridge University’s computer lab and led by Dr Quentin Stafford-Fraser, had a problem: the coffee machine was shared by others in more distant parts of the building.

    “These poor souls would often arrive, mug in hand, to find no fresh coffee,” explains Stafford-Fraser. “So one afternoon, friends and I gripped an old camera in a retort stand and connected it to a spare computer, then wrote a program [known as XCoffee] that allowed anyone in our group to display a live image of the pot in the corner of their screen.

    “When, in 1993, web browsers were first able to display images, my colleague Dan Gordon modified the software so that a browser could take the place of our program. As a side effect, the whole world could see the image. Millions did, and so the first webcam was born.”

    Coffeecam finally shut down in 2001, when the computer science department moved to a new building.

    posted by Ed on 8-10-2010 at 5:22 pm

  22. Not internet, and fairly well-known, but the first toy advertised on TV was Mr. Potato Head. Not sure where I first read this, but it has been my favorite trivia fact since I was small.

    posted by Kaitlin on 8-10-2010 at 5:31 pm

  23. First presidential inauguration broadcast live over the Internet, Bill Clinton, 1997. Now we know why VP Al Gore invented the Internet in the first place….

    posted by Mark on 8-10-2010 at 5:32 pm

  24. The first internet search engine was called Archie. (Archie Query Form.)

    posted by Paul on 8-10-2010 at 5:35 pm

  25. The first three characters sent over the internet were “lol”.

    This is because they were trying to send “login” but the connection died the first time around.

    posted by Amy on 8-10-2010 at 5:37 pm

  26. Kerri, that information is incorrect, the first CD album released was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street in 1982 (four years after it was released on vinyl/cassette, and two years before Born in the USA was released).

    posted by Mark on 8-10-2010 at 5:38 pm

  27. First use of the Internet to monitor the status of washers and dryers, Random Hall, MIT, circa 1995. You can look it up (linked).

    posted by Mark on 8-10-2010 at 5:44 pm

  28. First Internet addiction center, reSTART, opened in the Redmond, WA area in 2009. Redmond… Internet… nah, must be a coincidence.

    posted by Mark on 8-10-2010 at 5:53 pm

  29. The first Google doodle was in 1999, A stick figure was drawn behind the 2nd o in in Google, It was done indicate Google’s attendance at the Burning Man festival in Nevada

    posted by Sara on 8-10-2010 at 6:06 pm

  30. Correction I meant 1998 for the burning man doodle– August 30 to be exact

    posted by Sara on 8-10-2010 at 6:11 pm

  31. Pizza Hut was the first chain to offer online ordering for delivery in 1994.

    posted by Kate on 8-10-2010 at 6:22 pm

  32. the first “real” email, sent in late 1971, announced its own existence (the exact words have been forgotten, unfortunately ) and also included instructions how to use the ‘@’ character in email addresses.

    posted by Amy on 8-10-2010 at 6:40 pm

  33. If it’s true…I vote for Mr. Potato head being the first toy advertised on TV (courtesy of Kaitlin)…pretty interesting : )

    posted by Karen on 8-10-2010 at 6:43 pm

  34. (http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html) was the address of the world’s first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN – and The first web site built was at CERN, and was first put on line on 6 August 1991 ; it centred on information regarding the WWW project and visitors could learn more about hypertext, technical details for creating their own webpage, and even an explanation on how to search the Web for information. There are no screenshots of this original page

    posted by Amy on 8-10-2010 at 6:45 pm

  35. OOPS! The above (per Wikipedia) should read:
    —————————————
    http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html was the address of the world’s first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN and was first put on line on 6 August 1991 ; it centered on information regarding the WWW project and visitors could learn more about hypertext, technical details for creating their own webpage, and even an explanation on how to search the Web for information. There are no screenshots of this original page
    —————————————

    posted by Amy on 8-10-2010 at 6:47 pm

  36. The first online birth was on June 17, 1998, a son (Sean) to Elizabeth and Tod Fetherling and was broadcast on the web site of America’s Health Network

    posted by Amy on 8-10-2010 at 6:51 pm

  37. The actual term ‘virus’ , for referring to computers, was first used in David Gerrold’s 1972 novel, When HARLIE Was One. In that novel, a sentient computer named HARLIE writes viral software to retrieve damaging personal information from other computers to blackmail the man who wants to turn him off.

    posted by Amy on 8-10-2010 at 6:54 pm

  38. First E-mail. E-mail as we know it was created by a programmer named Ray Tomlinson, in 1971.

    posted by MrsDolly on 8-10-2010 at 7:16 pm

  39. First Search Engine. The first search engine was called Archie, and was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    posted by MrsDolly on 8-10-2010 at 7:17 pm

  40. First Domain Name. The first domain name ever was Symbolics.com, registered on March 15th, 1985, by a computer manufacturing company called Symbolics… that no longer exists.

    posted by MrsDolly on 8-10-2010 at 7:17 pm

  41. First Porn Website. It’s hard to prove definitively, but it’s believed that the first porn site was sex.com. It was registered in 1994 by a guy named Gary Kremen.

    posted by MrsDolly on 8-10-2010 at 7:18 pm

  42. ARPANET was the first Internet

    posted by MrsDolly on 8-10-2010 at 7:19 pm

  43. The first mobile phone with Internet connectivity was the Nokia 9000 Communicator. It was launched in Finland back in 1996,

    posted by MrsDolly on 8-10-2010 at 7:21 pm

  44. Online retailer NetMarket claims to have conducted the first secure retail transaction on the Web. On August 11, 1994, the site sold a copy of the Sting CD Ten Summoner’s Tales for $12.48 plus shipping.

    posted by MrsDolly on 8-10-2010 at 7:21 pm

  45. The first full-text web search engine (like the ones we have today) was WebCrawler, launched back in 1994.

    posted by MrsDolly on 8-10-2010 at 7:22 pm

  46. The first emoticon is widely reported to have been used in an email by Scott Fahlman in September of 1982. However, some people have claimed to have used the smiley as early as 1972, and one researcher thinks he has found evidence of emoticon use in the New York Times in 1862. Check it out at this link. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/hfo-emoticon/

    posted by Jeremiah on 8-10-2010 at 7:30 pm

  47. the first promotional coupons offered were for coca-cola in 1894. Asa Candler, who purchased the coca-cola formula, distributed handwritten tickets through employees and magazines, offering a free glass of what was then a soda-fountain drink

    posted by Jared on 8-10-2010 at 8:16 pm

  48. the very first website was nxoc01.cern.ch, and the very first web page was http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.

    posted by Brian on 8-10-2010 at 9:12 pm

  49. Google experimented with the first OFFICIAL Google Doodle, a series of revisions that played out a story of “alien intrigue” over the course of a week in May 2000.

    posted by Heather on 8-10-2010 at 11:05 pm

  50. first spam was by hormel.get your facts straight hosers.

    posted by dirk alan on 8-11-2010 at 12:38 am

  51. First computer “bug” being found and first case of “debugging” a computer program:

    “In 1947, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator (a primitive computer).

    On the 9th of September, 1947, when the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F.

    The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. The entry reads: “First actual case of bug being found.”

    The word went out that they had “debugged” the machine and the term “debugging a computer program” was born.

    (picture of the program log with moth attached)

    http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566k.jpg

    posted by Ed on 8-11-2010 at 9:22 am

  52. Queen Elizabeth II sent her first email on 3/26/76.

    posted by Wayne on 8-11-2010 at 9:35 am

  53. The first use of the internet by the military was actually during the Civil War.

    The early “Interstate Network” (or “inter-net”) was powered by mules and steam. Due to the speed with which coded signals were sent, specially trained workers were required to quickly translate the messages. The messages were delivered by a group of men that President Lincoln dubbed “Washington Employees, Being Specifically Instructed in Typing Efficiently” (referred to colloquially as “WEBSITEs”). Lincoln wrote to his Secretary of State, “it is truely [sic] a sad commentary that this grand technological advancement must occur only in the midste [sic] of this great War.”

    A little known fact is that President Garfield was actually assassinated by the husband of a woman he was “chatting” with over the inter-net. The man had ample time to prepare for the crime, given the forty-seven hour load time for each instant message (which in the days of horsecart-delivered mail, anything under two days was truly considered an “instant!”).

    posted by Aaron on 8-11-2010 at 10:08 am

  54. Argentine national Emilio Marcos Palma (born January 7, 1978) is the first person to be born on the continent of Antarctica…so far as we know, I mean with Antarctica being, in a somehow differently located and previously ice-free state, a “candidate” for ancient Atlantis and all.

    And, Aaron…brilliant post.

    posted by Derek on 8-11-2010 at 12:48 pm

  55. Ladies ang gentlemen, the cover of the first issue of mental_floss magazine. Ever.

    http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/issues/050601/images/smart2.jpg

    posted by Erwin on 8-15-2010 at 3:36 pm

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