Though the internet had technically been around for quite a few years before 1989, it was March 12, 1989 when the internet became a medium for sharing information over a browser based system laying the groundwork for the internet as we know it today.

Here is a summary of how things as we know them today came about.

1858
The first Atlantic cable was installed, allowing humans to communicate electronically across an ocean for the very first time.

1969
The Department of Defense establishes the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, connecting mainframe computers all over the world for the next 20 years. Hello, proto-Internet!

March 12, 1989
Tired of waiting for responses from his colleagues, Tim Berners-Lee, a software engineer at CERN, invents a system for exchanging data and results over the Internet. He submits his proposal for a browser-based, hypertext system to management on March 12. Eventually, this would become the World Wide Web.

1990
The World Wide Web officially launches with the first-ever webpage.

July 18, 1992
The first-ever photo is posted to the web. The ur-Photoshop image is of science-themed girl group called Les Horribles Cernettes, which was made up of the girlfriends and secretaries of CERN's scientists. Yes, it was a .gif file.

1991
Regular folks--like you and me!--outside of the CERN are allowed to join the web for the first time.

1992
AOL for Windows launches, soon spawning a host of online-based competitors like Prodigy (not to be confused with The Prodigy), and CompuServe, as well as mailing countless unused CD-Roms to doorsteps everywhere. As of August 2013, AOL still had 2.58 million paid subscribers.

April 22, 1993
Mosaic, a browser co-written by Marc Andreesen that had the amazing ability to display text and images at the same time, launches, creating the anatomy of the modern web page. Thanks to a legal dispute in 1994, however, the company was forced to change the name of its browser, which it rechristened as Netscape Navigator.

1993
In a major shift, CERN announces that the World Wide Web's technology would be available for anyone to use royalty-free.

January 1994
Two Stanford students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, create a website called "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web." Later that March, they decided to rename the portal to something slightly catchier: Yahoo.


1994-1995
Web-based email comes to the browser! One of the first versions unveiled in the United States, Webex, was, in fact, written by Fast Company chief technology officer Matt Mankins.

September 15, 1997
Two more Stanford students register a domain for a new kind website that made it vastly easier to index and comb the web. They called it Google. You should try it sometime!

August 1998
Pets.com launches, raising $121 million from investors. The company filed for an IPO in 2000, and was liquidated just 268 days later, effectively sounding the dotcom era's death knell.

August 2003
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson launch an enormously popular website, MySpace, that allows users to build profiles and connect with one another, sewing the early fabric of the social web. "MySpace Tom" becomes a household name--and every user's first online friend.

January 16, 2004
Lucky releases the first version of CycleFish.  Tired of having to do endless searches all over the internet to find motorcycle events, Lucky started CycleFish.com as a central calendar for anyone and everyone to list their motorcycle events.

February 4, 2004
Less than a year later, a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg invents a similar social-networking website called Facebook. You may have heard of it.

March 21, 2006
This happened:

2007
Apple's Steve Jobs pulls out a tiny computer called the iPhone, effectively putting a usable version of the web in the pockets of non-techy consumers.

February 20, 2009
Tired of all the BS on other websites while looking for friendly bikers and riders, Lucky changes CycleFish.com from a basic Motorcycle Calendar to a Social Network for anyone and everyone who rides!

2014
The World Wide Web turns 25. Before the end of the year, it is expected to cross the 1 billion-website threshold. According to Pew Internet Research, 87% of Americans now use it, too, and a full 90% of them say that the web has been good for their lives overall.

How about you--has it been good for your life these past 25 years? Tell us all about it below in the comments.

you left out the contributions of porn. Porn revolutionized major advancements in streaming audio, video, and web security. sounds funny but it's true

I believe this was the first website ever published.

back in 92 I signed up to A World of Difference AWOD before AOL I was the first residential customer in Chas SC. they thought the web would only be for businesses, and they had a hard time signing me up because they had to have a business name to sign in. since then I've been AquaDave. Who ever would have thought people would want the net in their homes?

I still can remember clicking on the You've Got Mail at the top of the page and it would take me 30 minutes to download my e-mails because I had dial-up internet. Can you imagine being on Cyclefish and still having dial up internet?

I recall when our office finally had a PC linked up to the home office for doing easier & faster documentation confirming transactions etc,and we found out we had access to the WWWeb,it was like wow!!! that was back in 96.

I am on the fence about the whole computer thing, seems like things in general are trending towards a robotic based society,which in turn raises all sorts of questions about the future of humanity in general.Yet overall it has improved the quality of life for people in general.It has helped me at work in multiple ways.

For real folks and you heard it here first

Inventor of World Wide Web Surprised To Find Kittens Took It Over