The First Email: The histories of ideas and concepts are at least as they are interesting, and it's usually difficult to point to a historical "first". Still, there must have been a first of everything and luckily we know quite a bit about how it come about and when it happened. In 1971, the ARPANET was little more than connected computers, and those who knew about it searched for possible uses of this invention. Richard W. Watson thought of a way to deliver messages and files to printers at remote sites in 1971. He filled his "Mail Box Protocol" as a draft standard, but the protocol was never implemented. Another person interested in sending messages between computers was Ray Tomlinson. SNDMSG, a program that could deliver messages to another person on the same computer network had been around for about ten years already. It delivered these messages by appending to a file owned by the user another user wanted to reach.
The First Website: The first ever website was published on August 6, 1991 and served up a page explaining the World Wide Web project and giving information on how users could setup a web server and how to create their own websites and web pages, as well as how they could search the web for information. The URL for the first web page put up on the first ever website was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/theproject.html. This link is no longer active and, unfortunately, nobody bothered to make a copy of this original page, which tended to be updated daily anyways.
The First Internet Virus Hoax: The fist Internet virus hoax appeared in 1988. Emails were sent out with the subject line stating that a Really Nasty Virus was on its way. The idea of that hoax was laughable and most users realized it wasn't true, but the same can't be said of some later virus hoaxes that spread like wildfire around the internet. The history of virus hoaxes details the first virus from the late 1980s and Virus Alert discusses some hoaxes used in later days.
The First YouTube video: It was entitled "Me at the zoo" that shows so-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005.
The First Banner Ad on Web: When HotWired wanted to make some money from their website in 1994 they had no idea the type of beast they would unleash, and the first Internet Web banner ad was born! AT&T was the first company to pay money for a web banner ad, a 468x60 web banner ad on October 25, 1994.
