It seems like only yesterday that I got my first unsolicited piece of shit email from some piece of shit selling some piece of shit. But spam is actually 30 freakin' years-old today! "The first recognisable e-mail marketing message was sent on 3 May, 1978 to 400 people on behalf of DEC-a now-defunct computer-maker. The message was sent via Arpanet-the internet's forerunner-and won its sender much criticism from recipients. Thirty years on, spam has grown into an underground industry that sends out billions of messages every day."

"The sender of the first junk e-mail message was Gary Thuerk and it was sent to advertise new additions to DEC's family of System-20 minicomputers. It invited the recipients, all of whom were on Arpanet and lived on the west coast of the US, to go to one of two presentations showing off the capabilities of the System-20.

"Reaction to the message was swift, with complaints reportedly coming from the US Defense Communications Agency, which oversaw Arpanet, and took Mr Thuerk's boss to task about it.

"Despite Mr Thuerk's pioneering spam it took many years for unsolicited commercial e-mail to become a nuisance. It took until 1993 before it won the name of spam - a name bestowed on it by Joel Furr - an administrator on the Usenet chat system. Mr Furr reputedly got his inspiration for the name from a Monty Python sketch set in a restaurant whose menu heavily featured the processed meat." [BBC via Slog]

Now we celebrate!