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Last Week's Quiz

Created by Eli Robinson
Edited by Jonpaul Guinn

Read This First

  • Submit your answers by 3:37pm ET 8/10/26
  • Don't cheat. Cheating is bad. Using Google/AI/ChatGPT/Gemini IS cheating.
  • Trivia graders don't care about spelling (but try your hardest)
  • No negative points for incorrect responses (so guess to your heart's content)
  • Email [email protected] for clarification on any questions

It's increasingly difficult to imagine our society today without the world wide web, but believe it or not it’s celebrating its 35th birthday this week.

Originally invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, it was published on August 6, 1991 as a “universal linked information system”.



We thought it’d be fun to take a trip through some of the more notable moments in WWW history.

Q1. 1960s – While the web is only 35 years old, the system of cables, routers, servers, and satellite connections that runs the web and what related “I”-name traces its roots back to organizations developing systems for time-sharing of computer resources?



Q2. April 30, 1993 – CERN finally releases the web to the public, charging everyone what incredibly affordable price to connect to the network?



Q3. October 27, 1994 – HotWired serves the first ad in what format that Merriam-Webster defines as “a strip of cloth on which a sign is painted”? It reads, "Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE?"



Q4. August 1995 – Internet Explorer 1.0 ships with Windows 95, thus beginning 30+ years of browser wars. At the time, they were trying to dethrone what company’s “Navigator”?



Q5. September 1995 – Pierre Omidyar realizes that the web would be a great place for peer-to-peer sales. Originally launched as AuctionWeb, what business did he found?



Q6. September 4, 1998 – Looking to raise money for their burgeoning venture, Sergey Brin and Larry Page received a $100,000 check from Sun Microsystems founder Andy Bechtolsheim. The issue was the check was made up to a company that didn’t exist yet. Ergo, the two founders rushed to incorporate what enterprise worth almost $5 trillion today?



Q7. January 10, 2000 – At the height of the dot-com boom, AOL spends $165 billion to buy what old-media giant, then home to CNN, HBO, and a namesake magazine and movie studio? The union would go on to be one of the worst corporate deals in history.



Q8. December 21, 2012 — A Korean rapper's invisible-horse dance becomes the first video ever to gallop past 1 billion YouTube views. Name the song.



Q9. March 11, 2021 — Christie's sells a Beeple JPEG collage for $69 million, mainstreaming what three-letter blockchain initialism for "you own this digital thing now"?



Q10. February 14, 2019 — OpenAI announces GPT-2, then stuns researchers by initially refusing to release the full model, warning it's too good at churning out convincing fake text. It was the public's first real taste of what class of AI — abbreviated “LLM” — that now powers every chatbot you've ever argued with?



TIEBREAKER Burst Bubbles: At what price did the NASDAQ Composite close at its dot-com peak on March 10, 2000? It would trough on October 9, 2002 at $1,114.11.

Quiz is closed and your answers are now locked! Graders are grading and results will be sent on 8/10/26