This is the observed day of the internet’s birth, actually marking the day that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency chose the contractor to build the initial nodes and connections of the ARPAnet. Though the internet is ubiquitous from a 21st century perspective, its origins lie in a disquieting Cold-War-era concept of a distributed computer communications network whose operations could continue even if multiple nodes of the network have been disrupted or destroyed. ARPAnet, the forerunner to the modern internet, will become operational on an experimental basis later in 1969.
