International Internet Day (October 29): The Story of the First Message "LO"
Picture a computer lab late at night more than half a century ago. A student types one letter at a time while a colleague hundreds of kilometers away waits on the phone to confirm each one arrived. Nobody in the room knew they were witnessing the birth of something billions of people now use every second. That night is why International Internet Day is celebrated on October 29 every year.
Quick answer: International Internet Day falls on October 29 to mark the night in 1969 when a UCLA team sent the first message over ARPANET to the Stanford Research Institute. They meant to type "LOGIN", but the system crashed after two letters, so the first message ever sent was simply "LO". Today about 6 billion people are online.
October 29, 1969: the first message was just "LO"
The experiment took place in the lab of Professor Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA, a pioneer of packet switching, the idea at the heart of the internet. Student programmer Charley Kline did the typing; Bill Duvall at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) was on the receiving end.
The plan was to type LOGIN. Kline typed L and Duvall confirmed it. O arrived too. Then the G crashed the system. History's first network message became "LO", fittingly close to "lo and behold". The team fixed the problem and sent the full word later that night. Kleinrock later joked that they should have prepared a grand message, but the accidental two letters became legend anyway.
From two nodes to a global network
ARPANET was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency and launched in fall 1969, with UCLA as the first node and SRI as the second. Then it grew:
December 1969: UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah joined, making four nodes.
1970s: the network spread to more universities, including Harvard and University College London.
January 1, 1983: on ARPANET's "flag day", connected systems switched from NCP to TCP/IP, the protocols the internet still speaks today.
The internet is not the Web
The internet is the road network linking computers worldwide; the World Wide Web is one service that runs on it, like email or chat apps.
March 1989: Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first proposal for the Web at CERN, to help scientists share information.
Late 1990: the first web server and browser were running at CERN.
1991: CERN released the WWW software and Berners-Lee announced it on internet newsgroups.
April 30, 1993: CERN made the Web's source code available royalty-free, the same year the Mosaic browser made the Web far easier to use.
The internet today, in numbers
According to the ITU's Facts and Figures 2025 report:
About 6 billion people use the internet, roughly three-quarters of the world's population.
About 2.2 billion people remain offline.
5G covers about 55% of the world's population: 84% in high-income countries but only 4% in low-income countries.
The internet has transformed most lives on the planet, yet quality, affordable access is still a challenge, and the next wave, AI, is now travelling on the same roads.
Want to go deeper? If the internet was the revolution of the last generation, AI is the shift of ours. The New Workforce: AI, Jobs, and the Future of Industry by ChatStick Team (110 pages) explores how AI is changing industries, which new jobs it creates, and practical strategies for thriving in an AI-driven workplace. A short, easy read.
5 useful ways to celebrate Internet Day
Tighten security: replace reused passwords and turn on two-factor authentication for key accounts.
Back up: keep your photos and work files in at least two places.
Check before you share: confirm news with at least two reliable sources.
Learn something new online: spend 30 minutes trying an AI tool or a free course relevant to your work.
Help someone get online safely: show an older relative how to spot scam links or make a video call.
Do you remember your first time online?
Dial-up tones, internet cafés, or your first smartphone? Every generation has its own "LO" moment. Share yours in the comments and pass this article to a friend who remembers waiting for web pages to load line by line.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
When is International Internet Day?
October 29 every year, marking the first message sent over ARPANET from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute on October 29, 1969.
What was the first message sent over the internet?
The team meant to type LOGIN, but the system crashed after two letters, so the first message received was "LO". The full word was sent later that night.
What is the difference between the internet and the Web?
The internet is the global network of computers that began with ARPANET in 1969. The Web is a service on the internet invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989 and made royalty-free in 1993.
How many people use the internet today?
The ITU estimates about 6 billion people were online in 2025, around three-quarters of the world, while about 2.2 billion remain offline.
Sources: HISTORY.com – First electronic message sent over ARPANET · Smithsonian Magazine – These two small letters heralded the beginning of online communication · CERN – A short history of the Web · CircleID – 30 years ago today: the switch to TCP/IP · ITU – Facts and Figures 2025
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