Internet's First Domain Name Turns 28

The entire Internet forgot it was grandpa's birthdaySymbolics.com — the first domain name ever registered — turned 28 today, and just about no one had anything nice to say.

The site was first registered on March 15, 1985—the same year Bill Watterson published his first Calvin and Hobbes strip, Mike Tyson debuted as a pro boxer, and Mark Zuckerberg was born to pair of lonely Cray-2 supercomputers. In Internet years, Symbolics is ancient, a veritable methuselah.

Symbolics (the company) built computer systems in Cambridge, Mass., making workstations that ran on a software language called Lisp. In fact, Symbolics was making computer workstations before the term "workstation" even existed.