On this day in 1969, UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock, known as the "Father of the Internet," connected two refrigerator-sized computers with a 15-foot gray cable... and bits of data began to flow. The connection sparked the birth of the Internet.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the early system—ARPAnet—was created to support collaboration among researchers through networked communication.

By 1972, email revolutionized human-to-human communication. With TCP/IP protocols emerging a year later, networks found a common language... and the Internet began to blossom.

"You can anticipate computer-to-computer communications," Kleinrock reflected. "You can't anticipate the human connections." Email became the Internet’s first breakthrough—and proof that sharing words could change the world.

Praised as a pioneer in queuing theory and now focused on nomadic computing, Kleinrock continues to shape the digital future.

In 2010, the number of active domains surpassed 122 million. Today, the Internet grows stronger every second. You can track its wild rise at Domain Tools.