The internet
Five real newspaper headlines about the internet, printed between 1969 and 2022, with their dates removed. Read each one and guess the year it was published. No multiple choice and no trivia questions, just the headline as it was printed.
There are 2 rounds of five in this topic, and a new one appears whenever the archive has enough for it.
Headline one
The Los Angeles Times
1969
On 29 October 1969, UCLA student Charley Kline sent the first message over ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet, to the Stanford Research Institute. The intended word was 'login' but the system crashed after just two letters — 'lo' — were transmitted. The network grew steadily through the 1970s and 1980s before evolving into the global internet.
Headline two
The Seattle Times
1994
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in his garage in Bellevue, Washington in July 1994, initially as an online bookseller. The company went public in 1997 and rapidly expanded beyond books to become the world's largest online retailer. Bezos would eventually become the world's richest person as Amazon's market capitalisation exceeded one trillion dollars.
Headline three
Financial Times
2000
The dot-com bubble burst in March 2000 when the NASDAQ composite index, which had risen to an all-time high of 5,048 points driven by speculative investment in internet companies, began a collapse that would ultimately wipe out 78 per cent of its value. Hundreds of internet companies that had never turned a profit went bankrupt, and trillions of dollars of paper wealth evaporated. The crash triggered a recession and profound reassessment of the internet economy.
Headline four
The Guardian
2012
In December 2012, PSY's 'Gangnam Style' became the first YouTube video ever to surpass one billion views, a milestone the platform had not even considered possible — forcing engineers to upgrade their view counter. The song's infectious horse-riding dance became a global phenomenon, topping charts in dozens of countries and making PSY an international celebrity almost overnight.
Headline five
The New York Times
2022
OpenAI launched ChatGPT on 30 November 2022, releasing to the public a large language model capable of generating remarkably fluent and coherent text on almost any subject. The chatbot reached one million users within five days and 100 million users within two months, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. ChatGPT's capabilities ignited a global debate about the future of artificial intelligence, education, creative work and employment.
Answer the five above to see your score.
Scoring works as it does in the daily game. Each headline is worth up to 100 points, and you lose two points for every year you are out. Being a decade wrong still earns you 80. A perfect round is 500.
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