WikiWikiWeb, the world's first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.
Ward Cunningham named his creation after the Honolulu airport shuttle because "wiki wiki" meant "quick" in Hawaiian—and he wanted something faster than "quick-web." The Portland programmer launched WikiWikiWeb on March 25, 1995, as a tool for software developers to share design patterns. Within hours, strangers were editing each other's work without asking permission first. No logins required. No approval process. Just trust. Six years later, two guys would use Cunningham's open-source code to launch Wikipedia, but here's the thing: Cunningham never patented the concept. He gave away the architecture for collaborative truth-making, betting that humans would build more than they'd destroy.
March 25, 1995
31 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on March 25
Liu Yu didn't just conquer Guanggu — he executed every member of the Southern Yan royal family he could find. The 410 siege was personal: Murong De's dynasty ha…
The refugees weren't building a temporary shelter — they were hammering wooden pilings into a malarial swamp. Attila the Hun's armies had driven them from the m…
Refugees fleeing barbarian invasions established Venice at high noon, seeking safety among the shifting mudflats of the Venetian Lagoon. By choosing this isolat…
Pope Constantine ascended to the papacy, inheriting a church deeply embroiled in the Monothelite controversy. His subsequent journey to Constantinople to meet E…
The pope walked 1,400 miles to meet an emperor who'd been mutilating his predecessors. Constantine became the 88th pope in 708, then did something no pontiff wo…
He didn't want to be emperor in the first place. Tax collectors in 715 had dragged Theodosios III from his minor bureaucratic post and forced the purple robes o…
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