By: HISTORY.com Editors

1993

World Wide Web (WWW) launches in the public domain

Published: March 30, 2020Last Updated: May 28, 2025

On April 30, 1993, four years after publishing a proposal for “an idea of linked information systems,” computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee releases the source code for the world’s first web browser and editor. Originally called Mesh, the browser that he dubbed WorldWideWeb becomes the first royalty-free, easy-to-use means of browsing the emerging information network that developed into the internet as we know it today.

Berners-Lee was a fellow at CERN, the research organization headquartered in Switzerland. Other research institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University had developed complex systems for internally sharing information, and Berners-Lee sought a means of connecting CERN’s system to others. He outlined a plan for such a network in 1989 and developed it over the following years. The computer he used, a NeXT desktop, became the world’s first internet server. Berners-Lee wrote and published the first web page, a simplistic outline of the WorldWideWeb project, in 1991.

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CERN began sharing access with other institutions, and soon opened it up to the general public. In releasing the source code for the project to the public domain two years later, Berners-Lee essentially opened up access to the project to anyone in the world, making it free and (relatively) easy to explore the nascent internet.

Simple Web browsers like Mosaic appeared a short time later, and before long the Web had become by far the most popular system of its kind. Within a matter of years, Berners-Lee’s invention had revolutionized information-sharing and, in doing so, had dramatically altered the way that human beings communicated. The creation and globalization of the web is widely considered one of the most transformational events in human history. 4.39 billion people, including you, are now estimated to use the internet, accounting for over half the global population. The average American now spends 24 hours a week online. The internet’s rise has been the greatest expansion in information access in human history, has led to the exponential growth in the total amount of data in the world, and has facilitated a spread of knowledge, ideas and social movements that was unthinkable as recently as the 1990s.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on April 30th

1789

George Washington gives first presidential inaugural address

On April 30, 1789, George Washington is sworn in as the first American president and delivers the first inaugural speech at Federal Hall in New York City. Elements of the ceremony set tradition; presidential inaugurations have deviated little in the two centuries since Washington’s inauguration. In front of 10,000 spectators, Washington appeared in a plain […]

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1803

United States and France complete the Louisiana Purchase

On April 30, 1803, representatives of the United States and Napoleonic France complete negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, a massive land sale that doubles the size of the young American republic. What was known as Louisiana Territory comprised most of modern-day United States between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the exceptions of Texas, […]

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1859

First installment of “A Tale of Two Cities” is published

On April 30, 1859, the first chapter of Charles Dickens’ serialized novel, A Tale of Two Cities, is published in Dickens’ circular, All the Year Round. It rolls out over 31 weekly installments, with the last one appearing that November. Dickens was born in 1812 and attended school in Portsmouth. His father, a clerk in […]

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1863

Battle of Chancellorsville begins

On April 30, 1863, the Battle of Chancellorsville begins in Virginia. Earlier in the year, General Joseph Hooker led the Army of the Potomac into Virginia to confront Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Hooker had recently replaced Ambrose Burnside, who presided over the Army of the Potomac for one calamitous campaign the previous […]

1897

British physicist J.J. Thomson announces the discovery of electrons

On April 30, 1897, British physicist J.J. Thomson announced his discovery that atoms were made up of smaller components. This finding revolutionized the way scientists thought about the atom and had major ramifications for the field of physics. Though Thomson referred to them as “corpuscles,” what he found is more commonly known today as the […]

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1917

Battle of the Boot takes place between Anglo-Indian and Turkish forces

On April 30, 1917, the so-called Battle of the Boot marks the end of the British army’s Samarrah Offensive, launched the previous month by Anglo-Indian forces under the regional commander in chief, Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, against the important Turkish railroad at Samarra, some 130 kilometers north of Baghdad, in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). Fresh from […]

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1939

New York World’s Fair opens

On April 30, 1939, the New York World’s Fair opens in New York City. The opening ceremony, which featured speeches by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and New York Governor Herbert Lehman, ushered in the first day of television broadcasting in New York. Spanning 1,200 acres at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, the fairground was marked […]

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1945

Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his underground bunker

Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces

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1948

Original Land Rover debuts at auto show

The Land Rover, a British-made all-terrain vehicle that will earn a reputation for its use in exotic locales, debuts at an auto show in Amsterdam on April 30, 1948. The first Land Rover, known as the Series 1, was the brainchild of Maurice Wilks, the head designer for the British car company Rover, of which […]

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1975

Fall of Saigon: South Vietnam surrenders

The South Vietnamese stronghold of Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City) falls to People’s Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong on April 30, 1975. The South Vietnamese forces had collapsed under the rapid advancement of the North Vietnamese. The most recent fighting had begun in December 1974, when the North Vietnamese had […]

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1977

Over 2,000 protesters occupy the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant construction site

On April 30, 1977, more than 2,000 protesters occupy the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant construction site in New Hampshire; 1,414 of these activists are arrested in what becomes one of the largest mass arrests in American history. Anti-nuclear demonstrators set up tents and toted signs reading “Split Wood, Not Atoms” and “Go Fishing, Not Fission” […]

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1993

Tennis star Monica Seles stabbed

Top women’s tennis player Monica Seles is stabbed by a deranged German man during a match in Hamburg. The assailant, a fan of German tennis star Steffi Graf, apparently hoped that by injuring Seles his idol Graf would be able to regain her No. 1 ranking. Seles became the youngest woman to win the French […]

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1997

Controversial “coming out” episode of “Ellen” airs

On April 30, 1997, in a widely publicized episode of the ABC sitcom “Ellen,” TV character Ellen Morgan (played by Ellen DeGeneres) announces that she is gay. DeGeneres, a former stand-up comedian who was born on January 26, 1958, became part of the ensemble cast of the ABC series “These Friends of Mine” in 1994. […]

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1997

Big Ben clock stops at 12:11 p.m. for 43 minutes

On April 30, 1997, at exactly 12:11 pm, London’s iconic Big Ben clock stops ticking. For 43 minutes, the most famous clock in the world, which strikes the note of E every hour, failed to keep time. According to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, engineers traced the problem to the mechanism that controls the hands on the […]

2019

Japan’s Emperor Akihito abdicates

On April 30, 2019, Japan’s 85-year-old Emperor Akihito steps down from the throne, becoming the first Japanese monarch to abdicate in over 200 years. Akihito was born on December 23, 1933, the eldest son of Emperor Hirohito, who had ruled Japan since 1926. Akihito was born two years after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the […]

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