From dentures that could explode at the dinner table and stiff shirt collars that could strangle us, to toxic hair implants, the pursuit of the perfect look once pushed people to surprisingly dangerous lengths.
On October 29, 1969, Stanford programmer Bill Duvall sent a single-word message—"login"—to UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, 350 miles away. Transmitted between two computers that each filled an entire room, this message marked the first communication between networked computers and is widely regarded as the birth of the internet.