http://news.netcraft.com/archives/20...day_today.html
Ten years ago today, spam as we know it was born. On 5 March 1994, a message was posted to some Usenet newsgroups by a law firm called Canter and Siegel, advertising their services for the U.S. Green Card lottery. It sounds mild enough today, but at the time that move and its follow-ups provoked increasing outrage across the Net. Many were appalled that "netiquette" - the unspoken rules that hitherto had maintained order in cyberspace - had been breached, sensing perhaps that things would never be the same again.
They were right, of course. By daring to try what no one had done before, those first spam messages opened the floodgates to the deluge we battle daily. When it became clear from Canter and Siegel's continued postings that their spams were being neither effectively blocked nor ignored, others soon followed in their footsteps.