Every ordinary thing has an extraordinary story.

The Origin Beat

Every ordinary thing has an extraordinary story.

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Two Letters, One Joke, and a Presidential Campaign: The Strange Political Birth of 'OK'
Tech History

Two Letters, One Joke, and a Presidential Campaign: The Strange Political Birth of 'OK'

Americans say it dozens of times a day without a second thought. But 'OK' — arguably the most universally understood word on the planet — didn't come from any ancient language or logical linguistic evolution. It started as a spelling joke in a Boston newspaper, and a presidential election accidentally made it immortal.
The Rise, Fall, and Stubborn Survival of Digg: The Site That Almost Broke the Internet
Tech History

The Rise, Fall, and Stubborn Survival of Digg: The Site That Almost Broke the Internet

Before Reddit became the self-proclaimed front page of the internet, there was Digg — a scrappy, community-driven news aggregator that dominated the mid-2000s web. This is the story of how it rose to the top, lost everything in one of tech's most dramatic collapses, and kept trying to come back.