In this episode of Know-It-All, host Avi Polirer takes listeners on a brief but fascinating journey through the origins of the internet, tracing it back to 1957 during the Cold War. Born out of the U.S. government's response to the launch of Sputnik, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) funded the development of computer communication, leading to the first successful data transmission between two computers in 1969. This marked the beginning of ARPANET, the earliest version of the internet. The episode explores ARPANET’s rapid growth, its eventual decline with the rise of NSFNET and MILNET, and its decommissioning in 1990—all while highlighting the crucial role ARPANET played in laying the foundation for the global internet we rely on today.