NYT.com
In 1994, registering a domain name was still free.
John Markoff, registered NYT.com between 3 to 5 years earlier, despite what the registration date of the three letter .com asserts.
Those were the days of the pre-commercial Internet, when domain names were still viewed as exotic, and very few had the means to access them.
Still, Mr. Markoff, a technology reporter at the New York Times, registered NYT.com for his personal email: markoff@nyt.com.
To establish a live email address, he had to use Internex, an ISP based in Menlo Park, California; the company was the first ISDN Internet service provider in Northern California.
In 1995, the New York Times went online, and Mr. Markoff offered them domain NYT.com – for free. Surprisingly, his offer was turned down initially, opting for NYTimes.com instead.
The rest, is history.
Read the full article, at NYT.com.
A sad tale indeed
If he would have only been able to see the future! Weren’t there fortune tellers in the 90’s too? Maybe he should have visited one of those. Wait, nevermind, I can’t think of one instance where a fortune teller won the lottery, so I guess that idea out the window. :p