Happy National Chocolate Milk Day! I personally choose to ignore the urban legends about how chocolate milk came into existence, because I don't care. It's the perfect drink, and was one of the few highlights of school lunches. Don't ruin this for me.

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September 27 in Nerd History

Here are five things that happened on September 27th for those of us who are still looking for the beef.

I.

Birthdays of honor: Meat Loaf (1947), Jenna Ortega (2002), Gwyneth Paltrow (1972), Samuel Adams (1722), Wilford Brimley (1934), Marc Maron (1963).

II.

Before 1998, how did we get information? As I recall, kids at school would just say stuff and it would go around seemingly for years and years with no one correcting it. Or maybe you'd call up a friend or family member — actually talking to them on the phone — and hopefully, they'd have an answer. Or, if you either had the spare change for it or a particularly good salesman knocked on your door, you would consult whatever outdated set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica adorned your bookshelves.

But 25 years ago, in 1998, that all changed when Google came into our lives.

For the first time, the internet became something you could sort through not by clicking through an endless list of categorized web pages, but just by typing in keywords. And it was fast — never before could information be so easily and quickly accessed. Originally known as "BackRub", the tech giant was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two computer science students at Stanford.

Of course, September 27 isn't the actual birthdate of Google. The company was incorporated on September 4, and the domain registration was a couple of weeks after — but today is the day that the company has decided to celebrate its birthday. Most think it coincides with a marketing announcement they made on that day about the massive amount of pages they were indexing back in '98. Whatever the reason, it's now the day we celebrate, because we don't dare anger the search-engine gods.

III.

In 1954 TV viewers across the country could see The Tonight Show for the first time on NBC. At that time simply called Tonight (in a nod to Today), it was originally hosted by comic and guy who's always sitting at a piano, Steve Allen.

Allen pioneered many of what we consider late-night staples today, including the opening monologue and house bands. Producers saw some success with a regional broadcast that was similar in concept, so they took it national with Tonight.

It wasn't until Johnny Carson took the reigns in 1962 that the show was officially called The Tonight Show. The late-night variety show is the world's longest-running talk show.

IV.

In 1980, Kurtis Blow became the first rapper to appear on national TV. At just 19-years-old, he performed "The Breaks" on the iconic Soul Train.

​The concept was so new, host Don Cornelious had to explain what rap was before the performance. Yet as you can see in the video, it was a definitive hit with the audience.

But Cornelious was still a bit confused, musing "it doesn't make sense to old guys like me."

V.

50 years ago today, in 1973, Barbara Streisand released the lead single from her new album, "The Way We Were."

The song would go on to top the charts, win two Academy Awards, and be named the top song of the year by Billboard in 1974.

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