What I Found Out

Hello, A friend at work introduced me to this website called "Today I Found Out". It is full of useful and not so useful information to entertain your brain! After visiting the site tonight I had to share this important information with you, I mean don't you often ask yourself, why am I calling my junk email Spam?? No? Probably not, but what the hec, now you know anyway! I posted the link to the website if your interested in finding out some more information that you don't really need to know.
Thanks for visiting,
Janet :)

How the Word “Spam”


Came to Mean “Junk Message”


Today I found out how the word “spam” came to mean
“junk message” or “junk mail”

While some have suggested that this was because SPAM (as in the Hormel meat product) is sometimes satirized as “fake meat”, thus spam messages are “fake messages”, this potential origin, while plausible enough on the surface, turns out to be not correct at all.

The real origin of the term comes from a 1970 Monty Python’s Flying Circus skit. In this skit, all the restaurant’s menu items devolve into SPAM. When the waitress repeats the word SPAM, a group of Vikings in the corner sing “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, lovely SPAM! Wonderful SPAM!”, drowning out other conversation, until they are finally told to shut it.

Exactly where this first translated to internet messages of varying type, such as chat messages, newsgroups, etc, isn’t entirely known as it sort of happened all over the place in a very short span of years, in terms of the name being applied to these messages. It is, however, well documented that the users in each of these first instances chose the word “spam” referring to the 1970 Monty Python sketch where SPAM singing was drowning out conversation and SPAM itself was unwanted and popping up all over the menu

DAVEN HISKEY SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

http://www.todayifoundout.com/