The History of the URL is a brilliant compilation of ideas and resources, explaining how we got to the URLs we use and love (or hate) today. In fact, the article comes in two parts:
Read them in whatever order you prefer. But I guarantee that you’ll have a number of different responses through out, from “Wow! I never knew that” and “I would have never thought of that!” to “No way! I don’t believe it“.
And here is one of the bits that made me smile:
In 1996 Keith Shafer, and several others proposed a solution to the problem of broken URLs. The link to this solution is now broken. Roy Fielding posted an implementation suggestion in July of 1995. The link is now broken.