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Every great website has to start somewhere, but the best ones manage to overcome their awkward first steps and carve out a unique identity on the web.

We decided to go back and take a look at the very first posts from some of the sites we admire, and we found some real doozies. You might be surprised to see how some of today's most influential web entities began.

Of course, it wouldn't be fair if we didn't fess up to our own first post, so we threw that in, too. Check it all out, after the jump.
Urlesque
LOL Together -- April 8, 2008
Our beloved site's first post -- back in the dark days before I wrote for Urlesque, of course -- was a sort of unofficial site theme song, 'LOL Together.' It's a parody of John Lennon's classic 'Come Together,' with lyrics about the emerging LOLCat trend at the time. Oh, those heady days of youth!

The original video has since been taken down, but the song lives on in the repost below.
Kottke.org
Why? -- March 14, 1998
The first post on Kottke.org, one of the most venerable sources of great links and commentary on the web, is a musing by Jason Kottke about his site's purpose. "So, I made it into content. Since it's content, I feel obligated to keep it up-to-date," he wrote. That was March of 1998, and he's still keeping up to date. Cheers, Mr. Kottke.

If you want to see what Jason's site looked like back in the day, check out his retrospective of Kottke.org's many looks during its first 10 years.
Cute Overload
I'm Inno-cent! -- September 26, 2005
Cute Overload's first post was -- what else? -- a kitteh picshur! The perennial source of LOL-animals for captioning and d'aww-ing started with this adorable photo of a surprised cat reaching for the sky.
cute overload first post
Cute Overload
YouTube
Me at the Zoo -- April 23, 2005
The first video ever uploaded to YouTube, on April 23, 2005, was YouTube's third founder, Jawed Karim's, "Me at the Zoo." It's exactly what it sounds like: nothing special. The guy in the video -- presumably Jawed -- says he likes the elephants because of their long trunks. I wonder if he knew his trip to the zoo would make internet history.
Boing Boing
People Who Drill Holes in Their Heads
David "Pesco" Pescovitz's post about trepanation -- the strange medical practice of drilling holes in people's heads -- is not the very first post on boingboing, but it's the earliest one recorded by The Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, on December 12, 1998.

The earliest post you can get to by clicking around the archives on Boing Boing now is this quick link to Street Tech, from 2000, but you can see a bunch of fascinating older posts on this archive of ancient Boing Boing history.

Hey Boing Boingers, if you're reading this: what was your real first post?
Boing Boing archive first post
Boing Boing
Engadget
Introducing Engadget -- March 2, 2004
Our AOL bro-site Engadget, currently getting a lot of buzz for reviewing the heck out of the iPhone 4, had its humble beginnings as part of Jason Calacanis' Weblogs, Inc Network. The very first post, in March of 2004, introduced the editors of the site. Calacanis went on to found Mahalo, and columnist Phillip Torrone would become a senior editor of MAKE magazine.
Engadget First Post
Engadget
I Can Has Cheezburger?
Happy Cat. Duh. -- January 11, 2007
The first post on I Can Has Cheezburger? is pretty obvious: it's the famous grey Happy Cat, with the caption "I Can Has Cheezburger?"

The text of the post calls the picture "the internets piece de resistance, the websites raison d'etre."

That was January 11, 2007. There are now over 700 pages of cats with funny captions on I Can Has Cheezburger?
cheezburger lolcat happy cat first post
I Can Has Cheezburger
The Huffington Post
Freedom Fries -- May 7, 2005
The Huffington Post -- the news site that's now bigger than the New York Times -- officially launched on May 7, 2005. There's a post that goes all the way back to May 1, though: Chris Messerole's "Je Deteste ... La France?"

Messerole deals with a controversial topic at the time: the American backlash against France's opposition to the Iraq War. Remember when french fries were briefly renamed "freedom fries?" Yeah, it's about that.
Huffington Post First Post
Huffington Post
The Daily What
McCain and the Cone of Silence -- August 18, 2008
Despite now being part of the Cheezburger Network and being known for funny pics and videos, the Daily What wasn't always the way it is now. It launched in the midst of the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and the first post was actually a link to a New York Times article about John McCain. I can has moar funnies, plz?
The Daily What First Post
The Daily What
Neatorama
I Heart The '70s -- August 29, 2005
Neatorama, that delightful internet compendium of the strange, weird and fun, began in 2005 with a post about the 1970s.
Neatorama First Post
Neatorama
CollegeHumor
Top Ten Actual Email Addresses
CollegeHumor has built a reputation on its well-written skits and parodies (and those Jake and Amir kids), but it wasn't always so great. The original archives have been erased from the site, but the Wayback Machine has CollegeHumor's earliest posts, including this list of lewd "actual email addresses."

They've come a long way, eh?
CollegeHumor First Post
CollegeHumor
Funny or Die
Will Ferrell in "The Landlord" -- April 12, 2007
Funny or Die, the celebrity-driven comedy video site founded in 2007, kicked off with one of the funniest internet videos of all time, "The Landlord." This one stars Will Ferrell and his angry 2-year-old landlord, Pearl. Warning: video contains swearing baby and adult content.
Click to Watch Video (Warning: NSFW Language)

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Meme Hall of Fame: Double Rainbow [Nerve]