There are something like 250 million photographs uploaded to Facebook each day, and, of course, Facebook is not the only repository for uploading images.  It is staggering!  But have you ever wondered when it all began?  What and when was the first photograph ever uploaded to the internet?

The answer to the what question is clear. It is a photograph of the parody pop-band, “Les Horrible Cernettes.”  The when is just a tad murky, but it was officially celebrate last July as having been July 10, 1992.  That’s twenty years ago, and those of us old enough to remember the internet of the 1990’s, remember it in all its DOS-based amber and green glory – just then blooming in color.

Last July was a fitting time to remember it, because on July 4, 2012, those of us with nerdy underpinnings rose early to hear lectures from the Central European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, announcing that events consistent with the fabled and long sought after Higgs Boson had been measured with strong statistical certainty by CERN’s large Hadron collider. (How’s that for scientific equivocation and qualification?) CERN played a pivotal role in the development of the internet as it sought to connect its particle physicists and their computers from around the globe.

An idea was born, as were Les Horribles Cernettes, a singing group comprised of female employees of CERN.  Their first great hit was “You never spend your nights with me.  You prefer your collider,” and expresses the painful and particular lament of the significant others of physicists everywhere.  And finally, here they are singing their tribute to the Professor Higgs and his boson as the finale to their farewell concert at the Hardronic Festival 2012, last July.