A promotional photo of Les Horribles Cernettes was the first photo ever to appear on the internet.
Les Horribles Cernettes is French for "The Horrible CERN Girls". The photo that highlighted an all-female parody pop group, was self-labelled as "the one and only High Energy Rock Band", founded by Michele de Gennaro, a graphic designer at CERN.
Their musical style is often described as doo-wop.
The group was formed with the help of Silvano de Gennaro, an analyst at CERN, Michele's then-boyfriend and an IT developer.
In 1992, after their show at the CERN Hardonic Festival, Tim Berners-Lee asked de Gennaro for a few scanned photos of the said "CERN girls" to be published on what was said to be a sort of information system he had just invented.
After de Gennaro sent Berners-Lee the photos, he then realized that he had just made a historical milestone.
The picture became the first ever photo to be uploaded on the World Wide Web, and the first picture clicked on a web browser.
Silvano de Gennaro had taken the picture on July 18, 1992, at the Hadronic Music Festival.
It's worth noting that Berners-Lee did what he did, because he wanted to make the web fun.
And the best way to do it, was uploading beautiful women.
The Les Horribles Cernettes image became more lasting because the scientists at CERN thought it was cute and funny, and Jean-François Groff was right.
After all, it was his idea.
"Sex sells!" Groff reportedly told Berners-Lee about which image to upload at the time.
"It's media. You put a pretty girl in the media, people will notice the media. And whatever is around the pretty girl? Sure." Groff said.
Groff has the idea because many of the people at CERN were men, and that scientists who spent too much time at the office didn't spend much time with their girlfriends and spouses.
The image of the girl band was originally meant to be an insider joke. But since it gave a long-lasting impression, it eventually helped changed the way the web works, and how people see it.
Berners-Lee, thanks to both Groff and Silvano de Gennaro, succeeded in making the people at CERN laugh, and since then, the image is considered he first-ever web meme.
Groff was a telecommunication engineer, and one of the key figures in the early development of the World Wide Web at CERN. He worked in close collaboration with Berners-Lee, and was the one who helped define the HTTP protocol and HTML language.
Groff is also credited for co-authoring an article titled "The World-Wide Web: The Information Universe" with fellow Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau and others.