Piet Beertema

[1] On November 17, 1988, at 2:28 PM, he linked the Netherlands as one of the first two countries (shortly after France's INRIA)[2][3][4] to NSFNET, a precursor to the Internet.

In 1966 he joined the SMC (Stichting Mathematisch Centrum), now called the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science, where he worked until his retirement.

On April 1, 1984, Beertema created and posted to the Kremvax Usenet site posing as Konstantin Chernenko.

Beertema's message greeted fellow users of Usenet on behalf of the Soviet Union and stated that one aim of them joining was to better present the views of the Soviet regime, alleging that the American administration were seeking war and world domination.

[6] On April 25, 1986, Beertema recorded the first country code top level domain .nl and solely managed it for ten years.