TIL the first ever internet café had to buy its domain name from the Amish

I lived just around the corner when Cyberia, definitely the UK's and possibly the world's first ever internet café, opened in 1994. (Naturally, a couple other places have since put in claims they opened first.)

Reading an article today about the founding of Cyberia, I saw this:

And then there was the Amish community in Pennsylvania. Eva had to fly out there to negotiate for the “Cyberia.com” domain name they had bought. “It was a proper barn with horse carts and a wall of modems as they were running a bulletin board and an early ecommerce company. Apparently, there was always one family nominated to be the tech support,” she remembers.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/worlds-first-ever-cyber-cafe-cyberia-london/