Briefs

Building on the Usenet data previously acquired from Deja.com, Google
has constructed what is believed to be the only complete 20-year
archive of online discussion groups. This unique resource provides
insight into the history and culture of online communication,
extending more than 10 years prior to the birth of the web. Google
Groups is the source for such first-hand accounts as Linus Torvalds
introducing Linux or Marc Andreessen presenting Mosaic and later, the
Netscape browser. The Google Groups archive contains more than 700
million postings in 35,000 topical categories

Here, for example is the call for papers for the very first Knowledge
Discovery Workshop in 1989, held at IJCAI-89 in Detroit.

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6726%40bunny.UUCP&output=gplain

See more about Usenet data on Google on
http://www.google.com/3.html