It all began 30 years ago today. The mother lode of all spam - the bane of everyone's online existence - was first sent out via the U. S. Defense Department's Arpanet by a salesman named Gary Thuerk. The first junk mail or "Spam" as we know it today, was an invitation for a demo of the new system-20 mini computers being marketed by the Digital Equipment Corp.

On its second voyage a virus outbreak struck passengers on the Queen Victoria. Blame it on bad luck, which is exactly what crew members of the $602 million 90,000 ton vessel, the Queen Victoria, are doing after 78 of their 3,000 passengers were infected by a highly contagious stomach known as norovirus. According to the crew members, during its naming ceremony, the champagne bottle swung by the Duchess of Cornwall against the hull of the Queen Victoria failed to break, which is considered a sign of bad luck in the seafaring world.

A toy manufacturer is hoping their news set of toys, versions of versions of microbes including gonorrhea and syphilis, will be a hit for Christmas. Giant Microbes, a toy manufacturer based in Connecticut has turned microscopic images of viruses and bugs, which also include malaria, mad cow disease, salmonella, Ebola, acne, rabies, black death and the good old influenza virus into 5-to-7 inch dolls.

In a continent suffering from a massive AIDS epidemic, the president of the small West African nation of Gambia is taking a more non-conventional approach to tackling the disease. Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, a 41-year old former army colonel seized control of his country in a 1994 coup, says his treatment is effective in combating the deadly AIDS virus.

Officials in the state of Bihar have created a novel idea to both rehabilitate beggars and help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS: pay beggars to sing songs and enact plays to raise awareness of the deadly virus. They want to train many of the estimated 100,000 homeless in the state to put on street plays about AIDS and to sing songs about it in trains and buses and on the sides of busy roads.