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(image by Takuya Oikawa via Flickr)

Friday, December 31, 1993. Juan "One Oh One" Barrios, a junior and computer science major at Stanford University, abruptly stands up from his chair and screams. Because the dorm is empty, no one hears his screaming or the minute of pounding on the computer monitor that follows.

For months, Barrios has struggled to score Brownie points with his Spanish language professor Barry Mathers. Though painfully shy, Barrios went so far as to write a public letter to the school newspaper in support of Prof. Mathers after the young teacher was criticized by campus conservatives for discussing his own homosexuality, explicitly according to some present, in a lecture on Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas.

On this quiet New Year's Eve, Barrios, who desperately needs a passing grade in Spanish to stay on the Dean's List, had hoped to tip the scales permanently in his favor by sending Prof. Mathers a friendly holiday note via electronic mail. But only seconds after typing "send," Barrios realizes his e-mail has been delivered to the entire class. Subject line: Feliz Ano Nuevo.

In 1992, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority registered the character map ISO-8859-1 for use on the Internet. ISO-8859-1 contains such important Spanish language characters as á, é, í, ó, ú and ñ.