Dan Brown's book Angels and Demons is a detective story about a secret society that wants to destroy the Vatican using an antimatter bomb. In the book, the antimatter is stolen from CERN.
 . . .
Hover over the images below to find out what is truth and what is fiction . . .
 
[Q:] Did CERN scientists actually invent the internet?

[A:} No. The internet was originally based on work done by Louis Pouzin in France, taken up by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in the US in the 1970's. The web however was invented and developed entirely by Tim Berners-Lee and a small team at CERN during 1989-1994. The story of the Internet and the Web can be read in "How the Web was born". Perhaps not as sexy as Angels and Demons, but everything in "How the Web was born" was first-hand testimony and research.

CERN's debunking page

(1/12/2006 update): Somebody in DC wrote to me with a concern about CERN's page, which I'm repeating here verbatim: I take issue with what the CERN folks said. They are simply incorrect. The "internet" is really an extension of ARPANET. Which was funded by ARPA (the precursor to DARPA), BBN Tech was one of the prime movers in that space. France, (she has done some wonderful things over the years) did not have very much to do with the internet (please remember the internet is more than the web). BBN's work on the ARPANET was done in the 60's (1962, I think). Louis Pouzin did work on packet networks, but claiming he 'invented' the internet is hubris.

CERN's 'Fact and Fiction' page about Dan Brown's novel 'Angels & Demons'