18 Years Ago, an 18-Second Video Recorded at the San Diego Zoo Launched YouTube

"Me at the Zoo."

That's the title of one of the most consequential videos of all time. The video to start all videos. The "big bang" of the video-sharing world.

It was the first-ever clip uploaded to YouTube, 18 years ago. That Zoo? The one in San Diego's backyard.

On April 23, 2005, YouTube founder Jawed Karim shared the unedited 18-second clip of himself in front of the elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo. It was shot by his co-founder Yakov Lapitsky.

"Alright, so here we are in front of the elephants," he casually shares with the camera. "The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks. And that's, that's cool."

"And, that's pretty much all there is to say."

And, that's pretty much the start of the largest video-sharing platform in the world. Me at the Zoo now has more than 263 million video views and 11 million comments. One made just days ago called the video "a classic."

"It's amazing to think that it was the very first video ever uploaded to YouTube," a YouTuber named Jr. Scientist commented. "Watching it now, it's fascinating to see how far YouTube has come, and how it has become a platform for people to share all kinds of content with the world."

Even the San Diego Zoo's YouTube channel had to comment that they were "honored that the first ever YouTube video was filmed here!"

A month after the first video clip was uploaded -- while the platform was in beta mode -- YouTube was already garnering about 300,000 video views a day. By the end of the year, the platform was getting two million views a day. Now, users watch about a billion hours of videos a day.

And that's pretty much all there is to say.