Everything has an anniversary, even spam. But in this case, it's the unwanted junk email, not the canned meat, that will be blowing out the candles as spam turns 30.

According to a BBC report, spam, which accounts for nearly 85 percent of all emails, began 30 years ago when Gary Thuerk sent an advertisement for mini computers to the West Coast members of Arpanet, a network often referred to as the forerunner to the internet.

Thuerk received complaints almost immediately, but it wasn't until 1993 that Joel Furr, an administrator on the Usenet chat system, coined the term spam in reference to unwanted email. Furr reportedly chose the word spam as an homage to a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that only served processed meat.

According to FBI statistics, more than 100 billion spam messages are sent daily.