It was 1999 & I was living in Paris & working as helpdesk support for Anheuser-Busch… proper hardware IT-like helpdesk. I was an imposter… didn't know what I was doing, but I was loving it.
My free local dial-up company, free.fr, had some obscure news item next to their webmail login that said their free hosting now included support for PHP3 & MySQL.
I didn't know what the hell these things were, but I was intrigued. I skipped over to the Eyrolles book store in Saint Michel & bought a couple of books.
Well, the one on PHP was the first edition of Core PHP Programming by Leon Atkinson. I read it from cover to cover like a novel.