Older version: http://www.aboutmalta.com/grazio/home-old.html. The actual Malta page has now moved over to Grazio's account. Its URL is: http://www.fred.net/malta/. The following is a part of the Malta page which I wrote up to explain a little about its origins.
Sometime in late '94, I happened to be visiting my German Freenet (Login: guest) and noticed a message in one of the forums there in what looked to be a rather mysterious language. I was able to make what I felt was a reasonable guess as to the language of the message because of one word in it, "Maltiji," which made me conclude that the message was likely in Maltese. At the bottom of the message, I noticed a person's name and alternate email address, an address which happened to be on CapAccess, the freenet in Washington, DC. (It's not technically a freenet, but is often called one.)
I didn't think too much more about it until a little while later. A couple of messages appeared in a forum on the freenet in Washington that looked to be in the same language and came from the same account mentioned in the bottom of the post in the German forum. At just about the same time, I was reading the newsgroup alt.internet.services and noticed a message from someone in New Zealand who was looking for email contacts in Malta. I decided to forward a copy of this message to the person on CapAccess in Washington who had posted the messages I'd seen in what I thought was likely Maltese.
Soon, I heard from Grazio. He told me that as a result of the message I had forwarded to him, he had been helping out the fellow in New Zealand who was looking for some genealogical information about a relative who had been from Malta and thanked me for sending the post to him. At some point, Grazio said that he'd like to create a home page for Malta and I said I would help him get it started.
And so it started. A couple of files in my webspace. And then there would need to be something else to be added, and then another something... Eventually, Grazio got his own fred.net account and his page was there for several years. Kathy Bilton