The exact date is unknown, but the birthday of IRC was in August of 1988, at the end of the month anyways. The first IRC server was tolsun.oulu.fi, hosted at the Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland.
I feel like IRC is one of the acronyms that are so well known, but so many people don't know what it stands for. I know I didn't for years and years back in the day. lol
As you can read from the author who was there, he kept no record of this event. Whether somebody else has logs of those first days, I am presently unawares. Let us know if you find anything!
Well. At least I won lunch. Good philosophy, see good in bad, I like!