History of Unix and Linux

This is actually quite a fascinating and interesting area and one which I need to write more about, however, for now let's just say that Unix came first. Linux was first released on 5th October 1991 by Linus Torvalds. The original idea was that Linux would be free and run on Intel x86 processors, however a lot has happened since then! Unix on the other hand was designed on 1969 at AT&T's Bell Labs and released in 1971. See the following timeline for this early history:
Early Unix timeline

Linux has of course further complicated the timeline, so check out UNIX History and GNU/Linux Distribution Timeline for more details on this. Oh and Unix timeline.en - Linux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is another good picture.

There is a good summary of Linux history at 25 years of Linux in just five minutes | Opensource.com.