Three accounts of the history of the Fediverse:

www.coactivate.org/projects/di… by @strypey

thomask.sdf.org/blog/2018/08/1…

The latter is slightly off on the chronology of some of the events around Mastodon's arrival. @rw 's story at robek.world/featured/what-is-g… digs into all the detail around that part of history.