What do Mr. T, Chewbacca and Monica Lewinsky have in common? All of them “ate my balls.”

Since 1996, more than 300 Web sites have been created to showcase the strange phenomenon of ball eating.

According to the Institute for Testicular Consumption Web site, one testicle contains over 85 percent of the suggested daily vitamin and mineral intake suggested by the surgeon general.

Cartoon characters, celebrities, political leaders and almost any person or group imaginable has been showcased on the Internet eating balls.

The sites feature pictures of various people with humorous captions designed to entertain Web surfers.

Nehal Patel, junior in computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, was the one who started it all. In March of 1996, he and some friends began work on “Mr. T Ate My Balls,” the first site dedicated to ball eating.

Patel described an incident during his freshman year which inspired him to create the page.

“A couple of guys were tossing the football around in the hallway when they hit an exit sign,” Patel explained. “They realized they could remove the glass pane so they scratched off the word ‘exit’ and replaced it with ‘Mr. T Ate My Balls.’

“After that incident, the phrase became the punch line to every joke,” he continued. “We began seeing cartoon-like advertisements for ‘Mr. T Ate My Balls Cereal’ and drawings and jokes related to Chewbacca eating balls. From there the Web pages were the next step.”

So one March night in 1996, Patel and his friends finally began work on the site by looking for pictures, editing them and posting the page by the following night.

They registered the site with some search engines and after only a few weeks, other “ate my balls” sites began to appear, with the first one being “Ronald Reagan Ate My Balls.” Soon after, Patel created the “Chewbacca Ate My Balls” page.

“I was pretty surprised that other people found our work funny enough to copy,” Patel said.

Since its launch, “Mr. T Ate My Balls” has received over 29,000 hits.

According to the site, the page has been featured in Internet Underground Magazine, as well as a book called “Dave Barry in Cyberspace.”

While most people have found the “ate my balls” to be harmless humor, Patel said that some people have expressed negative feelings about the sites.

“Generally people have enjoyed Mr. T, but there’s the occasional commie-hippie-pinko-freak that doesn’t enjoy it and expresses his disgust,” Patel said.

He also said that he has received numerous e-mail messages about his sites.

“When I first started getting e-mail about it, I’d reply to every message, even if it was just to say ‘thanks,’ print it out, and post it on my dorm room door,” Patel said. “By the end of that semester, fully one-half of the door was covered.”

He noted that some pages created by other people that he has enjoyed “South Park Ate My Balls” and “Jesus Ate My Balls.”

So, who do you want to eat your balls? The Ate My Balls Web ring contains an index of all the ate my balls pages and can be accessed at www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/3640/ring.html.

“Mr. T Ate My Balls” can be found at www.cen.uiuc.edu/~nkpatel/mr.t/index.html.