> Nginx’s real strength was being able to proxy and cache HTTP using that same mechanism

Fun fact: Igor Sysoev originally wrote mod_accel [1], an acceleration and reverse-proxy caching module for Apache before he made nginx.

I remember using that module in the mid-2000s as a load balancer (and to offload SSL encryption/decryption as it was a CPU-expensive operation).

[1] http://sysoev.ru/en/apache_modules.html