Does anybody know who discovered "39876877" first ?

[Thomas Scheuerle]

Dear group,

If you google  "39876877" you will find many hits on a well known math meme:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mathmemes/comments/1mmf3pz/multiply/

It seems that the meme originated somewhere in china more than 5 years ago,

but this is unsure.

I prepared a draft regarding this topic:

https://oeis.org/draft/A392568

While doing so I discovered how hard it is to find such numbers 

in the case of many digits, this made me curious who may have discovered this

particular number and what was the exact method used in discovering it.

Maybe the number appeared first in a paper? I could not find such a reference.

Any hint or even rumor is welcome here.

Thank you very much

Thomas