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Javascript "fame" came before npm/Node.js and before it had any idea async/await would ever be implemented.

Simply put, Javascript is the only language in the browser.

Asynchronous I/O refers to the fact that all I/O interactions default to being asynchronous in JS, not the fancy new `await` keyword, which is nice, but just sugar around Promises. The result of this default is that makes a best practice into a feature, not something I have to manage as a developer.

Because of Node or the browser's event loop? It's not like JS was the first language to have a built-in event loop. Visual Basic did exist.

Yes, but not much before. It took heavy evangelism and Google Chrome's JIT to make JavaScript popular about 10 years ago.

Maybe you don't remember the early 2000s when people were adding flying butterflies around the cursor with Javascript?

Recently there has been hype and explosion but web development (development on the browser, which means Javascript for lack of alternatives) had a long way coming.

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