As your sibling comment mentions, people used to be taught (apparently in school, but I went to school a bit early for TLDs to be part of the curriculum) about the meaning of the TLDs.
It has never been the case that you needed to be any particular kind of organisation (or an organisation at all) to get a .org, but in the early days it did tend to be used more by non-profits and the like.
It has never been the case that you needed to be any particular kind of organisation (or an organisation at all) to get a .org, but in the early days it did tend to be used more by non-profits and the like.