98 Fun Facts About 1990's

Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996 at the Roslin Institute in which country?

Scotland's Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, revealed Dolly in February 1997, seven months after her birth, and the news set off a worldwide argument over cloning.

Which medical drama created by Michael Crichton, set in a fictional Chicago hospital, premiered on NBC in 1994?

ER began as a film script Michael Crichton wrote in 1974 from his days as a medical student; it sat unmade for two decades until Steven Spielberg's company helped turn it into a series.

Which 1996 console came with a three-handled controller built around an analogue thumbstick?

Nintendo 64 stuck with cartridges while its rivals moved to CDs, a choice that drove Square to take Final Fantasy VII to the PlayStation instead.

What egg-shaped virtual pet became a global sensation after Bandai released it in Japan in 1996?

Tamagotchi demand so outran supply in Japan that Bandai banned staff from carrying bags with the company logo, for fear they would be robbed for the toy.

Which city hosted the 1992 Summer Olympics, where the NBA-stocked US 'Dream Team' won basketball gold?

Barcelona was the first Olympics after basketball's world body voted to admit NBA professionals; the Dream Team of Jordan, Magic Johnson and Bird won every game by an average of almost 44 points.

Which 1991 grunge album features the single 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'?

Nevermind climbed to number one on the Billboard 200 in January 1992, displacing Michael Jackson's Dangerous less than four months after Nirvana released it.

Which 1993 Steven Spielberg film set a new record as the highest-grossing movie ever?

Jurassic Park was meant to use go-motion puppet dinosaurs by animator Phil Tippett, until ILM's computer-generated animals proved more lifelike and set a milestone in film effects.

Which British pop group debuted in 1996 with the worldwide number one 'Wannabe'?

Spice Girls answered an advert in the trade paper The Stage, then broke with the managers who had assembled them and signed with Simon Fuller before 'Wannabe' was released.

Which 1994 prison drama stars Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman?

The Shawshank Redemption barely registered at the box office in 1994; video rentals and constant showings on the TNT cable channel later turned Frank Darabont's film into a favourite.

Which 1997 sci-fi film stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as agents monitoring aliens on Earth?

Men in Black began as a little-known comic by Lowell Cunningham, which producers optioned in 1992, five years before Barry Sonnenfeld's film turned it into a blockbuster.

Which R&B trio released 'Creep' and 'Waterfalls' from its 1994 album CrazySexyCool?

TLC took 'Creep' and 'Waterfalls' to number one in 1995, yet the trio filed for bankruptcy that same year, at the height of the album's success.

Which 1996 alien-invasion film was the year's highest-grossing movie?

Independence Day showed its exploding White House in a Super Bowl commercial months before release, and the film's success made the game a showcase for blockbuster trailers.

Which Seattle grunge band released its debut album 'Ten' in 1991?

Pearl Jam first played as Mookie Blaylock, after the NBA player; made to change the name once signed, the band titled its album Ten after his shirt number instead.

Beyoncé was lead singer of which Houston group, whose debut album arrived in 1998?

Destiny's Child grew out of Girl's Tyme, a girl group that lost on the TV talent show Star Search; years later Beyoncé spliced the clip of that defeat into her 'Flawless' video.

The Human Genome Project, launched in 1990, was led by which US body?

The National Institutes of Health funded the US work alongside the Department of Energy, and the project delivered its human sequence in 2003, two years ahead of its 2005 target.

Which was the first Soviet republic to declare independence, in March 1990?

Lithuania declared its independence restored on 11 March 1990, the first of the 15 Soviet republics to break away; Soviet troops stormed Vilnius's TV tower in January 1991 but could not reverse it.

Russia, Ukraine and Belarus declared the USSR dissolved in December 1991 and founded which successor body?

Commonwealth of Independent States was agreed by Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus at a state dacha in the Belovezh Forest; on 25 December the Soviet flag came down over the Kremlin for the last time.

What code name did the US-led coalition give its 1991 war against Iraq?

Operation Desert Storm opened with five weeks of air strikes from mid-January 1991; the ground offensive that followed on 24 February needed only four days to end the war.

What flaw compromised the Hubble Space Telescope after its 1990 launch?

Its main mirror had spherical aberration because it was polished slightly too flat near the outer edge; shuttle astronauts fitted corrective optics in December 1993 and the images came out sharp.

Which institution, where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, made it free to all in 1993?

CERN, the physics lab near Geneva, announced on 30 April 1993 that the Web would be free to anyone with no fees due, after the rival Gopher system had said it would charge for licences.

The cell used to clone Dolly the sheep was taken from which part of the donor's body?

A mammary gland cell from a six-year-old ewe was the donor, and Dolly was the only lamb born from 277 attempts; she proved that a specialised adult cell could be reset to build a whole animal.

Which US city's federal building was destroyed by Timothy McVeigh's truck bomb on 19 April 1995?

Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed on the second anniversary of the fiery end of the Waco siege, which Timothy McVeigh blamed on the government; 168 people were killed.

The creators of Bandai's egg-shaped virtual pet won which tongue-in-cheek award in 1997?

The Ig Nobel Prize for Economics went to Akihiro Yokoi and Aki Maita in 1997 'for diverting millions of person-hours of work into the husbandry of virtual pets'.

Which 1993 Nirvana album was recorded with producer Steve Albini?

In Utero was recorded in February 1993 with Steve Albini, who took a flat fee and refused any royalties from it, calling them an insult to the band.

Nirvana released its 1989 debut album Bleach on which Seattle independent label?

Sub Pop issued Bleach in June 1989 after the producer billed the band just $606.17 for thirty hours of recording, money put up by guitarist Jason Everman.

Which director made Titanic, which at about $200 million was then the most expensive film ever produced?

James Cameron ran so far over budget that Fox brought in Paramount to share the cost, and he gave up his $8 million directing fee; Titanic then took over $1.8 billion on its first run.

Which ballad from the 1997 film Titanic topped charts around the world?

My Heart Will Go On nearly went unrecorded: the director wanted no pop song in Titanic, so composer James Horner had Celine Dion tape a demo in secret and waited for the right moment to play it to him.

Friends was developed under which working title?

Insomnia Cafe was the title on the seven-page pitch Marta Kauffman and David Crane sold to NBC in December 1993; the script was later called Friends Like Us and Six of One before the name was cut to Friends.

Which comedian co-created Seinfeld and later made Curb Your Enthusiasm?

Larry David modelled the cheap, neurotic George Costanza on himself, quit Seinfeld after its seventh season, and came back two years later to write the 1998 finale.

Which invented holiday did Seinfeld introduce in 1997, complete with an aluminium pole and an 'Airing of Grievances'?

Festivus was real before it was fiction: the father of Seinfeld writer Dan O'Keefe had invented it for his own family in 1966, and his son worked it into the episode 'The Strike'.

Which 1990s computer scare came from software that abbreviated years to two digits?

The Y2K bug led firms and governments to spend billions on repairs before 1 January 2000; consultant Peter de Jager's 1993 article 'Doomsday 2000' raised the alarm, and few major errors occurred.

Which of these EU members kept its own currency when the euro launched in 1999?

United Kingdom negotiators had won an opt-out from the single currency in the 1992 treaty on European union, months before sterling was forced out of Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism on 'Black Wednesday'.

The euro took over one-for-one from which predecessor on 1 January 1999?

The European Currency Unit was a bookkeeping basket of member currencies used since 1979, never issued as cash; the euro itself stayed invisible for its first three years, until notes and coins arrived in 2002.

Which party, led by Ian Paisley, was the only major one in Northern Ireland to oppose the 1998 Good Friday Agreement?

The DUP walked out of the talks and campaigned for a No vote, yet in 2007 Paisley became First Minister, sharing power with Sinn Féin.

Which party won South Africa's first all-race election in April 1994, taking more than 60% of the vote?

African National Congress votes fell just short of the two-thirds needed to write the final constitution alone, and Nelson Mandela led a unity government that included F. W. de Klerk's National Party.

The shooting down of President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane in April 1994 set off a genocide in which country?

Rwanda's president died alongside Burundi's when their plane was shot down as it came in to land at Kigali; militias then set up roadblocks, and the killing of Tutsi went on for about 100 days.

In June 1994, some 95 million Americans watched police trail O. J. Simpson in which white vehicle?

A Ford Bronco owned and driven by his friend Al Cowlings carried Simpson along the Los Angeles freeways; TV stations broke into Game 5 of the NBA Finals to show the slow-speed pursuit live.

Which defence lawyer told O. J. Simpson's jury in 1995, 'If it doesn't fit, you must acquit'?

Johnnie Cochran used the rhyme in his closing argument after prosecutors had Simpson try on the gloves from the crime in court and they looked too small; the jury acquitted after about four hours of deliberation.

Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met as students at which university?

Stanford had student Sergey Brin show newcomer Larry Page around in 1995, and by some accounts the two disagreed about nearly everything; within a year they were building the search engine BackRub together.

Which country did Iraq invade in August 1990, triggering the Gulf War?

Kuwait was invaded after Saddam Hussein accused it of driving down oil prices and demanded that it cancel Iraq's war debts; a US-led coalition drove his army out seven months later.

At the 1997 handover, China pledged to keep Hong Kong's "one country, two systems" for how many years?

50 years of an unchanged way of life were promised under 'one country, two systems', a pledge that runs to 2047; at the handover the last governor, Chris Patten, sailed away with Prince Charles on the royal yacht Britannia.

The 1994 rail tunnel between Folkestone and Coquelles runs under which waters?

The English Channel had cut Britain off since the Ice Age; when tunnellers met beneath it on 1 December 1990, Graham Fagg and Philippe Cozette shook hands as the first men to walk between the two countries.

Which familiar desktop interface element did Windows 95 introduce?

The Start menu gave Microsoft its launch campaign: Windows 95 adverts ran to the Rolling Stones' 'Start Me Up', a song the company reportedly paid millions to use.

Which 1995 film was the first entirely computer-animated feature?

Toy Story was nearly abandoned in November 1993 after Disney executives saw a test reel with a far harsher Woody and judged it a disaster; Pixar's writers reworked the script within weeks and saved the film.

Which world chess champion lost a six-game match to IBM's Deep Blue in 1997?

Garry Kasparov had beaten the machine 4–2 in Philadelphia a year earlier; after losing the rematch 3½–2½ he accused IBM of cheating, and IBM retired Deep Blue without a third match.

Which rover did NASA's Mars Pathfinder set down on the Red Planet on 4 July 1997?

Sojourner, named for abolitionist Sojourner Truth by a 12-year-old essay winner, was planned to work for about a week but kept exploring for 83 Martian days.

Which businessman created Beanie Babies, the pellet-stuffed collectibles of the late 1990s?

Ty Warner sold Beanie Babies only through small gift and toy shops and 'retired' characters without warning, and the scarcity turned them into a speculative collecting craze.

Which 1998 robot toy spoke its own language at first, then seemed to learn English?

Furby never learned anything: its 'Furbish' was programmed to give way to English over time, yet in 1999 the US National Security Agency banned the toy from its offices for fear it would record secrets.

Which publisher first released Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in June 1997?

Bloomsbury bought the book after its chairman's eight-year-old daughter read one chapter and wanted more, then asked the author to use initials, fearing boys would not read a book written by a woman.

Freed in 1990, Nelson Mandela had spent 18 years imprisoned on which island?

Robben Island held him for 18 years, but it was not where he walked free: he was released from the gates of Victor Verster Prison, near Paarl, where he spent his last 14 months in custody.

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) was bundled with which console, becoming its best-selling game?

Sega Genesis consoles in America came with Sonic from 1991, when US chief Tom Kalinske dropped Altered Beast as the pack-in game; Sega's board in Japan opposed giving the hit away but let him try.

Which electronics giant launched its first games console in December 1994 after a rival scrapped their joint CD-ROM project?

Sony had been building a CD-ROM add-on for the Super NES until Nintendo cancelled the deal; it turned the work into the PlayStation, which went on sale in Japan on 3 December 1994.

Which prize did Pulp Fiction win at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival?

The Palme d'Or came from a jury led by Clint Eastwood, months before the film's release; Quentin Tarantino's low-budget crime story went on to take nearly $213 million worldwide.

Which 1994 film won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Tom Hanks?

Forrest Gump also won for Robert Zemeckis's direction, its screenplay, editing and visual effects, which placed Hanks inside real news footage to meet President John F. Kennedy.

Which 1994 Disney film was the highest-grossing animated movie until Finding Nemo?

The Lion King was the project most Disney animators avoided: they chose to work on Pocahontas instead, believing it would be the more prestigious and successful of the two films.

Which Spanish duo recorded 'Macarena', a 14-week US number one in 1996?

Los del Río improvised the chorus of 'Macarena' on a trip to Venezuela after watching flamenco teacher Diana Patricia Cubillán dance at a private party; a remix later topped the US chart.

Which band's 'Country House' beat 'Roll with It' by Oasis to number one in the 1995 'Battle of Britpop'?

Blur won a chart race that made the national television news; Oasis lost the week, but their album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? went on to be one of Britain's best-selling ever.

Before her 1998 debut, Britney Spears was a cast member of which show?

The Mickey Mouse Club first turned her down at eight as too young, so she did adverts and an off-Broadway play before joining the cast for its final two seasons.

Under what name did Jeff Bezos found Amazon in July 1994?

Cadabra lasted only a few months: Bezos renamed the company after a lawyer misheard its name as 'cadaver', and picked Amazon out of a dictionary because it sounded exotic and different.

Pierre Omidyar launched eBay in September 1995 under what original name?

AuctionWeb made its first sale when a broken laser pointer went for $14.83; Omidyar wrote to check the buyer knew it was broken, and was told: 'I'm a collector of broken laser pointers.'

Linus Torvalds was a student at which university when he started the Linux kernel in 1991?

Torvalds was a computer-science student at the University of Helsinki when he posted to comp.os.minix in August 1991 that his kernel was 'just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu'.

The 1994 Pentium FDIV bug was discovered by Thomas Nicely, a professor of what subject?

Mathematics was Thomas Nicely's field at Lynchburg College: he caught the error while counting twin primes, and replacing the flawed chips cost Intel a $475 million charge.

The 1995 accord ending the Bosnian War was negotiated at which site in Dayton, Ohio?

Talks ran at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton from 1 November 1995; the Dayton Agreement was initialed there on 21 November and signed in Paris on 14 December.

Which Dutch city gave its name to the 1992 treaty that created the European Union?

Maastricht saw all twelve member states sign on 7 February 1992, but Danish voters then rejected the treaty by 50.7% to 49.3%, and Denmark approved it only after winning exemptions.

On which two grounds did the House impeach Bill Clinton in December 1998?

Perjury and obstruction of justice were the two articles the House approved on December 19, 1998; the Senate acquitted him on both in February 1999, with neither charge winning even a bare majority.

Who lit the Olympic flame at the opening of the Atlanta 1996 Games?

Muhammad Ali, his hands shaking from Parkinson's, lit the cauldron at the 19 July 1996 opening ceremony; during the Games he received a replacement for his lost 1960 Rome gold medal at the Georgia Dome.

Tiger Woods won which 1997 major by a record 12 strokes?

The Masters began badly for him, with a four-over 40 on his first nine holes; he came home in 30 and finished twelve strokes clear of Tom Kite, at 21 the youngest champion Augusta had seen.

Mike Tyson was disqualified in June 1997 for biting which opponent's ear?

Evander Holyfield had both ears bitten in the third round of their June 1997 rematch; Tyson was disqualified, and Nevada's athletic commission then took away his boxing licence and fined him $3 million.

Who scored two headed goals from corners in the 1998 World Cup final against Brazil?

Zinedine Zidane headed in two corners before half-time and France won 3–0; Brazil's star striker Ronaldo played the whole match despite suffering a convulsive fit hours before kick-off.

Which country handed Macau to China at midnight on 20 December 1999?

Portugal had run Macau since 1557; after its 1974 revolution it stopped treating Macau as an overseas province and called it a Chinese territory under Portuguese administration.

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake on 17 January 1995 devastated which Japanese port city?

Kobe's elevated Hanshin Expressway toppled in pictures seen around the world, and the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate was among the first to hand out food and supplies to survivors.

Which cult carried out the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway on 20 March 1995?

Aum Shinrikyo members carried packets of liquid sarin onto rush-hour trains and punctured them with sharpened umbrella tips before getting off; founder Shoko Asahara was executed in 2018.

Which drug company launched Viagra after it won US approval in 1998?

Pfizer discovered sildenafil in 1989 while looking for a treatment for angina; the heart drug never arrived, and the compound was approved nine years later for a very different purpose.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone's South Park debuted in August 1997 on which channel?

Comedy Central got the show because a Fox executive had paid Parker and Stone to make him a video Christmas card; copies of the short spread so widely that it led to a series.

Who played the sceptical FBI agent Dana Scully when The X-Files began in 1993?

Gillian Anderson was cast although Fox executives had wanted a more glamorous 'bombshell' for the part; the role went on to win her an Emmy in 1997.

Which micro-budget 1999 horror film grossed nearly $250 million worldwide?

The Blair Witch Project was sold as real footage: its marketing listed the three actors as 'missing' or 'deceased', a hoax that helped a film bought for $1.1 million at Sundance become a sleeper hit.

Shawn Fanning launched the file-sharing service Napster in June 1999 with which co-founder?

Sean Parker and Fanning's service drew a lawsuit from Metallica in 2000 after an unreleased demo of the band's song 'I Disappear' spread across it; court action shut Napster down in July 2001.

Which web directory began in 1994 as 'Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web'?

Yahoo was the new name its founders gave the list within months; the word was a slang term for someone rude, unsophisticated and uncouth, taken from the brutes in Gulliver's Travels.

The Oslo I Accord was signed at a public ceremony on 13 September 1993 in which city?

After secret talks hosted in Norway by the Fafo institute were completed on 20 August 1993, the accord was signed on the White House lawn in Washington, with Rabin and Arafat shaking hands before Clinton.

Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in November 1995 after a rally in which city?

Rabin was shot by law student Yigal Amir on 4 November 1995 as he left a peace rally at Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv, since renamed Rabin Square; Amir opposed the Oslo Accords.

Which comet, torn apart by Jupiter's gravity in 1992, crashed into the planet in July 1994?

Shoemaker–Levy 9 hit Jupiter as a string of fragments, leaving dark scars more visible than the Great Red Spot that lasted for months before the planet's winds erased them.

Which 1993 first-person shooter by id Software crashed a university network on the night of its release?

Doom's first episode was uploaded free at midnight on 10 December 1993; so many people were already waiting on the University of Wisconsin server that the developers themselves could not connect to it.

Which plush toy caused a Christmas 1996 shopping frenzy?

Tickle Me Elmo, made by Tyco, sold out its whole run of a million toys that Christmas; some changed hands for hundreds of dollars, and a Canadian shop clerk was injured when a crowd of about 300 rushed him for one.

Which Canadian singer released the 1995 album Jagged Little Pill?

Alanis Morissette had made two dance-pop albums as a teenager in Canada; the other labels she approached turned the new record down before Maverick released it, and it won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Tupac Shakur was fatally shot in September 1996 after attending a Mike Tyson fight at which hotel?

Tupac watched Tyson beat Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand on 7 September 1996; after a brawl in the hotel lobby he was hit in a drive-by on East Flamingo Road and died six days later.

Whitney Houston's 1992 hit 'I Will Always Love You' was written and first recorded by whom?

Dolly Parton wrote 'I Will Always Love You' as a farewell to Porter Wagoner and took it to number one on the country chart in 1974; Houston's Bodyguard version topped the Hot 100 for 14 weeks.

The August 1991 coup by Communist hardliners tried to seize power from which Soviet leader?

Mikhail Gorbachev was held by the plotters at his holiday dacha in Foros, Crimea, but they failed to stop Boris Yeltsin, who rallied resistance from the Russian parliament building; the coup collapsed within days.

The peaceful split of Czechoslovakia on 1 January 1993 is known by what nickname?

The 'Velvet Divorce' echoes the bloodless Velvet Revolution of November 1989; the Czech Republic and Slovakia separated by parliamentary agreement, without a referendum, on 1 January 1993.

Which chancellor led West Germany into reunification with the East on 3 October 1990?

Helmut Kohl moved within weeks of the Berlin Wall opening, announcing a ten-point plan for unity that he had not discussed with other European governments; less than a year later the two states were one.

Which Canadian province voted in 1995 to stay in Canada by a margin of barely one percentage point?

Quebec's 'No' side won with 50.58% on a record turnout; that night separatist premier Jacques Parizeau blamed the defeat on 'money and ethnic votes', and he announced his resignation the next day.

Nunavut was split from which Canadian jurisdiction on 1 April 1999?

Northwest Territories land in the eastern Arctic became Nunavut under a land-claims settlement that gave the Inuit a self-governing territory, the first big change to Canada's map since Newfoundland joined in 1949.

Which country signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol but never ratified it?

United States negotiators signed, but the Senate had already voted 95–0 against any climate treaty that set no limits for developing countries, and the protocol was never ratified.

The ferry MS Estonia sank with 852 lives lost in September 1994 in which sea?

The Estonia went down in the Baltic Sea on 28 September 1994 while crossing from Tallinn to Stockholm, after her bow visor tore off in a storm; 852 of the 989 people aboard died.

FBI agents arrested the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, in April 1996 at his cabin in which state?

Kaczynski was arrested on 3 April 1996 at the plywood cabin near Lincoln, Montana, where he had lived since 1971 without electricity or running water; his brother David had tipped off the FBI.

The 1997 Heaven's Gate mass suicide of 39 members was timed to the approach of which comet?

Marshall Applewhite's followers believed a spacecraft trailed comet Hale–Bopp, then near its brightest; the 39 bodies were found in a rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, San Diego County, on 26 March 1997.

The 1992 Los Angeles riots began after four officers were acquitted of beating which man?

Rodney King's beating by LAPD officers in March 1991 was filmed by bystander George Holliday; the acquittal of four officers on 29 April 1992 set off days of unrest that left more than 60 people dead.

Disneyland Paris opened on 12 April 1992 under what name?

Euro Disney Resort kept that name until 1994, a year when the loss-making park was rumoured to be close to bankruptcy and renegotiated its debts; it dropped 'Euro' and became Disneyland Paris that October.

Who hosted the original British run of the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire from its 1998 launch?

Chris Tarrant hosted the ITV original from its 4 September 1998 launch until 2014; the format was devised by David Briggs, Mike Whitehill and Steven Knight, who had created promotional games for Tarrant's Capital FM breakfast show.