50 Fun Facts About 1995

Which 1995 Pixar release became the first feature film made entirely with computer animation?

Toy Story earned director John Lasseter a Special Achievement Academy Award, and its script was the first for an animated film to be nominated for a writing Oscar.

Which website, launched by Pierre Omidyar in 1995, made its first sale with a broken laser pointer?

eBay began as a hobby site called AuctionWeb, and the pointer fetched $14.83 from a buyer who said he collected broken laser pointers.

Which product was Jeff Bezos's Amazon set up to sell when the online store opened in July 1995?

Books were the whole catalogue at first, and the first one sold was a Douglas Hofstadter title about computer models of thought. Bezos had founded the company in his garage a year earlier.

Which sport had Michael Jordan been playing professionally before he returned to the Chicago Bulls in March 1995?

Baseball had been a struggle: Jordan batted .202 for the minor-league Birmingham Barons in 1994, and a Major League players' strike helped push him back to basketball.

Which Rolling Stones song did Microsoft use in its advertising to launch Windows 95 in August 1995?

Start Me Up was a nod to the new Start button. Reports put the fee as high as $14 million, though Microsoft said it had paid the band about $3 million.

Which comic strip about a six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger did Bill Watterson end on 31 December 1995?

Calvin and Hobbes ran in more than 2,000 newspapers at its peak, yet Watterson refused to license the characters, so almost no official merchandise appeared during its run.

Which Simpsons character was unmasked in September 1995 as the culprit in the cliffhanger Who Shot Mr. Burns?

Maggie fired by accident when Mr. Burns tried to take her lollipop and his gun slipped into her hands. Viewers had waited since May, when the first half aired, to find out.

Which 1995 teen comedy set in Beverly Hills did Amy Heckerling loosely adapt from Jane Austen's novel Emma?

Clueless drew on real classrooms: as research for the script, Heckerling sat in on classes at Beverly Hills High School to get a feel for student life.

Which company brought its first PlayStation to North America in September 1995 after a failed deal with Nintendo?

Sony had planned a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo; when that venture failed it built a console of its own, which became the first to ship over 100 million units.

Which American city became home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum, designed by I. M. Pei, in 1995?

Cleveland won after civic leaders pledged $65 million in public money and pointed to local disc jockey Alan Freed, who had heavily promoted the new genre on air.

Which actor first played James Bond in the 1995 film GoldenEye, released after a six-year gap between Bond films?

Pierce Brosnan took over after legal disputes stalled the series for so long that Timothy Dalton's contract expired. Sean Bean played the rogue agent he had to stop.

Which actor replaced Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne in the 1995 film Batman Forever?

Val Kilmer got the cape after William Baldwin and Ethan Hawke were considered, then lasted a single film: George Clooney replaced him for Batman & Robin in 1997.

Which 1995 epic starring Mel Gibson as Scottish warrior William Wallace won the Academy Award for Best Picture?

Braveheart won five of its ten Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Gibson, who had at first turned down the chance to direct it.

Which 1995 Robin Williams film features a supernatural board game that unleashes jungle hazards on its players?

Jumanji was adapted from a 1981 children's picture story by Chris Van Allsburg and finished as the tenth highest-grossing film of 1995.

Which 1995 Disney animated film about a Powhatan woman won the Best Original Song Oscar for Colors of the Wind?

Pocahontas had its premiere outdoors in New York's Central Park on June 10, 1995, and won a second Oscar for Alan Menken's score.

Which future star of Rent and Sin City was discovered on her front porch and cast in the 1995 film Kids?

Rosario Dawson was 15 when photographer Larry Clark, the film's director, came across her outside her home, and she was given a part already written into the script.

Which screenwriter, later the director of Gummo and Spring Breakers, wrote Larry Clark's 1995 film Kids?

Harmony Korine's script was his first, and the finished film went out unrated after Miramax declined to release it with the NC-17 rating it had been assigned.

Which rapper had the top-selling US single of 1995 with Gangsta's Paradise, from the film Dangerous Minds?

Coolio built the track on Stevie Wonder's 1976 song Pastime Paradise, and it became the first rap single ever to go straight to number one in Britain.

Which Canadian singer's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year?

Alanis Morissette won five Grammys for the album, which has sold over 33 million copies worldwide and made her the youngest Album of the Year winner up to that time.

Which band's single Country House outsold Roll with It by Oasis in the 1995 chart race called the Battle of Britpop?

Blur sold 274,000 copies to their rivals' 216,000 in what was the best week for UK singles sales in a decade.

Which Tejano star's album Dreaming of You debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 months after her death in 1995?

Selena had been recording an English-language crossover when she was killed that March; the album sold 175,000 copies on its first day, then a record for a female artist.

Which band released Free as a Bird in December 1995, built around a home demo recorded by a late member in 1977?

The Beatles came back 25 years after their break-up: Paul McCartney asked Yoko Ono for unreleased John Lennon material, and the three surviving members built a studio version around it.

Which singer's 1995 ballad You Are Not Alone was the first song to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100?

Michael Jackson broke his own mark: earlier that year his single Scream had set the previous record by entering the chart at number five.

Which boy band did Robbie Williams quit in July 1995, months before the remaining four members split up?

Take That finished their world tour as a four-piece and released a final single before splitting in 1996. Williams launched a solo career that year and later had his best-selling single with Angels.

Which pop star, born in London in August 1995 to Kosovo Albanian parents, had hits with New Rules and Levitating?

Dua Lipa got her first name at her grandmother's suggestion, and it means love in Albanian.

Which actor, born in New York City in December 1995, went on to play Paul Atreides in Dune and Willy Wonka?

Timothée Chalamet grew up in Hell's Kitchen in a subsidised building reserved for artists, and Call Me by Your Name brought him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.

Which author's Goosebumps novels became a children's horror anthology series that first aired on television in 1995?

R. L. Stine's scary stories were filmed largely in Ontario, Canada, using real houses and historic properties rather than purpose-built sets.

Which cartoon about two laboratory mice bent on taking over the world spun off from Animaniacs in September 1995?

Pinky and the Brain grew out of a recurring Animaniacs segment that began in 1993, and its first episode aired in prime time on The WB as well as on Kids' WB.

Which actress played the title role in Xena: Warrior Princess, the Hercules spin-off that began airing in 1995?

Lucy Lawless first played Xena in three Hercules episodes, and the character was originally scheduled to die in her third appearance before her popularity won her a series.

Which Star Trek series, launched in January 1995, was the first to have a female captain as its lead character?

Voyager put Captain Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew, in command, and it was also the first show ever to air on the new UPN network.

Which actor shot to stardom as Mr Darcy in the BBC's 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice?

Colin Firth's Darcy inspired Helen Fielding to write the Bridget Jones novels, and he later played Bridget's love interest, Mark Darcy, on screen.

Which Japanese anime was dubbed into English for North America in 1995 to capitalise on the Power Rangers craze?

Sailor Moon lost seven of its first 89 episodes to cuts in that dub, which also westernised the series by changing Japanese names and cultural references.

Which 1995 Gregory Maguire novel retells The Wizard of Oz from the witch's side and inspired a hit Broadway musical?

Wicked is written as a biography of the Witch of the West, whom Maguire named Elphaba Thropp, and the 2003 stage musical it inspired won Tony Awards.

Which author began the His Dark Materials trilogy with Northern Lights, first published in Britain in 1995?

Philip Pullman won the 1995 Carnegie Medal for it, and American readers met the story a year later under the title The Golden Compass.

Which programming language did Brendan Eich create at Netscape in 1995, finishing the first version in ten days?

JavaScript was first called Mocha, then LiveScript, and only got its final name that December in a joint announcement with Sun Microsystems.

Which BBC current affairs series broadcast Martin Bashir's interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, in November 1995?

Panorama drew nearly 23 million UK viewers that night. In 2020 the BBC apologised because Bashir had used forged bank statements to win the trust of Diana and her brother.

Which Irish poet, later acclaimed for his verse translation of Beowulf, won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Seamus Heaney was the eldest of nine children born on a County Londonderry farm, and the Nobel committee praised his work for exalting everyday miracles and the living past.

Which nebula holds the Pillars of Creation, the gas columns photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1995?

The Eagle Nebula image was taken by Arizona State University astronomers Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen, and its leftmost pillar alone is about four light-years long.

Which planet did NASA's Galileo spacecraft reach in December 1995, becoming the first probe to orbit an outer planet?

Jupiter was Galileo's home for nearly eight years, until NASA deliberately destroyed the craft in the giant's atmosphere in 2003 so it could not contaminate any of the moons.

Which US state capital lost its Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to a truck bomb on 19 April 1995?

Oklahoma City remembers the 168 victims with a field of empty chairs, set in nine rows to stand for the nine floors of the building.

Which Israeli prime minister was assassinated in November 1995 after a Tel Aviv rally supporting the Oslo Accords?

Yitzhak Rabin was shot by an Israeli law student who opposed the peace process, and the square where the rally was held was later renamed in his honour.

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

Quebec's No side took 50.58% of the vote, a margin of just 54,288 ballots, on the largest turnout in the province's history at 93.52%.

Which lawyer led the Dream Team of defence attorneys that won O. J. Simpson's acquittal in October 1995?

Johnnie Cochran built his closing argument around a rhyme about a glove that Simpson had appeared to struggle to pull on in front of the jury.

Which American city hosted the 1995 peace talks that ended the Bosnian War, held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base?

Dayton gave its name to the agreement reached there on 21 November 1995, which was ceremonially re-signed in Paris three weeks later.

Which London merchant bank, founded in 1762, collapsed in 1995 after rogue trader Nick Leeson lost £827 million?

Barings had once helped finance the Louisiana Purchase. It was undone by futures bets that Leeson placed from its Singapore office using the bank's own money.

Which Japanese city was hit hardest by the earthquake that struck near Awaji Island on 17 January 1995?

Kobe was the closest major city to the epicentre, about 20 km away, and around 4,600 of the more than 5,000 people killed came from there.

Which host nation beat New Zealand with an extra-time drop goal to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup final?

South Africa won 15–12 through Joel Stransky's drop goal, and Nelson Mandela handed over the trophy wearing a Springboks shirt and cap.

Which Baltimore Orioles shortstop passed Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played on 6 September 1995?

Cal Ripken Jr. beat a mark of 2,130 games that had stood for 56 years, then kept going to 2,632 before choosing to end the streak himself in 1998.

Which Liberian striker won the 1995 Ballon d'Or with AC Milan and was later elected his country's president?

George Weah was also named FIFA World Player of the Year in 1995, and he served as president of Liberia from 2018 to 2024.

Which Spanish cyclist won the Tour de France for the fifth year running in 1995?

Miguel Induráin won every Tour from 1991 to 1995 and spent 60 days in the race leader's yellow jersey across his career.