50 Fun Facts About 80s and 90s

Under which name was Sony's portable cassette player first sold in the United States instead of Walkman?

Overseas sales teams disliked the made-up Japanese-English name, so it was Stowaway in the UK and Freestyle in Australia and Sweden before Walkman won everywhere.

Who scored the go-ahead goal with exactly 10:00 left in the 1980 Miracle on Ice game?

The team captain's shot made it 4-3, the Americans' first lead of the game; two days later they beat Finland for the gold medal.

Which subject did Challenger's Christa McAuliffe teach at Concord High School?

She was picked from more than 11,000 applicants and had planned to teach two lessons from orbit, including a tour of the shuttle.

On 9 November 1989, what did Günter Schabowski answer when asked when new travel rules would take effect?

He had missed the meeting where the rules were discussed and improvised; crowds took him at his word and were at the Berlin Wall crossings that same night.

Whose 'new ideas' did Mondale attack with a fast-food catchphrase in a 1984 primary debate?

The line came from Wendy's 'Fluffy Bun' ad, in which Clara Peller inspects a huge bun with a tiny patty and demands to know where the beef is.

Trivial Pursuit, the board game craze of the mid-1980s, was invented in 1979 in which city?

A photo editor and a sports editor came up with it over a game of Scrabble; between 1983 and 1988 it sold 30 million copies.

The falling-blocks game bundled with the Game Boy in 1989 was written in which country?

Alexey Pajitnov built it on an Elektronika 60 at a Moscow computing centre while working on speech recognition and artificial intelligence.

Namco renamed its 1980 maze game from Puck Man for the North American release. What was the worry?

The original title came from the Japanese phrase paku paku taberu, the sound of gobbling something up.

Whose onstage remark at Live Aid inspired the first Farm Aid concert in September 1985?

He suggested a million or two of the Live Aid money could pay off some farm mortgages; Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young then staged the show in Champaign, Illinois.

Which actor spent weeks filming as Marty McFly before Michael J. Fox replaced him?

Fox was the first choice but tied up with Family Ties; the replacement was told on 10 January 1985 and much of the film was reshot.

In November 1987 someone in a Max Headroom mask hijacked the signals of two TV stations in which city?

WGN-TV and WTTW were both interrupted the same night; nobody has ever been identified as the culprit.

Before they were toys or a cartoon, the Care Bears were painted in 1981 for what product?

Artist Elena Kucharik painted them for American Greetings, the same company behind Strawberry Shortcake.

The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, the first commercial handheld cell phone, sold in 1984 at what price?

For that you got about 30 minutes of talk time after a charge that took roughly 10 hours.

In which Texas city was 18-month-old 'Baby Jessica' McClure rescued from a well in October 1987?

Rescuers took 58 hours to free her from an 8-inch well casing about 22 feet down.

How did Phil Collins play both the London and Philadelphia halves of Live Aid in 1985?

Noel Edmonds flew him by helicopter from Wembley to Heathrow, then a British Airways Concorde got him to New York and another helicopter to JFK Stadium.

Which producer talked Run-DMC into remaking Aerosmith's 'Walk This Way' in 1986?

It reached No. 4 on the Hot 100, higher than the original, and became the first hip hop single in the Billboard top five.

Teddy Ruxpin, one of the best-selling toys of 1985 and 1986, told stories using what hidden in his back?

His mouth and eyes moved in sync with the tape; maker Worlds of Wonder later also launched Lazer Tag.

The 1985 Garbage Pail Kids sticker cards, spoofing the Cabbage Patch Kids, were created by which cartoonist?

He was a consultant for Topps at the time and had already created Wacky Packages; his graphic novel Maus won a Pulitzer in 1992.

Swatch, the plastic Swiss watch brand launched in 1983, is a contraction of which phrase?

The idea was a cheap, high-tech watch you could own as a spare or a fashion accessory; the first collection of twelve models debuted in Zürich on 1 March 1983.

Chicken McNuggets went nationwide in the US in 1983. Which of these is one of the four official shapes?

The others are the bell, the ball and the bone (also called the bow-tie).

For how long did participants in Hands Across America hold hands on 25 May 1986?

Roughly 5 million people joined the coast-to-coast line on Memorial Day weekend to raise money for hunger and homelessness.

Michael Jackson first performed the moonwalk on TV at a 1983 anniversary special for which record label?

He mimed to 'Billie Jean', the only non-label song on the show, on NBC's 25th-anniversary special aired 16 May 1983.

The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound in March 1989. What did it strike?

Around 10.8 million US gallons of crude poured out; the reef itself is named after William Bligh of Bounty fame, who sailed with Cook.

The Simpsons began in 1987 as short cartoons on which Fox sketch-comedy series?

Forty-eight shorts ran over three seasons, starting with 'Good Night' on 19 April 1987, before the family got its own series in December 1989.

Which Nintendo engineer led the team that designed the Game Boy, released in 1989?

He also created the Game & Watch line; the original handheld's screen showed four shades of grey-green and the console family went on to sell nearly 119 million units.

By roughly how many points per game did the 1992 Dream Team beat its opponents at the Barcelona Olympics?

Charles Barkley led the team in scoring, and its closest game was a 32-point win over Croatia in the final.

Elwood Edwards, the voice of AOL's 'You've got mail', was paid how much in 1989 to record it?

His wife worked at the company and overheard CEO Steve Case say he wanted a voice on the service; Edwards recorded the lines on a cassette deck in his living room.

Where did Massachusetts programmer David Eddy coin the abbreviation 'Y2K' in June 1995?

David Eddy said rivals like CDC (Century Date Change) and FADL (Faulty Date Logic) were floating around and Y2K just came off his fingertips; the world spent an estimated $308 billion on fixes.

Which IBM computer first beat a reigning world chess champion in a match in May 1997?

Garry Kasparov had won their first match in Philadelphia in 1996 by 4-2; the New York rematch went 3.5-2.5 the machine's way.

The Channel Tunnel was officially opened in May 1994 by Queen Elizabeth II and which French president?

The ceremony in Calais came a year later than planned; the tunnel's 37.9 km undersea stretch is still the longest of any tunnel in the world.

What did Michael Jordan bat in 1994 for the Birmingham Barons, the White Sox Double-A affiliate?

He hit three home runs and stole 30 bases; the following March he announced his NBA return with a two-word press release, 'I'm back.'

The 1994 baseball strike wiped out the World Series for the first time since which year?

The stoppage began on 12 August 1994 and dragged on 232 days, still the longest in MLB history.

Which Japanese company released the first Tamagotchi in November 1996?

Aki Maita of the toymaker and Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ created it, and by 2025 more than 98 million had been sold worldwide.

The Blair Witch Project grossed about $248 million on an official production budget of roughly how much?

Marketing listed the three actors as missing on posters and even on IMDb; post-production and promotion pushed the real total to several hundred thousand dollars.

On the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind, what is the swimming baby reaching for?

Kurt Cobain got the idea from a TV programme on water births; in January 1992 the album knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous off the top of the Billboard chart.

Space Jam (1996) grew out of Super Bowl ads pairing Michael Jordan with Bugs Bunny for which brand?

The 'Hare Jordan' and 'Aerospace Jordan' spots ran in 1992 and 1993; in the film the Nerdlucks steal talent from Barkley, Ewing, Bogues, Larry Johnson and Shawn Bradley.

The 1999 Nokia 3210, which sold 160 million units, was the first mass-market phone without what?

It came with three games preinstalled: Snake, Memory and Rotation.

Crystal Pepsi's 1993 Super Bowl commercial was set to which Van Halen song?

The clear, caffeine-free cola grabbed 1% of the US soft drink market in its first year, then vanished by 1994 before a fan-driven 2016 comeback.

Dunkaroos, launched in 1990, had a mascot named Sydney. What animal was he?

He wore a hat, vest and tie and spoke with an Australian accent; the snack left US shelves in 2012 and returned via 7-Eleven in 2020.

Which network cancelled Baywatch after its first season, before it became a global hit?

David Hasselhoff helped revive it for syndication in 1991, and it went on to claim a weekly audience of over 1.1 billion viewers.

The 1990 ABC series Twin Peaks was built around the investigation into the murder of which character?

David Lynch and Mark Frost set it in a Washington logging town 'five miles south of the Canadian border', investigated by FBI agent Dale Cooper.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers built its monster fights from footage of a TV series from which country?

Saban recut Toei's Super Sentai shows, starting with Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, and shot new scenes of the Angel Grove teens around them.

POGs took their name from a Hawaiian juice of passion fruit, orange and which third fruit?

A Hawaiian teacher, Blossom Galbiso, revived the game in her fifth-grade class in 1991 as a maths aid and a peaceful alternative to rougher playground games.

Super Soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson was an engineer at which organisation?

He got the idea in 1985 when a nozzle he was testing for a refrigeration experiment shot a jet across his bathroom; the toy first sold in 1990 as the Power Drencher.

Which act's 1990 Grammy for Best New Artist remains the only Grammy ever revoked?

Producer Frank Farian admitted on 14 November 1990 that Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan had not sung on the records; the Recording Academy took the award back five days later.

On Saturday Night Live in October 1992, Sinéad O'Connor tore up a photograph of whom?

She had reworked Bob Marley's 'War' into a protest about child abuse and told viewers to fight the real enemy; Joe Pesci, Sinatra and Madonna all publicly criticised her.

Who carried Kerri Strug to the podium after her injured-ankle vault at the 1996 Olympics?

She had under-rotated her first attempt and hurt the ankle in the fall; the squad became known as the Magnificent Seven.

At what odds was Buster Douglas listed when he knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1990?

Douglas floored the champion in the tenth round; it was the first time Tyson had ever been knocked down as a professional.

The Bayside Boys remix of 'Macarena' spent how many weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1996?

Spanish duo Los del Río had recorded the original for their 1993 album; the Miami producers added an English-language section that pushed it worldwide.

In which city was Nancy Kerrigan attacked at the 1994 US Figure Skating Championships?

Shane Stant struck her right thigh in a corridor at Cobo Arena; the plot was hatched by Jeff Gillooly, ex-husband of rival Tonya Harding.