50 Fun Facts About Millennials

Which video rental chain turned down a chance to buy the fledgling Netflix for $50 million in 2000?

Blockbuster passed on the deal and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010, undone in part by competition from the very company it had declined to buy.

Which talking 1998 toy did the National Security Agency ban from its property as a spying risk?

Furby begins by speaking its own language, Furbish, and swaps in English words over time, which made officials suspect it could learn by listening.

Which social network automatically gave every new member the same first friend, a co-founder named Tom?

MySpace made Tom Anderson everyone's first friend, and in June 2006 it passed Google to become the most visited website in the United States.

Which film starring Tom Hanks and Tim Allen was the first feature made entirely with computer animation?

Toy Story was also the first feature film Pixar ever produced, and it grew out of the studio's 1988 short Tin Toy.

Which egg-shaped digital pet from Bandai could die if 1990s kids forgot to feed and clean it?

Tamagotchi translates roughly as "Egg Watch", and its two creators won a tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel Prize for economics in 1997.

Which file-sharing service did Metallica sue in 2000 after an unreleased song leaked online?

Napster took its name from co-founder Shawn Fanning's high school nickname, "Nappy", and the leaked Metallica demo was a track called "I Disappear".

Which coffee house gives Rachel Green a waitress job after she flees her wedding in Friends?

Central Perk barista Gunther was played by James Michael Tyler, who was cast because he was the only extra who could work the coffee machine on the set.

Which former Mickey Mouse Club member topped the Hot 100 with her debut, "...Baby One More Time"?

Britney Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997, and the song became one of the best-selling singles in history.

Which pair of Game Boy games introduced American players to the original 151 Pokémon in 1998?

Red and Blue reached North America more than two and a half years after Japan got its first pair, which were sold there as Red and Green.

Which 1990s instant messenger was known for its Buddy List and teenagers' changing away messages?

AIM launched in May 1997, and students left away messages up all day to tell buddies where they were, what they were thinking and which parties were on.

Which Los Angeles neighborhood takes in Will Smith's West Philadelphia teenager in a 1990s sitcom?

Bel-Air gave the sitcom half its title; the other half was Will Smith's rap name, the Fresh Prince, under which he performs the theme song.

Which underwater city is home to SpongeBob SquarePants, the Krusty Krab and the rival Chum Bucket?

Bikini Bottom lies in the Pacific Ocean beneath Bikini Atoll, a real coral reef, which is where the cartoon city gets its name.

Which fictional Los Angeles school do Zack Morris and Screech Powers attend in Saved by the Bell?

Bayside arrived when the Disney Channel series Good Morning, Miss Bliss was retooled, bringing four actors and their characters to the new sitcom.

Which green cartoon dinosaur is the idol of Tommy Pickles and the other babies in Rugrats?

Reptar is a deliberate spoof of Godzilla, and in the babies' world his face sells everything from cereal to chocolate bars.

Which singer beat Justin Guarini to win the very first season of American Idol in 2002?

Kelly Clarkson was largely absent from the audition episode, so viewers of the original broadcast never saw the tryout that started it all.

Which original host of MTV's Total Request Live later left to focus on his own NBC late-night talk show?

Carson Daly had hosted Total Request, a viewer request show, before MTV merged it with MTV Live in September 1998 to create the daily countdown.

What kind of animal is Arthur Read, the Elwood City schoolboy in the PBS children's cartoon Arthur?

An aardvark named Arthur began as a bedtime story that author Marc Brown made up when his young son Tolon asked for a tale about a weird animal.

Which fictional paper company employs Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute in the US version of The Office?

Dunder Mifflin is based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a real city that displayed the fictional company's logo in several spots downtown.

Which Boy Meets World teacher is also Cory Matthews's neighbor and eventually his college professor?

Mr. Feeny was played by William Daniels, whose voice 1980s viewers already knew as KITT, the talking car in Knight Rider.

Which actress played Disney Channel's Lizzie McGuire and also voiced her animated inner self?

Hilary Duff was asked to audition for the series in 2000, and her cartoon double sometimes speaks straight to the audience.

Which boy band's album No Strings Attached sold 2.4 million copies in its first week in 2000?

NSYNC named the album for the puppet strings the group felt it had cut after a legal battle with its former management.

Which Spice Girls member was nicknamed Sporty Spice for her tracksuits, athletic shoes and high ponytail?

Melanie Chisholm, better known as Mel C, rounded off the tough-girl image with tattoos on both of her arms.

Which trio of brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma, scored a 1997 smash with a song called "MMMBop"?

Hanson had already put the song on an independent album recorded in their hometown before a remake became the runaway single from their major-label debut.

Which Spanish duo spent 14 weeks at number one in 1996 with the dance craze "Macarena"?

Los del Río first recorded the song in 1993, after one of the pair improvised its chorus on the spot as a tribute to a flamenco dancer.

Which brand name completes the Outkast lyric from "Hey Ya!": "shake it like a ___ picture"?

Polaroid had declared bankruptcy in 2001, and the lyric gave the company a brief lift, even though shaking its modern film does nothing to develop a photo.

Which rapper wrote "Lose Yourself", the first hip-hop song to win the Oscar for Best Original Song?

Eminem also took his first Hot 100 number one with the track, which stayed on top for twelve consecutive weeks.

Which deodorant brand did Kurt Cobain mistake for a revolutionary slogan and put in a Nirvana song title?

Teen Spirit was the deodorant a friend joked that Cobain smelled of, and he said he only learned it was a product months after the single was released.

Which singer's Super Bowl halftime incident did a YouTube co-founder credit with inspiring the video site?

Janet Jackson became the most searched term in internet history after the 2004 show, and the moment set a record for replays on TiVo.

Which German singer's 1999 hit "Mambo No. 5" was built on an old instrumental by Pérez Prado?

Lou Bega's remake set off a seven-year German court fight over the song's earnings, which ended in favour of Prado's estate in 2008.

Which Queen and David Bowie song supplied the bassline that Vanilla Ice sampled for "Ice Ice Baby"?

Under Pressure dates from 1981, and neither Queen nor Bowie received a songwriting credit or royalties until the rap single had already become a hit.

Which Jane Austen novel was moved to a Beverly Hills high school for the 1995 comedy Clueless?

Emma charmed writer-director Amy Heckerling when she read it in college, and matchmaker Cher Horowitz is her answer to Austen's Emma Woodhouse.

Which Saturday Night Live star adapted the book Queen Bees and Wannabes into Mean Girls?

Tina Fey phoned producer Lorne Michaels to pitch the idea, and she named the character Glen Coco after a friend of her older brother.

Which 2001 film beat Monsters, Inc. to win the very first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature?

Shrek was also the first animated film that the American Film Institute ever named among its top ten movies of the year.

Which rainy Washington town did Stephenie Meyer choose as the setting for her Twilight vampire novels?

Forks was picked after Meyer searched online for rainy settings, and its yearly visitors jumped from about 10,000 to 73,000 by 2010.

Which Disney film has a teenager light the Black-Flame Candle and resurrect three witch sisters in Salem?

Hocus Pocus opened in July 1993, months away from Halloween, the holiday whose yearly return has since made it a cult classic.

Which James Bond film became a 1997 Nintendo 64 shooter with a four-player split-screen mode?

GoldenEye reached cinemas in 1995, two years before the game, and developer Rare visited the film set for reference.

Which disease stars in the death message from The Oregon Trail that fans later printed on T-shirts?

Dysentery became the game's running joke, yet the first version was built in 1971 by three student teachers for an eighth grade history class.

Which fairy interrupts Link with cries of "Hey! Listen!" in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time?

Navi got her name from the "Fairy Navigation System", the label a designer first gave the winged ball of light he had drawn as a targeting marker.

Which puzzle game was packed in with the original Game Boy in North America instead of Super Mario Land?

Tetris got the slot after Henk Rogers argued that Mario appealed mainly to young boys, while the falling-block puzzle would appeal to everyone.

Which console, discontinued in 2001, was the last home video game system that Sega ever manufactured?

Dreamcast was the end of the line: after shelving it, Sega reinvented itself as a maker of games for other companies' machines.

Where did a YouTube co-founder film two elephants for the first video ever uploaded to the site?

San Diego Zoo left a comment on the 2005 clip years later, saying it was honored that the first ever YouTube video was filmed there.

Which Rolling Stones single did Microsoft feature in the commercial that launched Windows 95?

Start Me Up was picked as a nod to the Start button, the new feature at the heart of the operating system.

Which author uses the pen name Lemony Snicket for A Series of Unfortunate Events?

Daniel Handler first came up with the Snicket name while doing research for an earlier novel of his, The Basic Eight.

Which author's name is on Animorphs, the books where teenagers turn into animals to fight aliens?

K. A. Applegate was the name on every cover, though Katherine Applegate created the series together with her husband, Michael Grant.

Which 1990s drink from the makers of Clearly Canadian had jelly beads floating in the bottle?

Orbitz kept its beads hanging in place with gellan gum, and some drinkers compared the result to a lava lamp you could sip.

Which Nickelodeon game show had contestants race up a fake mountain called the Aggro Crag?

Guts sent its winners home with a gold medal and a glowing piece of the 28-foot Crag, and Mike O'Malley hosted the action.

Which Flash cartoon website, launched on New Year's Day 2000, was best known for Strong Bad Email?

Homestar Runner began as an idea for a children's book by Mike Chapman and a friend, before Mike and his brother Matt rebuilt it as a website.

Which search engine grew out of BackRub, a research project started by two Stanford PhD students in 1996?

Google's name is a misspelling of googol, the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, chosen to suggest the vast amount of information it would search.

Which label for millennials was coined by Advertising Age in 1993, before the name Millennials won out?

Generation Y was dropped by the magazine itself in 2012, when it conceded that Millennials was the better name.

Which 1990s toy grew out of a NASA engineer's bathroom experiments on a new kind of refrigeration system?

Super Soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson was awarded nearly $73 million in 2013 after a dispute with Hasbro over underpaid royalties.