50 Fun Facts About Millennials vs Boomers

Which 1950s children's show seated its young audience in bleachers called the Peanut Gallery?

Howdy Doody. The seats took an old nickname for a theater's cheapest balcony, whose occupants had a reputation for heckling the performers.

Which toy sold its first 400 units at a 1945 demonstration in Philadelphia's Gimbels department store?

Slinky. Naval engineer Richard James got the idea in 1943, when springs he knocked off a shelf 'walked' down instead of simply falling.

The Beatles' first live US TV appearance in February 1964 drew over 73 million viewers to which programme?

The Ed Sullivan Show. Capitol had resisted releasing the Beatles in America, but after DJs aired a leaked copy it rushed out 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' ahead of schedule.

Who hosted American Bandstand for more than three decades?

Dick Clark. He took over in 1956 after original host Bob Horn was arrested for drunk driving while his own station was running an anti-drunk-driving campaign.

The 1969 Woodstock festival was actually held on a dairy farm in which New York town?

Bethel. After the town of Wallkill turned the festival away, dairy farmer Max Yasgur rented out his fields, and hundreds of thousands of fans poured in.

Which cartoon character taught schoolchildren what to do in an atomic flash in the film Duck and Cover?

Bert the Turtle. After the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, schools across America began drilling children for an atomic attack.

'TV Dinner' began as a brand name for aluminium-tray frozen meals sold from 1953 by which company?

Swanson. Retired executive Gerry Thomas said a glut of unsold frozen turkeys inspired it, though members of the Swanson family dispute his story.

Sales of the powdered drink Tang stayed poor until which astronaut's 1962 orbital flight?

John Glenn. Tang wasn't invented for astronauts: General Foods chemist William Mitchell, who also created Pop Rocks and Cool Whip, helped develop it.

The Regency TR-1, released in 1954, was the first commercially manufactured what?

About 150,000 were sold, mostly on the novelty of a radio small enough to carry around.

Which CBS anchorman closed his evening newscast with the words 'And that's the way it is'?

Walter Cronkite. Back from Vietnam after the 1968 Tet offensive, he told viewers the war seemed headed for a stalemate and urged negotiations.

Annette Funicello became a 1950s star as one of the original members of which television troupe?

The Mouseketeers. Walt Disney spotted the 12-year-old dancing in a Swan Lake recital at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank and cast her himself.

'Rock Around the Clock' became a teenage anthem after opening which 1955 film?

Blackboard Jungle. Bill Haley's recording had first come out in 1954 as a B-side that sold disappointingly, until the film played it over its opening credits.

Which toy did French electrical technician André Cassagnes invent as L'Écran Magique, the 'magic screen'?

Etch A Sketch. Ohio Art passed on it at the 1959 Nuremberg Toy Fair, then took a second look, and it became a must-have toy for Christmas 1960.

Hasbro's 1964 launch of G.I. Joe led to the coining of which two-word toy term?

Action figure. Hasbro branded G.I. Joe with this term to set the toy soldier apart from dolls.

Ruth Handler named Barbie after her daughter; which doll did she name after her son?

Ken. Handler got the idea for Barbie from watching Barbara give paper dolls grown-up roles, and Ken, named for her son Kenneth, soon followed.

Who broke Babe Ruth's single-season home run record with 61 homers in 1961?

Roger Maris. Commissioner Ford Frick, a friend of Ruth's, said a record set after game 154 should be listed separately, and Maris hit No. 61 on the season's last day.

Cassius Clay took the world heavyweight title from Sonny Liston in February 1964 in which city?

Miami Beach. Liston complained of an injury after six rounds and refused to come out for the seventh.

In The Graduate (1967), what one word of career advice does Mr. McGuire give young Benjamin?

Plastics. The filmmakers first pictured Robert Redford as Benjamin before casting Dustin Hoffman instead.

Which TV western ran 20 seasons from 1955 to 1975, a scripted primetime record until The Simpsons passed it?

Gunsmoke. After CBS moved it from Saturdays to Monday nights in 1967, it climbed back into the top 20 and stayed there for the next seven years.

When five-digit ZIP codes arrived in 1963, what did the letters ZIP stand for?

Zone Improvement Plan. To get people using the new codes, the Post Office unveiled a cartoon mailman mascot, Mr. ZIP, in 1962.

What was the first toy ever advertised on television, in a 1952 campaign aimed directly at children?

Mr. Potato Head. Kids first pushed its face parts into real vegetables, until Hasbro added a potato body to the kit in 1964.

Which frontiersman, killed at the Alamo, did Fess Parker play in Disney's 1950s television miniseries?

Davy Crockett. The series set off a nationwide rush on coonskin caps and other Crockett merchandise.

Which Japanese toymaker launched the Tamagotchi virtual pet in 1996?

Bandai. It first marketed the toy to Japanese teenage girls, before the craze spread worldwide.

Which video game company buried truckloads of cartridges, E.T. among them, in a New Mexico landfill in 1983?

Atari. A 2014 dig at the Alamogordo landfill turned up E.T. cartridges, and the Smithsonian took one for its collections.

Pokémon Red and Blue each had creatures missing from the other; what did players need to trade for them?

A link cable. The 151st Pokémon, Mew, wasn't meant to be caught in normal play, which set off rumors and myths about the games.

Which teenager co-founded the file-sharing service Napster, launched in June 1999?

Shawn Fanning. After copyright lawsuits, a court order kept the original service offline from July 2001.

Which of the four games built into the Nokia 3310 became a phenomenon in its own right?

Snake II. More than 126 million 3310s were made, and when the phone was relaunched in 2017, a modern Snake came preinstalled.

Furby, the must-have owl-like toy of Christmas 1998, was created by which company?

Tiger Electronics. In 1999 the NSA banned Furbies from its premises, fearing they could record secrets.

In 2000, Blockbuster reportedly passed on buying which startup for $50 million?

Netflix. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, just as Netflix's streaming service was gaining steam.

Lunchables were released nationally in 1988 under which lunch-meat brand?

Oscar Mayer. It created the trays in the 1980s as a way to sell more bologna and other lunch meats as red-meat sales fell.

Surge, the 'hardcore' late-1990s citrus soda, was which company's rival to Mountain Dew?

Coca-Cola. After Surge was dropped in the early 2000s, a Facebook fan campaign won it a 2014 comeback sold only on Amazon.

Who hosted MTV's Total Request Live when it launched in September 1998?

Carson Daly. It aired from a glass-walled studio above Times Square, where crowds of screaming fans at times shut the square down.

Zack, Kelly, Screech and friends attended which fictional Los Angeles high school in Saved by the Bell?

Bayside. When Zack's class graduated, NBC moved them to college in prime time and filled Bayside with a new cast for Saved by the Bell: The New Class.

Which 2000 album sold 2.4 million copies in its first week, a Nielsen-era US record that stood for 15 years?

No Strings Attached. It came out after the group fought manager Lou Pearlman in court and left RCA for Jive Records in a settlement.

What was Britney Spears's debut single, released in September 1998?

...Baby One More Time. Max Martin's demo had already been passed over elsewhere before her label, Jive, grabbed it for her debut.

Titanic (1997) was the highest-grossing film of all time until which movie overtook it in 2010?

Avatar. Both were directed by James Cameron, and after Avengers: Endgame took the crown in 2019, a 2021 China re-release won it back for Avatar.

What was the first entirely computer-animated feature film?

Toy Story. Disney shut down production after early story reels made Woody too unlikable, so Pixar rewrote the script.

Brandi Chastain's shirt-off celebration came after the 1999 Women's World Cup final at which stadium?

Rose Bowl. She had just scored the decisive penalty against China, with 90,185 fans in Pasadena and about 40 million more watching on US television.

Which Chicago Bulls star quit basketball in 1993, then played minor league baseball?

Michael Jordan. He spent 1994 with the Birmingham Barons, then returned to the Bulls in March 1995 wearing No. 45.

Every new Myspace account came with which person already added as a friend?

Tom. Co-founder Tom Anderson was a teenager when the FBI seized his computer equipment in a 1985 sweep of suspected hackers.

Super Soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson worked for the Air Force and which other body?

NASA. The idea came while he was testing a homemade heat pump, when a nozzle he'd attached shot a powerful stream of water across the room.

The teenagers who told campfire stories in Are You Afraid of the Dark? called themselves what?

The Midnight Society. Nickelodeon revived the show in 2019 with an all-new Midnight Society whose campfire story starts coming true.

Sony's PlayStation began after a scrapped deal to build a CD-ROM add-on for which company's console?

Nintendo. A day after Sony announced their deal in 1991, Nintendo revealed a rival one with Philips, so Sony went on to build its own console.

Which disease became the running joke for wiping out your party in The Oregon Trail?

Dysentery. The first Oregon Trail was written in 1971 by three Carleton College student teachers to liven up an eighth-grade history unit.

Which die-cast cars, launched in 1968 to beat Britain's Matchbox, were styled on California custom cars?

Hot Wheels. Mattel co-founder Elliot Handler wanted a line that would do for boys what Barbie had done for girls.

Which 1966 Milton Bradley game became a hit after Eva Gabor played it on The Tonight Show?

Twister. It began as an idea for a shoe polish promotion, and some saw the body-tangling game as racy.

Which puzzle, invented by a Hungarian design teacher in 1974, became a worldwide craze in the early 1980s?

Rubik's Cube. Ernő Rubik called it the Magic Cube, until Ideal Toy renamed it after him for its 1980 launch.

Which Sony gadget was first sold in the US as the Sound-About and in Britain as the Stowaway?

Walkman. Co-founder Masaru Ibuka wanted to hear music on business trips without lugging around Sony's bulky cassette recorder.

Which 1989 handheld came bundled in North America with the falling-block puzzle game Tetris?

Game Boy. Designer Gunpei Yokoi favored cheap, proven parts over cutting-edge ones, which is why it had a greenish monochrome screen.

Which app's viral videos turned 'OK boomer' into a mass retort in late 2019?

TikTok. Within weeks, New Zealand MP Chlöe Swarbrick used it to shut down a heckler during a climate-change speech in Parliament.