99 Fun Facts About 90s and 2000s

Windows 95, released in August 1995, introduced which now-familiar feature to the desktop?

The Start button and taskbar: Windows 95 introduced both, and Microsoft licensed the Rolling Stones' 'Start Me Up' for its launch ads as a nod to the new button.

Toy Story, released in 1995, was the first feature film made how?

Entirely with computer animation: the film hit trouble first, when Disney halted production after disastrous early story reels and Pixar had to rewrite the script.

Which 1997 film was the first ever to gross $1 billion at the box office?

Titanic: James Cameron gave up his $8 million directing fee when the budget ran to $200 million, then saw it become the first film to gross $1 billion, in 1998.

Which 1993 film overtook E.T. to become the highest-grossing movie of its day?

Jurassic Park: Spielberg first hired Phil Tippett to build go-motion puppet dinosaurs, then switched to ILM's digital ones; the film grossed more than $900 million.

The Matrix (1999) made famous a slow-motion camera trick known as what?

Bullet time: an arc of cameras fires in sequence so the shot seems to orbit a frozen moment; the film won four technical Oscars.

Nirvana's Nevermind knocked which superstar's album off the top of the Billboard chart in January 1992?

Michael Jackson's Dangerous: Nevermind, which had entered the Billboard 200 at number 144, replaced it at number one on the chart dated 11 January 1992.

Which Spice Girls debut single topped the charts in 37 countries?

Wannabe: it topped the UK chart in July 1996 and then those of 36 more countries; within 18 months the group had sacked Simon Fuller, the manager who launched them.

The Backstreet Boys formed in 1993 in which city?

Orlando: the group was assembled in Orlando, Florida, in 1993 by promoter Lou Pearlman, who also put together NSYNC there.

Which sitcom's six stars bargained as a group and went on to earn about $1 million each per episode?

Friends: with the studio hinting that it could carry on with only four of them, the six stuck together in salary talks, and their pay climbed from about $22,000 an episode in the first season.

Which sitcom's May 1998 finale drew about 76 million American viewers?

Seinfeld: about 76 million tuned in to see its four leads end up in jail; Jerry Seinfeld had turned down a reported $5 million an episode from NBC to make a tenth season.

In The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith's character grew up in which city before moving to Bel-Air?

Philadelphia: the theme song tells how Will was 'born and raised' in West Philadelphia before being sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Bel-Air.

Which console, launched in 1996, stuck with cartridges while its rivals moved to CDs?

Nintendo 64: Nintendo kept cartridges for fast loading while the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn used CDs; Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 were its only North American launch games.

The Tamagotchi's name combines the Japanese words for 'egg' and what?

Watch: the name joins tamago, Japanese for egg, to uotchi, the Japanese rendering of 'watch', because the toy was first conceived as a wristwatch.

In 1999 the NSA banned Furbies from its buildings over fears the toys could do what?

Record conversations: the NSA feared Furbies would repeat classified talk, but the head of Tiger Electronics said the toy 'has absolutely no ability to do any recording whatsoever'.

Japan's first Pokémon games in 1996 were Red and which colour, swapped for Blue in the West?

Green: Pocket Monsters Red and Green launched in Japan in February 1996; a programmer squeezed a secret 151st Pokémon, Mew, into the space freed when debugging tools were removed.

Beanie Babies fuelled a 1990s collecting bubble largely because their maker Ty did what?

Regularly 'retired' designs: Ty announced that certain animals would stop being made, which sent collectors into a buying frenzy; at the peak Beanie Babies made up 10% of eBay's sales.

Dolly the sheep, born in 1996, was the first mammal cloned from what?

An adult body cell: Dolly was cloned from a mammary gland cell of an adult ewe, hence the Dolly Parton name; her remains are displayed at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

The first Harry Potter book's first hardback printing in 1997 ran to how many copies?

500: Bloomsbury says it printed just 500 first-edition hardbacks, most bound for libraries, and put initials on the cover for fear boys would shun a book by a woman.

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

Stanford: Page and Brin met at Stanford in 1995 and built the search engine there as a research project called BackRub before incorporating Google in 1998.

Which file-sharing service, launched by student Shawn Fanning in 1999, was sued by Metallica a year later?

Napster: Metallica sued in April 2000 after a demo of its unreleased song 'I Disappear' spread across the service, and court orders shut Napster down in July 2001.

Which online giant began in 1994 as a bookseller run from a garage near Seattle?

Amazon: Jeff Bezos first called the company Cadabra, but dropped the name after his lawyer heard it as 'cadaver'; the bookshop began in his garage in Bellevue, Washington.

The Sopranos, which began on HBO in 1999, follows a mob boss who reluctantly starts doing what?

Seeing a psychiatrist: Tony Soprano starts therapy with Dr. Jennifer Melfi after panic attacks, and the sessions frame the series from its 1999 pilot.

Which company's 3310 handset, launched in 2000, sold about 126 million units and became a byword for toughness?

Nokia: more than 126 million 3310s were made before it was retired in 2005, and Finland honoured its durability in 2015 with a national emoji called 'The Unbreakable'.

Which ride-on craze sold more than five million units within six months of its 2000 launch?

The Razor scooter: built as quick transport for adults, it sold five million in six months once Razor pitched it to American children.

The PS2 sold so well partly because it doubled as what?

A DVD player: the PS2 was a cheap way to play films on disc, and at its Japanese launch in 2000 the best-selling title was a DVD of The Matrix, not a game; Sony counts over 160 million consoles sold.

Which 2001 film won the very first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature?

Shrek: DreamWorks, co-founded by former Disney studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, beat Disney-Pixar's Monsters, Inc. to the first Best Animated Feature Oscar in March 2002.

Steve Jobs launched the first iPod in October 2001 with which slogan?

1,000 songs in your pocket: the line headed Apple's launch press release because the first iPod's 5 GB hard drive held about a thousand songs; Apple retired the last iPod model in May 2022.

The Bratz dolls, launched in 2001, originally came as Cloe, Jade, Sasha and who?

Yasmin: designer Carter Bryant sold the Bratz idea to MGA while still on the payroll of rival Mattel, and the two toy firms then fought over the dolls in court for years.

The Fox singing contest that crowned Kelly Clarkson its first winner in 2002 was based on which British show?

Pop Idol: Simon Fuller's ITV hit reached America after Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, who had seen the British show, persuaded him to buy the format for Fox.

Crocs, the foam clogs launched in 2002, were first sold at what kind of event?

A boat show: Crocs unveiled its first clog, the Beach, at the 2002 Fort Lauderdale Boat Show and sold out all 200 pairs; the charms made for its holes are called Jibbitz.

Which 1998 Apple computer, designed by Jony Ive, came in translucent 'Bondi Blue'?

iMac: the all-in-one iMac G3 shipped in August 1998 and dropped the floppy drive in favour of USB, prompting accessory makers to launch their first USB products.

The Motorola Razr V3, released in 2004, became the best-selling phone of which type ever?

Flip phone: launched as a pricey fashion statement, the ultra-thin clamshell went mass-market as its price fell and led US sales until the iPhone 3G overtook it in 2008.

Which 2004 comedy gave the world an unofficial holiday on 3 October?

Mean Girls: Tina Fey built the comedy on a parenting guide to teenage cliques, and fans turned a throwaway line about 3 October into an annual Mean Girls Day.

Lost, which premiered in 2004, follows the survivors of which fictional airline's Flight 815?

Oceanic: Flight 815 from Sydney to Los Angeles crashes in a pilot that cost a reported $10 to $14 million; Lloyd Braun, the ABC chairman who championed it, was fired before it aired.

The Livestrong wristband of 2004 was yellow in reference to what?

The Tour de France leader jersey: the band echoed the yellow jersey Lance Armstrong wore; tens of millions were sold before Nike stopped making it in 2013 after his doping scandal.

Which feature did the 2004 Nintendo DS have that Sony's rival PSP lacked?

A touchscreen: Nintendo billed the stylus-driven DS as an experimental 'third pillar' beside the Game Boy and GameCube, not a replacement, yet it sold so well that it took over from the Game Boy line.

The US version of The Office, which began in 2005, is set at a paper company in which Pennsylvania city?

Scranton: after he was cast as Jim, John Krasinski visited the city to research paper companies and shot the footage of Scranton used in the opening credits.

YouTube's first video, uploaded in April 2005, was titled what?

Me at the zoo: co-founder Jawed Karim's 19-second clip in front of the elephants at San Diego Zoo went up on 23 April 2005; Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006.

In August 2006 astronomers voted to reclassify Pluto as what?

A dwarf planet: the IAU's August 2006 definition demoted Pluto because it has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, the third of three tests for a planet.

The Wii console of November 2006 came bundled with which game that became its killer app?

Wii Sports: packed in with the console in most markets outside Japan, its tennis, bowling, golf, baseball and boxing games were built to show newcomers what the motion remote could do.

Steve Jobs unveiled the 2007 iPhone as three devices in one: an iPod, a phone and what?

An internet communicator: Apple was turning from computers towards consumer electronics, and on the same day Jobs dropped the word 'Computer' from the company's name.

Psychologist Roger Adams put a wheel in a trainer's sole to create which shoe craze?

Heelys: Adams, a clinical psychologist who hated his job, cut into the heels of a pair of Nikes with a hot butter knife and fitted a skateboard wheel bearing.

Which train service began carrying passengers between London and Paris in November 1994?

Eurostar: regular services began from Waterloo six months after the Queen rode one of its trains through the Channel Tunnel to meet President Mitterrand's train nose to nose at Calais.

'Macarena', the 1996 US chart phenomenon, was originally recorded by which Spanish duo?

Los del Río: the duo improvised the chorus at a private party in Caracas in 1992 to praise a local flamenco dancer, and the Bayside Boys remix spent 14 weeks at No. 1 in 1996.

Where was the first season of Survivor, first broadcast on May 31, 2000, set?

Borneo: the castaways were filmed on Pulau Tiga, off Malaysian Borneo, in spring 2000; winner Richard Hatch later went to prison for evading tax on his $1 million prize.

Wikipedia began in 2001 as a feeder project for which expert-written encyclopedia?

Nupedia: Jimmy Wales's peer-reviewed Nupedia was so slow that Larry Sanger proposed a wiki to feed it on 10 January 2001; the wiki launched five days later.

Which game did The Sims overtake in 2002 to become the best-selling PC game at the time?

Myst: Cyan's 1993 puzzle adventure sold more than six million copies and helped make CD-ROM drives standard on home PCs before The Sims passed it in 2002.

Which launch game became the signature title of the Xbox's November 2001 debut?

Halo: Combat Evolved: Steve Jobs unveiled Bungie's shooter on stage at Macworld in 1999, but Microsoft bought the studio in 2000 and made the game the Xbox's launch showpiece.

Which 2005 music game came with a plastic controller modelled on a Gibson SG?

Guitar Hero: dance-mat maker RedOctane asked Harmonix to build it; after Activision bought RedOctane in 2006, Harmonix went on to create the rival Rock Band.

Pogs, the 1990s milk-cap craze named after a tropical fruit juice, began in which US state?

Hawaii is where children played with the caps of POG, a passionfruit, orange and guava drink from a Maui dairy, long before the 1990s craze.

Which singer's 1998 dance hit Believe made the robotic Auto-Tune vocal effect famous?

Cher had her vocals pushed through pitch-correction software at extreme settings, and the warble was imitated so widely that it became known as the Cher effect.

Which company was founded in 1997 in Scotts Valley, California, to rent out DVDs by mail?

Netflix spent nearly a decade as a DVD-by-mail rental service before it launched the streaming business that made it a household name.

Which 1990s toy was invented by Lonnie Johnson, an engineer who had worked for NASA and the Air Force?

Super Soaker began when Johnson shot a jet of water across his bathroom while testing a refrigeration idea. The water gun has since earned more than $1 billion in sales.

Which website made its very first sale in 1995 when a broken laser pointer fetched $14.83?

eBay, then called AuctionWeb, was a hobby project. Its founder checked that the buyer knew the pointer was broken, and the man replied that he collected broken laser pointers.

Which actor modelled the pirate Captain Jack Sparrow on Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards?

Johnny Depp researched 18th-century pirates, decided they were the rock stars of their day, and also borrowed from the cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew.

Which company built Deep Blue, the computer that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997?

IBM's machine had lost to Kasparov a year earlier, then won the six-game rematch after an upgrade, taking two games and drawing three.

In Home Alone (1990), the McCallister family leaves Kevin behind while flying to which city?

Paris is where the family lands before finding every flight home is booked for the next two days. Both airports in the film were shot at Chicago's O'Hare.

Which 1990s search engine invited users to type whole questions for a cartoon valet to answer?

Ask Jeeves borrowed its mascot from the manservant in P. G. Wodehouse's comic stories, then dropped him in 2006 and became plain Ask.

Which giggling plush toy caused shopping scuffles during the 1996 Christmas season?

Tickle Me Elmo, based on the Sesame Street Muppet, cost $28.99 in shops. Its laughing mechanism had first been pitched for a toy chimp.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is set in which fictional California town, built over a Hellmouth?

Sunnydale looked like a sleepy Southern California city, but its Hellmouth pulled in vampires, demons and anything else with magical powers.

South Park, the animated comedy about four schoolboys that debuted in 1997, is set in which US state?

Colorado has a real South Park basin in the Rocky Mountains, about an hour's drive from Denver, and the cartoon town borrows its look from nearby Fairplay.

SpongeBob SquarePants, who debuted on Nickelodeon in 1999, works as a fry cook at which restaurant?

The Krusty Krab is owned by a greedy red crab who acts as a father figure to SpongeBob, and its cashier is his grumpy octopus neighbour Squidward.

Teletubbies, the 1997 toddler show starring Tinky Winky and Po, was created for which broadcaster?

The BBC series made stars of four colourful creatures led by Tinky Winky, the largest and oldest of them, who often carried a red bag.

Which Fox series, launched in 1993, sent FBI agents Mulder and Scully to investigate paranormal cases?

The X-Files paired Mulder, a believer in the paranormal, with Scully, a medical doctor and sceptic assigned to test his theories with science.

Which NBC medical drama, created by Michael Crichton in 1994, starred George Clooney as Doug Ross?

ER ran for 15 seasons and 331 episodes, though Clooney left the hospital in 1999 to chase a film career.

Which Nickelodeon cartoon, launched in 1991, follows a group of toddlers led by Tommy Pickles?

Rugrats was one of Nickelodeon's original three Nicktoons and became the network's top-rated series from 1995 to 2001.

Which 1998 Cartoon Network series stars the kindergarten heroes Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup?

The Powerpuff Girls owe their powers to a professor who accidentally spilled the mysterious Chemical X into the mixture he was using to make them.

Which actress played newspaper columnist Carrie Bradshaw in the HBO series Sex and the City from 1998?

Sarah Jessica Parker was the star the pilot was written for, yet she has said she didn't want the part at first and had to be talked into signing.

Which talk-show host fronted the original American run of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire from 1999?

Regis Philbin hosted the primetime network version, but the daily syndicated show needed a new host because it recorded four episodes in a single day.

Which British pop star wrote the songs for Disney's The Lion King (1994) with lyricist Tim Rice?

Elton John was Rice's suggestion, made after an invitation to ABBA fell through because Benny Andersson was busy with a stage musical.

Which director followed Reservoir Dogs with Pulp Fiction, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1994?

Quentin Tarantino talked his co-writer Roger Avary into taking a story credit, so the film's advertising could present it as written and directed by one man.

Peter Jackson shot all three Lord of the Rings films back to back in which country, his homeland?

New Zealand hosted the simultaneous shoot from October 1999 to December 2000, with filming spread across many of its protected conservation areas.

Which talk-show host voiced Dory, the forgetful blue tang, in Pixar's Finding Nemo (2003)?

Ellen DeGeneres returned to the role when the forgetful fish got a sequel of her own, Finding Dory, 13 years later.

James Cameron's Avatar (2009) follows humans mining unobtanium on which lush fictional moon?

Pandora lies in the Alpha Centauri star system and is home to the Na'vi, a blue-skinned species that stands 10 feet tall.

Which actor won a posthumous Oscar for playing the Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008)?

Heath Ledger finished filming the role several months before he died, and the film reached cinemas about half a year after his death.

Which 1995 teen comedy moved Jane Austen's novel Emma to a wealthy Beverly Hills high school?

Clueless got its authentic slang because its maker, Amy Heckerling, observed real students at Beverly Hills High School while developing the script.

Which actress starred opposite Richard Gere in the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman?

Julia Roberts played Vivian in a story first planned as a dark cautionary tale set in Los Angeles, before it was reworked as a big-budget romantic comedy.

Which 1996 Wes Craven slasher film kills off Drew Barrymore's character in its opening sequence?

Scream named its masked killer Ghostface and is credited with reviving the slasher genre through a knowing, self-aware style of horror.

In Legally Blonde (2001), sorority sister Elle follows her ex-boyfriend to which university's law school?

Harvard admits Elle thanks to a 4.0 GPA, and by her second semester she is one of the first-year interns picked to help on a high-profile court case.

Which pop star's 1998 debut single, ...Baby One More Time, came with a video set in a high school?

Britney Spears topped the charts in more than 20 countries with the song, which went on to sell over 10 million copies.

Which rapper made his feature film debut in 8 Mile (2002), a drama drawn from his own Detroit youth?

Eminem won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the film's anthem. Its title comes from the road that separates Detroit from the suburbs to its north.

Justin Timberlake rose to fame in the late 1990s as a member of which best-selling boy band?

NSYNC grew out of an all-male singing group assembled in 1995 and financed by the boy-band manager Lou Pearlman.

Grunge, the rock style of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, was originally known as the sound of which city?

Seattle gave the style its first name, the Seattle Sound, before the local label Sub Pop encouraged the press to describe it as grunge.

Which Manchester band, formed in 1991, was built around the quarrelsome brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher?

Oasis started with Liam on lead vocals, and he asked his older brother Noel to join a few months later. Their public disputes filled the tabloids all decade.

Which Atlanta hip-hop duo, André 3000 and Big Boi, reached number one in 2003 with Hey Ya!?

Outkast paired the song with a second single recorded by Big Boi, The Way You Move, while André 3000 wrote, produced and performed this one himself.

Which rock band, fronted by Chester Bennington, released the hit debut album Hybrid Theory in 2000?

Linkin Park drew the album's lyrics from Bennington's troubled adolescence, and it became the best-selling debut since Guns N' Roses's Appetite for Destruction.

Which cartoon band did Blur singer Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett create in 1998?

Gorillaz were conceived as a comment on how manufactured pop felt at the start of the boy-band explosion, so the pair invented a virtual group instead.

Which singer walked the red carpet at the 2001 Academy Awards in a dress shaped like a swan?

Björk completed the stunt by pretending to lay an egg on the red carpet, and she wore the same dress on the cover of her album Vespertine.

Which presenter was the original host of MTV's countdown show Total Request Live in 1998?

Carson Daly had hosted a request show that MTV merged into TRL, and he was seen less often from 2002 once his own late-night talk show began.

Grand Theft Auto III (2001) is set in Liberty City, a crime-ridden stand-in for which real city?

New York was also home to the game's publisher, Rockstar Games, although the game itself was built by a core team of 23 people in Edinburgh.

Which 2004 online role-playing game from Blizzard is set on the fantasy planet of Azeroth?

World of Warcraft became the most popular game of its kind, with more than 10 million subscribers by 2008 and a peak of 12 million in 2010.

Which Japanese company launched Dance Dance Revolution, the arcade game played by stepping on arrows?

Konami introduced it in Japan in 1998 as part of its Bemani line of music games, and it became the pioneering series of the rhythm and dance genre.

Which company bowed out of making home consoles after the Dreamcast, released in Japan in 1998?

Sega discontinued the machine in 2001 and turned to making games for other companies' consoles, even though it was the first with a built-in modem for online play.

Which territory did Britain hand back to China in 1997 after 156 years of colonial rule?

Hong Kong changed hands at midnight on 1 July, at a ceremony attended by the future King Charles III that is often said to mark the end of the British Empire.

Which space telescope launched in 1990 with a wrongly ground mirror that astronauts fixed in 1993?

Hubble suffered from spherical aberration, a blur caused by its 2.4-metre main mirror being ground to the wrong shape, until a servicing mission corrected the optics.

Which French star was sent off for headbutting Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final?

Zinedine Zidane was playing the last match of his career, and he was awarded the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player even though Italy won on penalties.

Which Japanese company animated Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-winning fantasy film of 2001?

Studio Ghibli saw the film become Japan's highest-grossing release of its day, and a Pixar animator who admired Miyazaki persuaded Disney to buy the North American rights.

Which web browser, launched in 1994, ruled the 1990s before Internet Explorer was bundled with Windows?

Netscape had lost nearly all its users by about 2003, and its collapse became a central part of the antitrust trial over Microsoft's bundling.

Which comet blazed across the skies of 1997, staying visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months?

Hale–Bopp takes its name from Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, who each discovered it separately on the same date in 1995, and it was dubbed the Great Comet of 1997.