90 Facts about the 90s - mental_floss - List Show (Ep. 236)

hi I'm John Green welcome to my salon this is Mental Floss on YouTube mangina that in 1999 people believe that Furbies contained computer chips so they could record words and repeat them that wasn't true but the National Security Agency still banned people from bringing their Furbies to work now don't ask me which NSA employees you know had Furbies in the office because I don't know but regardless that's the first of 90 facts about the 90s I'm going to share with you today in this video brought to you by our friends at Geico jennifer aniston didn't love her friend's haircut the Rachel in fact she called it the ugliest haircut I've ever seen Ilana's Morissette has said that she was embarrassed by the backlash to her song ironic although she notes it is ironic that a song called ironic is not filled with ironies Napster launched in 1999 and within two years Dada twenty six point four million users and if you think that's a lot al Instant Messenger launched in 1997 and gained fifty three million users in less than 10 years nowadays there are fewer than four million active users wait there are four million active users of AOL Instant Messenger seriously how many of them just left their away messages up for the last ten years but speaking of outmoded technologies 61 million people were using pagers in 1994 in 1992 during a 60 Minutes interview about bills infidelity Hillary Clinton said I'm not sitting here as some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette Hilary later gave an apology to the singer the 90s book who moved my cheese sold a couple million copies in China where it inspired books like whose cheese should I move and no one can move my cheese especially weird when you consider that cheese does not really have a place in Chinese cuisine by the way when Beauty and the Beast was released in China Jackie Chan voiced the Beast you may remember that choker necklaces made a comeback in the 90s throughout history they've had different implications like during the French Revolution some women wore red ribbons around their neck to pay tribute to those who had been executed in the 1800s it was a way to identify prostitutes Doc Martens were invented by Klaus Martens when he needed a low impact shoe after a ski accident Miss Cleo was the spokesperson for psychic readers Network Inc who later got a 5 million dollar fine from the FTC for making deceptive claims you know like about being psychic the amazing thing is that they didn't see it coming anyway nc-17 became a legitimate movie rating in 1990 the first nc-17 movie was Henry in June slap bracelets were invented by a high school shop teacher who was playing with steel ribbons silly crystallis said he only regrets turning down one role in his career buzz lightyear another movie role that could have been Julia Louie Dreyfus as Mia in Pulp Fiction she had to turn it down due to her Seinfeld commitment we don't really have a joke about that but we do have Quentin Tarantino on our wall thing of which Larry David made a no hugging no learning rule for Seinfeld scripts basically he didn't want the characters to have sentimental full house II revelations we now associate PowerPoint with Microsoft Office but in the 90s it was originally developed for a Mac The Voice who announced you've got mail whenever you received an email was Elwood Edwards he recorded the saying in his living room on a cassette deck Jeff Hawkins developed the Palm Pilots look by cutting a block of wood to the right size and using a short chopstick as the model for the writing utensil the Rembrandt's can thank the television program friends for their only hit I'll be there for you the song was co-written by the show's producers Justin Timberlake's mom came up with the name in sync which was the last letter of each band members name what mind-blown Backstreet Boys on the other hand were named after a flea market in my hometown of Orlando the Backstreet market in 1993 a Russian astronaut brought his Gameboy to space he was allowed to bring only one game and he chose Tetris nineties kids will no doubt remember Anthony Hopkins distinct voice for Hannibal Lecter in the Silence of the Lambs he called it a combination of Truman Capote and Katharine Hepburn the mascot on warheads candy has a name Wally warheads many Power Rangers shows were filmed in New Zealand but the show itself was banned there for violence until 2011 speaking of which pogs were banned at many schools in the 90s because people thought it was gambling little did they know pogs are worthless 7 Yankee stadium's could fit in the 90s greatest architectural triumph the Mall of America Ice Ice Baby was originally a b-side and the song only caught on when a radio DJ in Georgia played it possibly by accident in Australia bucket hats are known as giggle hats there was originally an entire song in the Lion King about eating bugs and by the way young Simba was voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas and if you want to hear a very 90s sentence Jonathan Taylor Thomas won the first ever Nickelodeon Kids Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on the sitcom home improvement eBay was originally called auction web Stephen Chbosky got the idea for the perks of being a wallflower format because he once wrote an anonymous letter to a professor who gave a seminar at USC Michael Jordan got rich off of Nike Air Jordans but he wanted to wear adidas in fact he brought them his Nike contract and said if they could come close to matching it he'd sign with them but they didn't but it worked out alright cuz they got the support of this guy also it's a myth that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team he was put on the JV team which was still probably a mistake in retrospect but yeah another 90s myth that the Taco Bell Chihuahua commercial stopped when the dog died in fact they stopped when we collectively realized that those commercials were unbelievably annoying Chucky from Rugrats was based on the lead singer of Devo the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990 according to the Space Telescope Science Institute it was able to walk on to a target without deviating more than the width of a human hair seen at a distance of one mile Chris wigs invented the Polly Pocket after making a dollhouse for his daughter in a powder compact and you can blame graffiti artists for the popularity of Junko jeans the company hired them to paint murals to advertise the jeans in LA to get the sound for the t-rex in Jurassic Park the crew slowed down recording of a Jack Russell Terrier playing with a rope Carmen Sandiego has a middle name Isabella so we know who she is but do we know where she is Pepsi tested around 3,000 variations for Crystal Pepsi which was still not enough Britney Spears is cousin played her love interest in the baby one more time music video art student Deidre Lockhart created the hamster dance webpage in 1998 to increase traffic to her website which she did by the way to hamster dance web page still exists in 1997 people sold Tickle Me Elmo's online for the reasonable price of $1500 Saved by the Bell started as a show about a teacher in Indianapolis called good morning miss bliss and tara lipinski started out as a roller skater before she ever went on ice when the Hummer was released in 1992 it weighed 10,000 pounds and got less than 10 miles to the gallon another popular 1992 invention light-up sneakers la gear sold around 5 million pairs annually for the first few years and they are still very popular among four-year-olds in my house exactly Warner Brothers weren't sure about the matrix considering that writer directors lana and andy wachowski were unknowns so they created a 600-page shot-for-shot storyboard to convince the studio to make the movie we did the same thing to convince middle class to let us make their videos but it was just just the one shot Mattel sued MCA records over the song barbie girl by aqua for copyright infringement the case went to the US Court of Appeals where Judge Alex Kaczynski said the parties are advised to chill speaking of court cases the psychic Uri Geller sued pokeymon because he believed that the character Cadabra who also bent spoons with his mind was based on him the character has since been retired RL Stein who wrote the Goosebumps series also wrote the novelizations for Spaceballs and ghostbusters 2 the toy Bapat was inspired by the games Simon and whack-a-mole Sabrina the Teenage Witch lives in a fictional town Westbridge but it's zip code is the real zip code for Salem Massachusetts she also lives at 1:33 Collins Road the same address from Dark Shadows by the way Sabrina's cat is also named Salem our cat's name is puck the ThighMaster was invented by Joshua Reynolds heir to the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company he also invented the mood ring and speaking of innovators 90's boy band Hanson has their own beer brand called mm hops 80 members of the crew for the movie Titanic got sick on the same day some were even hospitalized due to hallucinations it turned out that someone had spiked the lobster chowder with PCP Justin Reardon came up with the wassup Budweiser commercial and for his hard work the company gave him a $250 bonus and a baseball bat with a motivational saying on it nirvana once received the following facts we really dig nirvana never mind is the best album of the year let's get together soon love Metallica PS Lars hates the band unclear whether the band in question with Metallica or Nirvana but regardless probably true the first Google servers storage rack was made out of Legos the Doug funnie character originated in Florida grapefruit juice commercials super soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson shot the water gun in the middle of a meeting with the president of Laramie toy company the Macarena was so popular during the 1996 Democratic convention that Al Gore made the following joke and if I could have your silence I would like to demonstrate for you the Al Gore version of the Macarena at which point he stood completely still producer Deborah Forte of scholastic entertainment says they were inspired to create the Magic School Bus TV show after learning that many girls and minorities were opting out of science at young a in the original sonic the hedghog the Sega logo and sound at the beginning took up one-eighth of the ROM cartridge for the game Amy Heckerling who wrote and directed clueless sat it on high school classes to get a feel for how real teens talk Hermione Granger's last name was almost Puckle a Puckle I can't help but notice that your initials are HP the coca-cola company released surged to compete with Mountain Dew while the drink was in the creation stages employees called it Mountain Dew killer princess beanie baby raised over 15 million dollars for the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund David Lynch and Mark Frost once tried to make a biopic about Marilyn Monroe that project fell through but they ended up making Twin Peaks also about a beloved blonde who died tragically young resulting in secrets being revealed 32% of the original imax were sold to first time computer buyers Mike Myers got the inspiration for the Austin Powers film after hearing the Dusty Springfield song the look of love Destiny's Child were originally called girls time Bridget Jones originated in a newspaper column in the independent to most remembered slogan in beverage history is got milk Will Smith knew that people would call him by his Fresh Prince of bel-air character name for the rest of his life so he named the character Will Smith while Tupac was in high school his friend got shot while playing with a gun Tupac then wrote his first rap which was about gun control my girl made Macaulay Culkin the first child actor to be paid a million dollars for a film all the Nintendo 64 was in development its code name was Project Reality back in 1997 a band called Kara's flowers performed on Beverly Hills 90210 they're now called maroon 5 Simon Cowell wanted to sign the Spice Girls back in the day but he approached them too late which he calls his biggest regret not his like 13 marriages Marilyn Manson originally performed with friends like Madonna Wayne Gacy and Olivia Newton Bundy tamagotchi comes from the Japanese words for egg and friend Lois Lowry wrote The Giver when her father was beginning to lose his memory and finally I return to my salon to take you to the very end of the 1990s when the United States spent around 100 billion dollars to prepare for y2k thanks for watching this episode of Mental Floss on YouTube which was made by all of these nice people and brought to you by our friends at Geico thanks again for watching and as we say in my hometown don't forget to be Uncle Jesse

Channel: Mental Floss

Views: 921,231

Rating: 4.9209375 out of 5

Keywords: 1990, 1990s, 90s, Mental Floss (Magazine), John Green, List Show, Retro, Classic, 90s facts, facts about the 90s, nineties, nineties facts, facts about the nineties, facts about the 1990s, 1990s facts, 90s toys, 90s nostalgia, the worst toys of the nineties, the worst nineties toys, 1990's, 1990's facts, facts about the 1990's, crazy 90s facts, weird 90s facts, weird facts about the 90s, weird facts about the nineties, weird facts about the 1990s, nostalgic facts, nostalgia

Id: WS2e4bBZ4QY

Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 10 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/echo0220]

All of this made sense to me.