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

And did you know that in 1999 people believed that Furbies contained computer chips so they could record words and repeat them

Now, it 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

Alanis 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 it had 26.4 million users

And if you think that's a lot, AOL Instant Messenger launched in 1997 and gained 53 million users in less than 10 years

Nowadays, there are fewer than 4 million active users. Wait, there are 4 million active users of AOL Instant Messenger? Seriously

How many of them just left their away messages up for the last 10 years? But speaking of outmoded technologies, 61 million people were using pagers in 1994

In 1992, during a 60 Minutes interview about Bill's infidelity, Hillary Clinton said

I'm not sitting here as some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette

Hillary 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

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 and June

Slap bracelets were invented by a high school shop teacher who was playing with steel ribbons

Billy Crystal has said he only regrets turning down one role in his career, Buzz Lightyear

Another movie role that could have been Julia Louis-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

Speaking of which, Larry David made a no-hugging, no-learning rule for Seinfeld scripts

Basically he didn want the characters to have sentimental full housey revelations We now associate PowerPoint with Microsoft Office but in the 90s it was originally developed for a Mac The voice who announced you 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 Pilot's look by cutting a block of wood to the right size

and using a short chopstick as the model for the writing utensil. The Rembrandts 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 NSYNC, which was the last letter of each band member's 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 Game Boy to space. He was allowed to bring only one game, and he chose Tetris

90s 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. Seven Yankee stadiums 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. Steven Chmossky 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, because 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 90's myth that the Taco Bell Chihuahua commercials 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 lock onto a target without

deviating more than the width of a human hair seen at a distance of one mile

Chris Wiggs 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 in Jurassic Park the crew slowed down a 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' cousin played her love interest in the Baby One More Time music video

Art student Deidre LeCart created the hamster dance webpage in 1998 to increase traffic

to her website, which she did. By the way, the hamster dance webpage still exists

In 1997, people sold Tickle Me Elmo's online for the reasonable price of $1,500

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. L.A. Gear sold around 5 million pairs annually for the first few years, and they are still very popular among 4-year-olds in my house

Execs at Warner Bros. 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 Mental Floss to let us make their videos, but it was 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 Yuri Geller sued Pokemon because he believed that the character Kadabra

who also bent spoons with his mind, was based on him. The character has since been retired

R.L. Stine, who wrote the Goosebumps series, also wrote the novelizations for Spaceballs and Ghostbusters 2

The toy Bop It was inspired by the games Simon and Whack-A-Mole

Sabrina the Teenage Witch lives in a fictional town, Westbridge, but its zip code is the real zip code for Salem, Massachusetts

She also lives at 133 Collins Road, the same address from Dark Shadows

By the way, Sabrina's cat is also named Salem. Our cat's name is Puckle. The Thighmaster was invented by Joshua Reynolds, heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company

he also invented the mood ring. And speaking of innovators, 90's boy band Hanson has their own beer brand, called M-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 What's Up 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. Nevermind is the best album of the year. Let's get together soon

Love Metallica P Lars hates the band Unclear whether the band in question was Metallica or Nirvana but regardless probably true The first Google server storage rack was made out of Legos

The Doug Funny 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 ages

In the original Sonic the Hedgehog, 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 in on high school classes to get a feel for how real teens talked

Hermione Granger's last name was almost Puckle. Hey Puckle, I can't help but notice that your initials are H.P

The Coca-Cola company released Surge to compete with Mountain Dew. While the drink was in the creation stages, employees called it Mountain Dew Killer

The Princess Beanie Baby raised over $15 million 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 iMacs 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 Girl's Time. Bridget Jones originated in a newspaper column in The Independent

The 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

While 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 returned to my salon to take you to the very end of the 1990s, when the

United States spent around $100 billion to prepare for Y2K. Thanks for watching this episode of Metal 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