In which year was Nelson Mandela released from prison?
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1990
He was freed on February 11, 1990, after 27 years. He was elected South Africa's president in 1994.
Question 2
What was the name of the sheep cloned from an adult cell in Scotland in 1996?
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Dolly
Dolly was born in July 1996 at the Roslin Institute; scientists announced her birth in February 1997.
Question 3
Which handheld digital pet was a craze in 1997?
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Tamagotchi
Bandai released it in Japan in 1996. Furby, a talking robot toy, followed in 1998.
Question 4
In which year was the first Harry Potter book published in the UK?
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1997
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out in June 1997. The US edition, retitled the Sorcerer's Stone, came in 1998.
Question 5
Which band's 1991 album Nevermind included "Smells Like Teen Spirit"?
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Nirvana
Nevermind knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous off the top of the Billboard chart in January 1992.
Question 6
Which of these was NOT one of the Spice Girls' nicknames?
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Smart Spice
The five were Scary, Sporty, Baby, Ginger and Posh.
Question 7
In which year was Google founded?
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1998
Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporated Google in September 1998, working from a garage in Menlo Park, California.
Question 8
Which telescope was launched into orbit by the space shuttle in 1990?
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Hubble
A flaw in its main mirror was fixed by a shuttle servicing mission in 1993.
Question 9
Which game console did Sony first release in Japan in 1994?
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PlayStation
The PlayStation reached North America in 1995. The Saturn was Sega's, and the Dreamcast came later.
Question 10
Pokémon began in 1996 as a game for which Nintendo system?
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Game Boy
Pokémon Red and Green came out in Japan in 1996. The anime and trading cards followed.
Question 11
Which sitcom starred Will Smith as a teenager sent from Philadelphia to live with his relatives?
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The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
It ran on NBC from 1990 to 1996 and made Smith a star.
Question 12
What did "Y2K" refer to in the late 1990s?
Show answer
A computer date problem expected at the year 2000
Many programs stored years with two digits, so 2000 could be read as 1900. Governments and companies spent billions fixing it.
Question 13
Which US city hosted the 1996 Summer Olympics?
Show answer
Atlanta
The Atlanta Games marked 100 years since the first modern Olympics, held in Athens in 1896.
Question 14
Which two countries were linked by the Channel Tunnel, opened in 1994?
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England and France
The tunnel runs about 50 km between Folkestone and Coquelles, nearly 38 km of it under the sea.
Question 15
Which singer's debut single, released in 1998, was "...Baby One More Time"?
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Britney Spears
She was 16 when it came out. The album of the same name followed in January 1999.
Question 16
Which web browser, released in 1994, brought the internet to millions of people?
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Netscape Navigator
Netscape lost ground to Internet Explorer in the late 1990s. Firefox grew out of its code.
Question 17
Which boy band had a 1999 hit with "I Want It That Way"?
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Backstreet Boys
It was from the album Millennium, one of the best-selling albums of 1999.
Question 18
Which TV series followed FBI agents Mulder and Scully?
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The X-Files
It began in 1993. Its tagline was "The truth is out there."
Question 19
Which new currency was launched in 1999, first only for banks and electronic payments?
Show answer
The euro
Euro notes and coins came into use on January 1, 2002, replacing currencies such as the franc and the mark.
Question 20
Which 1997 film became the first to earn more than $1 billion at the box office?
Show answer
Titanic
James Cameron's film passed $1 billion in 1998 and held the box-office record until his own Avatar in 2010.
Key numbers
Questions
20
Format
Multiple choice, 4 options
Explanations
Every question
Answers
Hidden until you open them
The decade the internet arrived
The 1990s questions follow the arrival of the modern internet, from the Netscape browser to Google's founding in a garage in 1998, along with the Y2K scare that closed the decade. Science gets its moments too: the Hubble telescope and Dolly the sheep.
Pop culture
Music runs from Nirvana's Nevermind to the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. TV covers The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The X-Files; toys and games include the Tamagotchi, the PlayStation and Pokémon, which began on the Game Boy.
World events
Nelson Mandela's release, the Channel Tunnel, the euro and the Atlanta Olympics give the set a wider view. They make good questions for players who weren't paying attention to boy bands at the time.
Dates that anchor the 90s
Mandela's release in 1990, the Channel Tunnel in 1994, the first Harry Potter book in 1997 and Google in 1998 make good anchors. Most other questions in the set fall neatly before or after one of them, and the explanation after each answer gives the exact year so you can build your own timeline as you play.
Questions about the decade's music, TV, toys and technology, from Nirvana and the Spice Girls to Tamagotchi, Pokémon and Y2K, plus big events like Mandela's release.
What was Y2K?
A computer problem expected at the start of 2000: many programs stored years as two digits, so 2000 might be read as 1900. Large fixes meant few problems occurred.