In my opinion, this is possibly one of the greatest and most productive decades. Arts and Culture, for example, has boomed so much during this decade.
Arts and Culture: This is the decade of the greatest movie productions, in my opinion.
Here is a list of all the Best Picture Academy Award winners:
- Dances with Wolves (1990)
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
- Unforgiven (1992)
- Schindler’s List (1993)
- Forrest Gump (1994)
- Braveheart (1995)
- The English Patient (1996)
- Titanic (1997)
- Shakespeare in Love (1998)
- American Beauty (1999)
Also, here, is a list of the twenty-five highest-grossing films of the nineties (in order):
- Titanic
- Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
- Jurassic Park
- Independence Day
- The Lion King
- Forrest Gump
- The Sixth Sense
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park
- Men in Black
- Armageddon
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day
- Ghost
- Aladdin
- Twister
- Toy Story 2
- Saving Private Ryan
- Home Alone
- Pretty Woman
- The Matrix
- Mission: Impossible
- Tarzan
- Mrs. Doubtfire
- Dances with Wolves
- The Mummy
- The Bodyguard
Also during the nineties, Spice Girls have become extremely popular, they were the biggest pop group of the decade.
Science, Technology, and Ideas:
Video games became wildly popular in this decade. The most popular, and top selling game console was Sony’s Playstation. Another game console that rocketed in the nineties was the Nintendo 64. The most popular video games during the nineties are here in this list:
Super Mario World,
Donkey Kong Country,
Pokémon Red and Blue Versions,
Pokémon Yellow Version,
Super Mario 64,
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,
Mario Kart 64,
Super Mario Kart,
Tomb Raider series,
Final Fantasy,
Crash Bandicoot series,
Resident Evil series,
Street Fighter II,
Spyro the Dragon series,
Test Drive series,
Monkey Island,
Mortal Kombat series,
Warcraft series,
Tekken series,
StarCraft,
Sonic the Hedgehog series,
Resident Evil
Email also became wildly popular thanks to Microsoft’s recent adoption of MSN’s Hotmail. Instant Messaging, or IM’s became popular, as well as pagers. A few Instant Messaging programs were:
Buddy list
MSN
AIM and ICQ (protocols).
A few additional creations of the 90’s:
- The first MP3 was first released in 1998, called the MPMan.
- Apple introduces the iMac computer.
- CD burners were introduced.
- NASA‘s spacecraft Pathfinder lands on Mars and deploys a small roving vehicle, Sojourner, which analyzes the planet’s geology and atmosphere.
- The Galileo probe orbits Jupiter, studying the planet and its moons extensively.
- Discovery of dark matter, dark energy, brown dwarfs, and first confirmation of black holes.
Social Change (issues of gender, race, class, immigration):
- Anita Hill and other women testify before the United States Congress on being sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
- A record breaking amount of women were nominee’d for high office position of the U.S. in 1992, which was then referred to as the “Year of the Woman“.
- In the U.S. the Violence Against Women Act was passed, which greatly affected the world community through the United Nations.
- Women reach great heights of power in the U.S. government.
- Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected senator in 2000.
- Madeleine Albright and Janet Reno take two of the cabinet‘s top jobs as United States Secretary of State
- A record breaking number of women became the top of CEO’s worldwide.
War, Politics, and Nature:
- There was the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing that led to awareness in U.S. of domestic and international terrorism as a potential threat.
- The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995
- The bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, that killed 168 people.
- The Ethiopian Civil War ends in 1991, ending over twenty years of internal conflict.
- The Taliban seize control of Afghanistan in 1996.
- The 1992 Los Angeles riots occurred. There were 53 deaths and 5,500 property fires in a 100-square-mile riot zone.
- The Pakistan Army overthrows the democratically elected government of Pakistan on 12 October 1999.