• Politics: Apartheid finally ended in South Africa.
• The Top Song was Dreamlover by Mariah Carey
• The Big Movies included Jurassic Park, Mrs. Doubtfire and The Fugitive
• Price of Bayer Aspirin in 1993: $3.84/100
  Sony (radio) Walkman: $29.98
• The World Population was ~ 5,477,000,000
• US Life Expectancy: Males: 72.2 years, Females: 78.8 years
• The Pentium Processor was invented in 1993.
• The 1993 VHS release of Aladdin sold 10.6 million copies in its first week.
• And… Music Producer Rick Rubin held a funeral complete with a casket and grave for the word “Def” after discovering it had been accepted into the standardized dictionary. Amongst those who attended included Tom Petty, Flea, and Trent Reznor.

“Got Milk?”
– California Milk Processor Board

Regarding concerns about AIDS, when asked to comment on Magic Johnson’s desire to return to basketball for the 1992-1993 season, Charles Barkley responded, “It’s not like we’re going out to have unprotected sex with Magic on the floor.”

Dave Thomas (founder of Wendy’s) went back to high school in 1993 to get his GED because he was worried that his success as a high school dropout might convince other teenagers to quit school.

Thomas Amberry set the consecutive free throw record in 1993 at 71. He shot and made 2,750 free throws over twelve hours. However, the streak did not end due to a missed shot. Instead, a janitor kicked him out because the gym closed for the night.

MIT has hosted the complete works of William Shakespeare online at shakespeare.mit.edu since 1993

Anna Paquin went to an audition for The Piano because she had nothing better to do. Selected among 5,000 candidates for the role in The Piano, she earned the 1993 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at 11, making her the second-youngest Oscar winner in history.

Oprah’s 1993 interview with Michael Jackson is the most-watched interview ever in television history.

The International Space Station survived an axing by Congress in the summer of 1993 by just one vote. It only survived when it was recast as a US-Russian alliance in the wake of the Cold War.

Coachella was started when the band Pearl Jam boycotted Ticketmaster in 1993 for their high prices and played at the location during their Ticketmaster boycott tour.

The first death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence was wrongly convicted child murderer Kirk Bloodsworth in 1993. Ten years later, Bloodsworth discovered the actual killer had been incarcerated just one cell block beneath him.

Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle sold over 800K copies in its first week, becoming the record for a debuting artist and the fastest-selling hip-hop album until Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP bested it. Dr. Dre produced both.

The cover of Billy Joel’s album River of Dreams is a painting by his wife (at the time) Christie Brinkley. In 1993, Rolling Stone gave Brinkley the Top Picks award for “The Best Album Cover of the Year.”

A company called “Space Advertising inc.” attempted to launch a giant billboard into low earth orbit. The billboard would look almost as big as a full moon from earth. After the project was canceled, a bill banning any further space advertising was introduced.

Mattel introduced “Earring Magic Ken,” featuring blonde highlights, a purple shirt, a lavender vest, a necklace with a circular charm, and an earring in its left ear. Kitsch-minded gay men bought the doll in record numbers, making Earring Magic Ken the best-selling Ken model in Mattel’s history.

Until 1993, women were banned from wearing pants on the floor of the US Senate.

When the US Post Office issued the first stamp honoring Elvis in 1993, stamp collectors mailed letters with these stamps to bad addresses to have them marked “Return to Sender.”

Built in 1965, the BT Tower’s existence was an official secret. It is nearly 600 feet tall, located in the center of London, and has a rotating restaurant that anyone could visit. It did not appear on maps and was not officially acknowledged until 1993.

The ‘Barbie Liberation Organization’ challenged gender stereotypes by switching the voice boxes of hundreds of Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls and ‘reverse shoplifting’ them back into stores. Barbies would yell, “Eat lead, Cobra!” while G.I. Joe would ask, “Want to go shopping?”.

Until 1993, no outsider had ever seen the “M” being applied to an M&M.

The reason the Super Bowl has big-name performers is that in 1992, FOX counter-programmed Super Bowl XXVI’s halftime show with In Living Color, who did a live Super Bowl spoof, complete with a game clock so viewers could see when the second half of the Super Bowl was going to start and switch back to CBS. FOX was not a Superbowl-airing entity at the time. The NFL brought Michael Jackson in for 1993 (XXVII) and has had huge artists ever since.

When the film Clerks by Kevin Smith was first screened at the Independent Feature Film Market, only 12 people showed up, including Kevin himself seven people from the cast and crew, and two random people.

Vijay Singh played the lowest PGA score of 63.

In a 1993 episode of Seinfeld, The Masseuse, Elaine was dating a guy who shared a name with serial killer Joel Rifkin. She suggested he change his name to O.J., like the football player. The following year, O.J. was charged with double murder.

Chevy Chase had his late-night show in 1993 that only lasted five weeks.

Nike released a commercial featuring NBA star Charles Barkley, whose message was that parents should be role models to their children, not basketball players.

New York Yankees pitcher Jim Abbot threw a no-hitter despite being born without a right hand.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has declined every interview since 1993 with his racial identity as the premise: “That then becomes the point of people’s understanding of me, rather than the astrophysics. So it’s a failed educational step for that to happen.”

The sound of the velociraptors barking at each other in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park was the sound of tortoises mating.

Cost of a Superbowl ad in 1993: $850,000

In 1993, total Internet traffic amounted to approximately 100 TB for the year. As of June 2008, Cisco Systems estimated Internet traffic at 160 TB/s. In other words, the amount of Internet used per second in 2008 exceeded that used in 1993.

The conspirators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were caught when one tried to reclaim his deposit on the rental van they used to carry the bomb into the parking garage.

The Super Bowl has required national anthem vocals to be pre-recorded since 1993 when Garth Brooks declined to pre-record and then refused to sing live until a dispute over debuting his music video – We Shall Be Free – during the game could be settled, resulting in a delayed kickoff. They did play the video.

During the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Great Flood of 1993, 23-year-old James Scott removed sandbags from an Illinois levee to strand his wife on the other side of the river so that he could keep partying. He received life imprisonment for “intentionally causing a catastrophe.” His breach flooded 14,000 acres.

Women were not allowed to wear pants on the US Senate floor until 1993, after Senators Barbara Mikulski and Carol Moseley Braun defiantly staged a protest by wearing pantsuits.

Dateline NBC ran a story on the danger of GM pickup trucks with sidesaddle gas tanks exploding upon impact. NBC was forced to apologize after it was revealed that they had staged the explosions in their crash test footage.

Pepsi ran a contest in the Philippines, which promised 1 million pesos, roughly $40,000, to the person who found 349 inside his bottle cap. Pepsi went on to mistakenly print 800,000 winning caps, leading to outrage and death threats to Pepsi executives.

The earliest known entry of an internet search on the word “jihad” was about an anti-Barney the Dinosaur newsgroup community called “The Jihad to Destroy Barney.”

RIP Brandon Lee, accidental death on the set of The Crow

Celebrity Drug-related Death: River Phoenix outside the Los Angeles Viper Room.

Commodore’s Amiga CD32, Atari Jaguar, Power Rangers action figures, 1850’s Southern Belle Barbie, Barbie Batgirl giftset, and Beanie Babies were released, with a fairly small market, Magic The Gathering role-playing card game

Panasonic released the FZ-1, the first model of the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer

Taste of Home began publication

OK! began publication

Wired began publication

Still Reading The Bridges of Madison County by James Robert Waller,

(Data is compiled from charts including Billboard’s Pop, Rock, Airplay, R&B/Dance, and Singles Charts. The Hot 100 is the primary chart used for this list.)

March 6, 1993 – March 12, 1993: Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle – A Whole New World

March 13, 1993 – April 30, 1993: Snow – Informer

May 1, 1993 – May 14, 1993: Silk – Freak Me

May 15, 1993 – July 9, 1993: Janet Jackson – That’s The Way Love Goes

July 10, 1993 – July 23, 1993: SWV – Weak

July 24, 1993 – September 10, 1993: UB40 – Can’t Help Falling In Love

September 11, 1993 – November 5, 1993: Mariah Carey – Dreamlover

November 6, 1993 – December 10, 1993: Meat Loaf – I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)

December 11, 1993 – December 24, 1993: Janet Jackson – Again

December 25, 1993 – January 21, 1994: Mariah Carey – Hero

(according to boxofficemojo)
1. Jurassic Park
2. Mrs. Doubtfire
3. The Fugitive
4. The Firm
5. Sleepless In Seattle
6. Indecent Proposal
7. In The Line Of Fire
8. The Pelican Brief
9. Schindler’s List
10. Cliffhanger

Beethoven’s 2nd, Carlito’s Way, Cliffhanger, Cool Runnings, Dave, Demolition Man, Falling Down, The Firm, Free Willie, The Fugitive, Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day, Grumpy Old Men, Hocus Pocus, In The Line of Fire, Indecent Proposal, Mrs. Doubtfire, Jurassic Park, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Pelican Brief, Philadelphia, Rising Sun, Rookie of the Year, Rudy, Schindler’s List, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Sleepless in Seattle, The Three Musketeers, Tombstone, True Romance, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape