Jon And Chantel

25 Things That Turn 25 in 2017

My favorite list every year is one that makes me feel old! MentalFloss.com put together a list of 25 things that are turning 25 this year. So if you were born in 1992, this one is for you!

 

1. WAYNES WORLD

On February 14, Wayne’s World graduated from Saturday Night Live sketch to feature film. No way?! Way!! Featuring Mike Myers and Dana Carvey and directed by Penelope Spheeris, it was a landmark comedy that both reflected and affected ’90s pop culture. It single-handedly revived Queen’s song “Bohemian Rhapsody,” introduced the world to the intellectualism of Alice Cooper, and convinced teens that public-access TV was worthwhile after all. As a pair of wise men once said: “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”

 

2. THE FIRST TEXT MESSAGE

On December 3, 1992, 22-year-old engineer Neil Papworth sent the first text message over a cellular network. He used a computer connected to the Vodafone GSM network to send the message to Vodafone director Richard Jarvis’s Orbitel 901 mobile phone (which was gigantic, but technically “mobile” by 1992 standards). The message read: “Merry Christmas.” Why the early Christmas greeting? Jarvis was at a Christmas party at the time.

 

3. BARNEY AND FRIENDS

To the immense frustration of adults and delight of toddlers, the purple dinosaur Barney appeared on PBS on April 6. Barney & Friends was initially envisioned four years earlier as a direct-to-video series called Barney & The Backyard Gang created by Sheryl Leach, a Dallas elementary school teacher who wanted to create toddler-appropriate programming for her kids. (She noted that most programming for kids assumed too long an attention span, which led to the simplistic bits featured on Barney.)

If you missed this moment in television history, let’s catch you up. Barney is a giant purple Tyrannosaurus rex made of cloth, who likes to sing and dance. He is utterly non-threatening, essentially a scaled-up version of a plush dinosaur toy. When a People Magazine article called the lyrics to Barney’s songs “stupid,” an era of Barney-bashing began. Toddlers didn’t care one bit, and clamored for Barney merchandise, as an actor in a six-foot tall Barney costume embarked on a mall tour in December.

 

You can read the entire list here!!!!

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