On This Day: June 10, 1990 — Pilot Sucked Out of Flight 5390
On June 10, 1990, BA Flight 5390 captain Tim Lancaster was sucked halfway out of a windscreen at 17,300 feet — and survived 20 minutes outside the aircraft.
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Digital Underground: 7 Wild Facts About Humpty Hump
Digital Underground hit platinum in 1990 with the Humpty Dance, launched Tupac Shakur, and pulled George Clinton into rap. Here’s the wild story behind Shock G’s Oakland crew.
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On This Day: June 7, 1990 — Universal Studios Florida Opens
June 7, 1990: Spielberg cut the ribbon, $631 million went online, and three of the headline rides immediately broke. Inside Universal Studios Florida’s legendary disaster of a grand opening.
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Seattle Grunge Scene History: 7 Venues That Built the Sound
The Seattle grunge scene history did not begin in 1991 with Nirvana’s Nevermind. It began about seven years earlier in a 550-capacity Pioneer Square bar, a black-walled Belltown art club, and a triangular wooden shed in Ballard that recorded bands for under a thousand bucks an album. By the time MTV figured out what was…
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The Most Dangerous Race in the World Had Its Greatest Moment in 1992 and Nobody Watched It Live
In 1992, Steve Hislop and Carl Fogarty produced the greatest race in Isle of Man TT history — 4.4 seconds apart, both breaking the lap record, with barely anyone watching live.
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51 Days in Waco: The 1993 Siege That Divided America
In the spring of 1993, America sat glued to its TV sets watching a tense standoff unfold on a remote Texas compound. Fifty-one days, 76 deaths, and one charismatic doomsday preacher later, nothing would ever be the same.
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On This Day: May 26, 1990 — The Week Women Owned the Entire Billboard Top 5
On the morning of May 26, 1990, radio DJs across America were spinning a chart that had never existed before. Five songs sat at numbers one through five on the Billboard Hot 100. Five songs. All by women. It sounds like a footnote, but in the pop landscape of 1990 — an industry still largely…
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MC Hammer: The Rise, the Pants, the Bankruptcy, and the Legacy
On February 12, 1990 — the same day Nelson Mandela walked free from Victor Verster Prison — a 27-year-old kid from Oakland named Stanley Kirk Burrell released his third studio album and accidentally changed pop culture forever. By August, it was selling 100,000 copies a day. By the following spring, it had gone diamond with…
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Hudson Hawk: 7 Wild Facts From May 24, 1991’s Bomb
Hudson Hawk hit theaters on May 24, 1991 and became Bruce Willis’s most notorious flop. 7 wild facts about the $65M cult classic that almost broke a career.
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Van Gogh’s $82.5M Painting: 7 Wild Facts From May 15, 1990
The Van Gogh Portrait of Dr. Gachet auction on May 15, 1990 detonated the art market in under three minutes. Christie’s New York chairman Christopher Burge opened the bidding at $20 million and slammed his gavel down at a final hammer price of $75 million — $82.5 million with the buyer’s premium — making it…
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Seinfeld Finale: 7 Wild Facts From 1998’s TV Goodbye
The Seinfeld finale aired on May 14, 1998, and roughly 76 million Americans dropped what they were doing to watch four New Yorkers go to jail for being terrible people. Twenty-eight years later, it’s still one of the most-watched television finales in U.S. history, and it remains the most argued-about goodbye in sitcom history. This…
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Deep Blue vs Kasparov: 7 Stunning Moments From 1997
On May 11, 1997, Deep Blue vs Kasparov ended in a way nobody outside IBM thought possible. Garry Kasparov, the most dominant world chess champion of the modern era, resigned a game after only 19 moves against an IBM supercomputer, handing Deep Blue a 3.5–2.5 series victory in the Equitable Center in New York. It…
