1995 … and all that!
It all starts again tonight. The Orlando Magic are in the NBA finals and instead of the Rockets it’s the Lakers that stand between them and immortality.
The last time…and the first time the Magic made it to the finals was in 1995 so I thought it would be fun to rewind the clock and see what happened back then.
1995 was the year that:
The World Trade Organization was established on January 1st and Super Bowl XXIX saw the San Francisco 49ers become the first National Football League franchise to win 4 Super Bowls as they defeated the San Diego Chargers in Miami.
Also on 23 February the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 4,003.33…the first time ever it closed above 4,000 but in UK, Barrings Bank collapsed after rogue trader, Nick Leeson lost $1.4 billion by speculating on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Meanwhile in March, Scott Amedure revealed on the Jenny Jones Show that he had a crush on his friend Jonathan Schmitz who promptly rewarded him by killing him a few days later.
March 24 was also a historical day in Belfast as for the first time in 26 years, no British soldiers patrolled the streets. April saw the US House of Representatives vote 246 to 188 to cut taxes for individuals and corporations but it was also the month that Timothy McVeigh and his accomplices set off the Oklahoma City bomb killing 168 people.
May saw Jacques Chirac elected as President of France and Finland somehow managed to win the ice hockey world championship. The America’s Cup was won by Team New Zealand in San Diego as they handed out a 5-0 whipping while a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit Neftegorsk in Russia killing at least 2,000 people.
June saw US astronaut Norman Thagard setting a space endurance record of 14 days, 1 hour and 16 minutes aboard Russian space station MIR while OJ Simpson put on the pair of gloves that were worn by the person who presumably murdered his ex-wife and her friend Ron Goldman. The Stanley Cup was won by the New Jersey Devils as they swept the heavily favored Detroit Red Wings and South Africa won the Rugby World Cup. On June 29 Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian Mir space station for the first time while in July the Irag disarmament crisis reached boiling point as Iraq admitted for the first time that they had an offensive biological weapons program.
John Major also won his battle to remain the leader of the Conservative Party in UK and the NASDAQ Composite index closed above 1,000 mark for the first time on July 17. August saw Microsoft release Windows 95 and in September the DVD, an optical disc computer storage media format was announced.
In October ten people were convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in 1993 and OJ Simpson was found not guilty of the double murder of his former wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman. On November 1st, the US House of Representatives voted to ban partial birth abortions by a vote of 288 – 139 and on 21 November the Dow Jones Industrial closes at 5,023.55, its first close above 5,000 thus making 1995 the first year where the Dow surpasses 2 millennium marks in a single year.
On 22 November, Toy Story was released by Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures…the first ever full length computer animated feature film and 5 days later President Bill Clinton signed the National Highway Designation Act which ended the federal 55 mph speed limit.
In December, France is paralyzed by strikes in the public sector but that doesn’t stp the Dayton Peace Agreement being signed in Paris on 14th. On December 15th the European Court of Justice rules that all EU football players have the right to a free transfer at the end of their contracts and this becomes known as the Bosman transfer in subsequent years.
1995 was also the year that the world population reached 5,674,380,000 with North America accounting for 299,438,000 while by far the biggest population was in Asia at a massive 3,430,052,000. The Metro Orlando Population was 1,410,877 (2008 – 2,103,480)
Notable deaths in 1995 were Peter Cook, Fred Perry, Murray Rothbard, Ron Luciano, Donald Pleasence, James Herriot, John Minton, Davie Cooper, Tony Lock, Kenny Everett, Art Fleming, Ginger Rogers, Al Sanders, Elizabeth Montgomery, Harold Wilson, Mickey Mantle, Alec Douglas-Home and Dean Martin.
So what will 2009 bring? Will it be the year of the Magic or will the Lakers take the title again?
