20 Years Ago...

A junior at Beverly Hills High School dreamed of becoming famous. She did. (Monica Lewinsky)

In 1990, a 25-year-old woman was delayed four hours on her trip from Manchester to London, England. During this delay, a story idea “came fully formed” into her mind. Once she reached her flat in London, she began to write what would become a worldwide phenomenon: the Harry Potty books. (J. K. Rowling)

An important project began in 1990 headed by James D. Watson and the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Primary goals of this project were to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs that make up DNA and to map the estimated 25,000 genes of the human genome. It took ten years before a working draft was released. (Human Genome Project)

The observation deck on the 107th floor received an estimated 80,000 visitors a day. A typical weekday had 50,000 people working within the two largest buildings and 200,000 visitors. The complex was so large it had its own zip code. (World Trade Center in New York City)

The 42nd governor of Arkansas headed the Democratic Leadership Council in 1990. Little did he know that he would become the 42nd President of the United States. (Bill Clinton)

After 27 years in prison, this man was released in February 1990. The event was broadcast all over the world. Within four years of his release, he would become a Nobel Peace Prize winner and President of South Africa. (Nelson Mandela)

An actress who played the title role of Annie on Broadway for four years saw a resurgence of her movie career in the early ‘90s. However, it would take another eight years and the small screen (TV) before she found success playing a writer driven to understand the differences between the sexes. (Sarah Jessica Parker)

A student in his final year of law school in 1990 became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review and subsequently gained national media attention. This wouldn’t be the first time he would make the news for setting precedents. (Barak Obama)

A child of nine years old in 1990, growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, started singing country music as he followed in the footsteps of Memphis music legend Elvis Presley. This child would also leave behind country music to create his own legendary multimedia career. (Justin Timberlake)

One month prior to the beginning of 1990, new travel regulations were proposed to modify impermeable restrictions that had existed in a major European city for almost thirty years. A “Peaceful Revolution” brought down this divisive wall without a single loss of life. (fall of the Berlin Wall)

The first commercial dialup Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the U.S. opened in 1989. By 1990, the technical core of what would become the Internet (ARPANET) was replaced by newer networking technologies. Six years later, students at Stanford working on their research project goal of a “single, integrated and universal digital library” set the foundation for what was to become the Google search engine. (history of the Internet; history of Google)

How the world has changed in twenty years…

In June of 1990, in a suburban Midwestern town, a young girl of seventeen graduated from high school. She would go on to graduate cum laude with a business degree from a small Midwestern college in another town. After marrying the love of her life in 1999, and after the birth of her son six years later, she would start a ‘curious’ blog in pursuit of her dreams of writing. (me)