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Born in 1993? Here's the world you arrived into

In 1993, "I Will Always Love You" topped the charts, Jurassic Park packed theaters, a stamp cost 29¢, the average home went for about $126,500.

What things cost in 1993

A $1.11 gallon of gas in 1993 has the buying power of roughly $2.40 in 2024 dollars. A 29¢ stamp is around 63¢ today, and a $4.14 movie ticket is about $9.

The biggest moments of 1993

• The World Wide Web opened to the public in April.
• The Mosaic browser made the web mainstream.
• Intel released the Pentium processor.

• The Cheers finale in May 1993 drew more than 80 million viewers, one of the biggest TV audiences ever, as Boston toasted its favorite bar.
• Michael Jordan stunned the sports world by retiring from basketball in October, at the very peak of his powers, to try baseball.
• The "Got Milk?" ad campaign debuted in October 1993 and its milk-mustache question became one of advertising's most famous lines.

Toys, TV & trends of 1993

• Mighty Morphin Power Rangers debuted in August 1993, and Power Rangers toys became nearly impossible to find by the holidays.
• Ty's first Beanie Babies quietly appeared in 1993, planting the seeds of a collecting craze that would sweep the nation.
• Jurassic Park roared into theaters and dinosaur toys, T-shirts, and lunchboxes stomped into every classroom.

• The X-Files premiered in September 1993, and suddenly everyone wanted to believe.
• Doom spread from computer to computer on shareware floppies, sneaking onto school and office PCs across the country.
• The Talkboy from Home Alone 2 hit toy stores for real after kids wrote in demanding it, and slowed-down voice pranks followed.

The music scene

Whitney Houston opened 1993 by rewriting the record books — her ballad from The Bodyguard held No. 1 for an unprecedented 14 weeks, a run no single had ever managed before. Hip-hop had a landmark year of its own: Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle became the first debut album by any artist to enter the charts at No. 1. Meanwhile country music kept booming, with Garth Brooks playing to stadium crowds that rivaled any rock tour on Earth.

At the movies

1993 belongs to Steven Spielberg, who pulled off perhaps the greatest one-two punch in movie history: Jurassic Park's computer-generated dinosaurs made audiences believe the impossible, and months later Schindler's List earned him his first Best Director Oscar plus Best Picture among seven wins. At Cannes, Jane Campion's The Piano made her the first woman ever to win the Palme d'Or.

Cartoons kids loved

• Animaniacs
• The Simpsons
• Beavis and Butt-Head

Steven Spielberg's partnership with Warner Bros. hit its peak in 1993, reviving the anything-for-a-laugh spirit of the old Looney Tunes with jokes pitched at kids and their parents at the same time — a trick that made afternoon cartoons genuinely rewatchable for whole families. With Cartoon Network in its first full year on cable, kids could suddenly watch animation around the clock, something unimaginable just a few years earlier.

The world in 1993

• World population: about 5.5 billion
• U.S. President: Bill Clinton
• The European Union was formally established

• Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on January 1, 1993, in what was called the Velvet Divorce.
• Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO's Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn in September after signing the Oslo Accords.
• Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of apartheid.

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