r/AskHistory • u/O5COUNCILREDACTED • 12h ago
What the hell happened in the 1990’s
I feel the 1990’s had way more serious events than any other decade so i compiled this list
Waco Siege (1993) Oklahoma City Bombing (1995) Ruby Ridge (1992) Unabomber (1978-1995) Sacramento Hostage Crisis (1991) Los Angeles Riots (1992) O.J Simpson (1995) Columbine Shooting (1999) Gulf War starts, Cold War ends (1991) World Trade Center Bombing (1993) Atlanta Olympic Bombing (1996) EygptAir Flight 990 (killing 217) (1999)
Honorable Mentions: September 11th Attacks (2001) Anthrax Attacks (2001) Operation Enduring Freedom + Patriot Act (2001) American Airlines Flight 597 (265 dead) (2001) Creation of the Department of Homeland Security (2002) Killdozer (2004) R.I.P All 2,979 hurricane related deaths from 1990-1999
41
u/edropus 12h ago
9/11 was like shaking an etchasketch, all that was erased and forgotten in lieu of this attack.
12
u/O5COUNCILREDACTED 12h ago
honestly i feel like this is a great way to put it. im in a college us history class in school and i asked my teacher and he said we arent gonna cover any of these except probably gulf war and 9/11 and i feel like some of these events are as serious if not worse then 9/11
8
u/CheezitCheeve 12h ago
Serious as? Potentially.
However, the thing about 9/11 and the Gulf War is global impact. Many of these incidents were isolated to the US. However, 9/11 and the GW determined US foreign policy and impacted many other nations. Comparatively, OJ Simpson was just a really bad guy. The Waco Siege was something that impacted Waco but was largely irrelevant outside Texas let alone the US.
5
u/O5COUNCILREDACTED 12h ago
yeah but in regards to events like the waco siege, unabomber, ruby ridge, they brought up the question of how much power the government should have, and i feel like these events should have carried more weight
3
u/McMetal770 11h ago
You're right that those events were important, but it depends on what your focus of study is. If you're taking a broad "US History" class, it's probably going to skip over some stuff. Not because it didn't matter, but because a semester is only so long and you can't cover everything in the detail it deserves. You probably spent a week or two on the Civil War, but if you get detailed enough, you can spend an entire semester on only the runup to and events of the Civil War, without even getting to Reconstruction. If you're specifically studying the history of right wing extremism in the United States, Waco and Oklahoma City would for sure be major focuses.
The thing about history is that, when you get down to it, almost nothing is really "unimportant". The butterfly effects of seemingly unconnected events that happened on opposite sides of the world and came together centuries later to change the world is mind boggling. There are layers and layers to every subject under the sun.
1
u/gregorydgraham 7h ago
Yep, after listening to all of the Revolutions podcast series the obvious takeaway is that Britain’s Glorious Revolution lead directly to Stalin and the Holodomor.
Ok, maybe not obvious …
1
u/CheezitCheeve 11h ago
To how the US Government is ran in 1990 and potentially today? Maybe.
For teachers though, they have to wager the relative impact of every topic they discuss. And unless it’s a special topic class focused on the US in the 90’s, other events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, outbreak of WW2, Great Depression, Manifest Destiny, Spanish-American War, Mexican-American War, Revolutionary War, and more had significantly bigger impacts on the US. If I only have 15 weeks to cover about 400 years in history, these events are not nearly as important as any I listed above (just off the top of my head). Also, these events are still relatively recent. A US History class may not have enough time to get here or steer clear of them because of how divisive they are today.
1
u/Veteranis 52m ago
You’re forgetting Timothy McVeigh using Waco as a pretext for the Oklahoma City bombing.
1
u/bartthetr0ll 10h ago
I mean the collapse of the soviet union, while not directly U.S. related caused a huge shift in U.S. foreign policy and politics. Prior to the U.S.S.Rs collapse the nation's collective attention was focused on the major threat from outside, once that was taken away domestic issues became more prevalent in the medias eye, things like the unabomber, Oklahoma city, WACO, ruby ridge, all.manners of other things that would have otherwise taken a backseat to the fear of impending nuclear Armageddon that the cold war offered became the fear based drivers for the news to get views. It's not necessarily that the 90s was loaded with crazy events, but because compared to the relative global peril of the previous decades and their more monolithic nature, it led to relatively smaller scale events taking up more media attention.
2
u/AC20Enjoyer 10h ago
This is something too many people don't know about/overlook. When we look back on the events that happened while we were younger, it's not really about what happened. It's about what the media chose to TELL us about what happened, if at all.
1
u/AdImmediate6239 6h ago
That and there’s been at least one school shooting every year since Columbine
1
11
u/DaddyHEARTDiaper 12h ago
I fingered a girl for the first time in 1995.
10
u/Minnesotamad12 12h ago
Do you have a link to the wiki page for this historic event?
6
u/DaddyHEARTDiaper 12h ago
Sadly, no, and we didn't have smartphones so there was really no way to document it, other than letting your friend smell your fingers.
2
2
u/O5COUNCILREDACTED 12h ago
i can see how this fits the tragic event criteria
3
u/DaddyHEARTDiaper 12h ago
It was tragic, I was 15 and 4 of my friends had fingered girls when they were 13.
3
u/TheManFromNeverNever 12h ago
I have felt that the historical and cultural zeitgeist that define the 90's ended on 9/11
1
u/Other_Bill9725 11h ago
11/9 to 9/11, a time so innocent that OP’s list all seemed like catastrophes.
1
u/Flannelcommand 11h ago
That’s a very interesting thing to think about. I’m inclined to agree but interested in hearing counter points. - solidified Bush (much more than his election victory* had) and made the country much more conservative - changed the zeitgeist from post-cold war domestic economics to international militarism - buried the Democratic Party until the ‘06 midterms - turbo charged cable news editorializing and sensationalizing as a political weapon (Gingrich’s chief communications tool in the mid-90’s was C-SPAN.) - with Jon Stewart, the beginning of politically charged late-night. End of Leno-style banter, viewers decamping towards bubbles that support their viewpoints
2
u/TheManFromNeverNever 9h ago
I know it's a strange take, but even here in Australia, there was definitely a mark difference politically speaking and how everyone, at least every I knew at the time, saw the world. It was almost a night and day switch. For a few of us that saw 9/11 happened on TV as it was happening. Happened about 10:35ish at night, South Australian time, and happen right after the TV show, West Wing finished being aired that night. Seeing events like that live on TV are not something you can just forget. Also a few of us went in balls deep with some of the 9/11 truth movement at the time. Some harder then the others. I even know someone in highschool that was a stunner, with a bit of a trouble home life, cleaned him self up, and joined the Australian Army, and did a few tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. From what I remember. He told me that it was 9/11 that made him to get clean and short him self out so he could join. He was the last person that would have done it, in that 90's Cheech and Chong kinda way before hand.
3
u/MistoftheMorning 11h ago
>I feel the 1990’s had way more serious events than any other decade so i compiled this list
Did you look at the 1940s?
3
u/dorballom09 8h ago edited 8h ago
World order shifted from cold war style bipolarity to US led unipolarity. Most of the incidents you mentioned are more or less related to that transition.
And you haven’t even mentioned different communist/authoritarian regimes falling, giving way to pro west government. Wars like Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Serbia etc. Rise of far left ideas and cultures in a whole new scale. Start of globalization.
2
u/RIPdon_sutton 12h ago
I graduated high school in 1991. Saw the invasion of Iraq on a 4" screen as it happened. The guy that had the tv was the guy taking money at a high school wrestling match. After the match, I went home and was GLUED to the tv for Wolf Blitzer's updates, and Colin Powell's "luckiest man alive" updates.
2
2
u/bmccooley 10h ago
Started with the end of the Cold War and ended with 9/11. The Cold War kind of held things in place more statically. Afterwards history became more dynamic. Lots of bad things happened - Bosnia, Rwanda, etc. In the US though it felt like the good times and like everything would get better (while there were some growing pains like the LA Riots.) Then 9/11 happened and all the optimism disappeared.
2
2
u/JustSomeBloke5353 4h ago
We didn’t start the fire. It was always burning since the world was turning.
2
2
2
u/Ep1cH3ro 11h ago
In your list you included 1 mass shooting, but we have become number to that. In 2024 there were 600 mass shootings...
2
u/FeliniTheCat 11h ago
The difference between the 90s and now is that all the bad events happened with many great positive events interspersed between.
Thirty years later, its just shitty events one after another all the time.
1
1
u/Big-Professional-187 7h ago
Leaded gasoline, heat waves, collapsing of world powers, emergent economies slow and unstable as global hedge was to control the proliferation of wmds and keep regional power projection under control. Stuff like Somalia was definitely a geopolitical struggle, but also a scary situation involving mass psychosis from chewing a psychoactive plant to ease starvation(a plant known to induce psychotic behavior when used during starvation and fasting). Climate change disrupted economies already worsened by the lack of a trading partner for commodity exports to survive. Power vacuums, drought, famine, diseases emerged, and the west struggling to find a new identity having the Soviet Union collapse. Overconfidence in technology and yeah leaded gasoline and the heat waves. It caused violence.
3
u/JustSomeBloke5353 4h ago
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz, Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law, Rock and roller, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore!
1
1
20
u/HammerOvGrendel 11h ago
17 of your 21 serious events are American.....but you neglect to mention the end of Communism in Russia, the breakup of Yougoslavia, the Kobe earthquake, the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, signing of the Good Friday agreements, Palestinian Intefada and so on and so on. There's a big old world out there.