Skip to content
Back Then

You: 1949

Things that are younger than you

59 famous things arrived after you did. Don't panic — it's affectionate.

  1. 1953

    Everest was climbed

    Hillary and Tenzing, 29 May

  2. 1953

    The structure of DNA was discovered

  3. 1955

    The first Guinness World Records book

  4. 1957

    Sputnik 1, the first satellite

  5. 1959

    The Mini went on sale

  6. 1961

    The first human in space

    Yuri Gagarin

  7. 1963

    Doctor Who first aired

    23 November 1963

  8. 1967

    The first cash machine

    Barclays, Enfield, June 1967

  9. 1969

    Colour TV arrived on BBC1

  10. 1969

    Concorde's first flight

    March 1969, Bristol

  11. 1969

    The Moon landing

    Apollo 11, July 1969

  12. 1971

    Decimal currency in the UK

    15 February 1971

  13. 1971

    The first email

  14. 1972

    Pong, the arcade hit

    Atari

  15. 1973

    The first mobile phone call

    Motorola, April 1973

  16. 1975

    Home video recorders

    Betamax

  17. 1975

    Jaws invented the summer blockbuster

  18. 1975

    Microsoft was founded

  19. 1976

    Apple was founded

  20. 1977

    Star Wars was released

  21. 1979

    The Sony Walkman

  22. 1981

    The Humber Bridge opened

    the longest span in the world

  23. 1981

    The IBM PC

  24. 1982

    The compact disc

  25. 1984

    Tetris was created

  26. 1985

    Live Aid

    13 July 1985, Wembley

  27. 1985

    Mobile phones reached the UK

    Vodafone and Cellnet

  28. 1987

    The Simpsons first appeared

    on Tracey Ullman

  29. 1989

    The Game Boy

  30. 1989

    The World Wide Web was invented

    Tim Berners-Lee, CERN

  31. 1990

    The Hubble Space Telescope launched

  32. 1991

    Sonic the Hedgehog

  33. 1991

    The first website went online

  34. 1992

    The first text message

    December 1992

  35. 1994

    The Channel Tunnel opened

    6 May 1994

  36. 1994

    The PlayStation

    Japan, December 1994

  37. 1995

    eBay was founded

  38. 1995

    Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated film

  39. 1996

    Dolly the sheep was cloned

    the Roslin Institute

  40. 1997

    Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

    26 June 1997

  41. 1998

    Google was founded

  42. 1999

    The euro launched

  43. 1999

    The Matrix was released

  44. 2000

    Big Brother came to the UK

  45. 2001

    The iPod

  46. 2001

    Wikipedia launched

  47. 2003

    The human genome was mapped

  48. 2004

    Facebook was founded

  49. 2005

    YouTube was founded

  50. 2006

    Twitter was founded

  51. 2007

    The iPhone

  52. 2007

    The smoking ban in England

    1 July 2007

  53. 2008

    Spotify launched

  54. 2010

    Instagram

  55. 2010

    The iPad

  56. 2012

    The London Olympics

  57. 2017

    TikTok went global

  58. 2020

    The UK left the EU

    31 January 2020

  59. 2022

    ChatGPT arrived

What surprised you most?

Pass it on and find out what catches someone else out.

Keep exploring