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Back Then

You: 1972

Things that are younger than you

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

  1. 1973

    The first mobile phone call

    Motorola, April 1973

  2. 1975

    Home video recorders

    Betamax

  3. 1975

    Jaws invented the summer blockbuster

  4. 1975

    Microsoft was founded

  5. 1976

    Apple was founded

  6. 1977

    Star Wars was released

  7. 1979

    The Sony Walkman

  8. 1981

    The Humber Bridge opened

    the longest span in the world

  9. 1981

    The IBM PC

  10. 1982

    The compact disc

  11. 1984

    Tetris was created

  12. 1985

    Live Aid

    13 July 1985, Wembley

  13. 1985

    Mobile phones reached the UK

    Vodafone and Cellnet

  14. 1987

    The Simpsons first appeared

    on Tracey Ullman

  15. 1989

    The Game Boy

  16. 1989

    The World Wide Web was invented

    Tim Berners-Lee, CERN

  17. 1990

    The Hubble Space Telescope launched

  18. 1991

    Sonic the Hedgehog

  19. 1991

    The first website went online

  20. 1992

    The first text message

    December 1992

  21. 1994

    The Channel Tunnel opened

    6 May 1994

  22. 1994

    The PlayStation

    Japan, December 1994

  23. 1995

    eBay was founded

  24. 1995

    Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated film

  25. 1996

    Dolly the sheep was cloned

    the Roslin Institute

  26. 1997

    Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

    26 June 1997

  27. 1998

    Google was founded

  28. 1999

    The euro launched

  29. 1999

    The Matrix was released

  30. 2000

    Big Brother came to the UK

  31. 2001

    The iPod

  32. 2001

    Wikipedia launched

  33. 2003

    The human genome was mapped

  34. 2004

    Facebook was founded

  35. 2005

    YouTube was founded

  36. 2006

    Twitter was founded

  37. 2007

    The iPhone

  38. 2007

    The smoking ban in England

    1 July 2007

  39. 2008

    Spotify launched

  40. 2010

    Instagram

  41. 2010

    The iPad

  42. 2012

    The London Olympics

  43. 2017

    TikTok went global

  44. 2020

    The UK left the EU

    31 January 2020

  45. 2022

    ChatGPT arrived

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