Skip to content
Back Then

You: 1980

Things that are younger than you

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

  1. 1981

    The Humber Bridge opened

    the longest span in the world

  2. 1981

    The IBM PC

  3. 1982

    The compact disc

  4. 1984

    Tetris was created

  5. 1985

    Live Aid

    13 July 1985, Wembley

  6. 1985

    Mobile phones reached the UK

    Vodafone and Cellnet

  7. 1987

    The Simpsons first appeared

    on Tracey Ullman

  8. 1989

    The Game Boy

  9. 1989

    The World Wide Web was invented

    Tim Berners-Lee, CERN

  10. 1990

    The Hubble Space Telescope launched

  11. 1991

    Sonic the Hedgehog

  12. 1991

    The first website went online

  13. 1992

    The first text message

    December 1992

  14. 1994

    The Channel Tunnel opened

    6 May 1994

  15. 1994

    The PlayStation

    Japan, December 1994

  16. 1995

    eBay was founded

  17. 1995

    Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated film

  18. 1996

    Dolly the sheep was cloned

    the Roslin Institute

  19. 1997

    Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

    26 June 1997

  20. 1998

    Google was founded

  21. 1999

    The euro launched

  22. 1999

    The Matrix was released

  23. 2000

    Big Brother came to the UK

  24. 2001

    The iPod

  25. 2001

    Wikipedia launched

  26. 2003

    The human genome was mapped

  27. 2004

    Facebook was founded

  28. 2005

    YouTube was founded

  29. 2006

    Twitter was founded

  30. 2007

    The iPhone

  31. 2007

    The smoking ban in England

    1 July 2007

  32. 2008

    Spotify launched

  33. 2010

    Instagram

  34. 2010

    The iPad

  35. 2012

    The London Olympics

  36. 2017

    TikTok went global

  37. 2020

    The UK left the EU

    31 January 2020

  38. 2022

    ChatGPT arrived

What surprised you most?

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

Keep exploring