That '80 and ’90s Quiz 3

Central Perk is the name of the fictional Greenwich Village coffee house where the Friends gang spent their free time on the iconic orange couch. The other options belong to different famous TV shows: Monk's Diner is from Seinfeld, The Peach Pit is from Beverly Hills, 90210, and Luke's Diner is from Gilmore Girls.

A pager (or beeper) was the ultimate 90s communication tool before mobile phones became affordable and widespread. It could not make calls or send text messages; instead, someone would dial your pager number from a landline, and their phone number (or a short numeric code) would appear on your pager's tiny screen. You would then have to find a public payphone to call them back.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill polluted more than 1,300 miles of Alaskan shore. Exxon (today ExxonMobil) paid some $2.1 billion in cleanup funds. However, studies done in 2018 show that there are still patches of Exxon Valdez oil lingering under the surface of the beaches in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

In 1996 Deep Blue beat Kasparov once but ended up losing the overall match. During a rematch the following year, Deep Blue won twice and tied three times, winning the match. Various artificial intelligences have gone on to defeat professional poker players as well as champions of the board game go.

In 1981 Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat left vacant by Potter Stewart. The Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown happened in 1979, before Reagan’s tenure, while the fall of the Berlin Wall and the launch of the Hubble Telescope happened after.

“Did I do that?” Steve Urkel, played by Jaleel White, was the brilliant-but-bungling cheese-loving neighbor to the Winslow family during the nine-season run of Family Matters. Urkel was originally intended as a guest role, but White’s nerdy charm immediately won over audiences.

In 1985, celebrities from Dan Aykroyd to Stevie Wonder shared studio space to record “We Are the World,” which raised $60 million for famine relief in Africa. Prince was originally scheduled to participate but later abruptly declined, instead composing his own track for the We Are the World album.

For a not-too-brief time during the late ’90s, Titanic was “king of the world,” raking in a then-record $1.8 billion worldwide ($600 million domestically, also a record). A critical and commercial success, Titanic is one of a handful of number-one box office draws to win the best picture Oscar.

The Chernobyl power station was located in Pryp'yat, about 65 miles north of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. The area is still subject to an exclusion zone covering over a thousand square miles, largely devoid of human life.

Even many of Clinton’s supporters considered his impeachment testimony evasive. The U.S. House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment, for perjury and obstruction of justice regarding his sexual relationship with a White House intern. The Senate acquitted him of the charges.

Bigger than a football field when first displayed in 1987, the AIDS Memorial Quilt had 1,920 panels, each representing someone who died of the disease. Following a four-month 20-city tour of the U.S., the quilt had 8,288 panels. Today the quilt has more than 50,000 panels and weighs 54 tons.

John Gotti was eventually convicted on 13 charges, including murder and racketeering, thanks to the testimony of underboss Salvatore (“Sammy the Bull”) Gravano. In 2002 Gotti died in prison, and in 2020 Gravano started a Mafia podcast.

While Knight Rider star David Hasselhoff’s music did not make much of an impact stateside, his albums were chart-toppers in Germany. He performed his single “Looking for Freedom” in a bucket crane above a massive crowd gathered on the remnants of the Berlin Wall just two months after its fall. Some Germans of a certain age still associate Hasselhoff’s music with the reunification of Germany.

Sonic creator Naoto Ohshima said the red-on-white contrast on Jackson’s bestseller influenced the hedgehog’s footwear.

Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is world-famous for its 14-minute music video, which was styled like a mini-horror movie. In the video, Michael Jackson and a troupe of dancers dressed as zombies perform a synchronized dance routine that became a defining pop culture moment of the 1980s. While "Beat It" and "Bad" also have famous choreographies, they feature street gangs rather than monsters.