Washington Township in Gloucester County opened a time capsule that had been buried in 1995 this week. Inside, NJ.com reports students from Thomas Jefferson Elementary School had placed items like phone books, newspapers, T-shirts, yearbooks, and money.

While the artifacts were particular to that town, it got me reminiscing about how things were different 25 years ago (after coming to terms with the fact that 1995 was 25 years ago!).

What were you doing in 1995? Well, there’s a good chance you were renting movies from Blockbuster (make sure you get there early before all the “new releases” are gone). If you decide to go to the movies instead, you might have been watching Braveheart (Oscar winner for Best Picture), or maybe a cool new, completely computer generated film, Toy Story. It could have been the newest James Bond film, Goldeneye, or maybe the true life space adventure, Apollo 13.

If you stayed home to watch TV, there was a good chance you were riveted by the O.J. Simpson trial: over 150 million Americans watched the reading of the verdict. In prime time, Seinfeld, Friends, ER, Home Improvement, and Grace Under Fire were among the most popular series that you could record on the VHS tapes in your VCR.

In music, the number one hit of 1995 was “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio. Other big songs were “Waterfalls” and “Creep” by TLC, “Kiss From a Rose” (from the Batman Forever soundtrack) by Seal, and “Another Night” by Real McCoy.

Among the bestselling books was Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray. On the roads, you were seeing a lot of Saturns and Ford Escorts, as well as Honda Civics; they were the best selling cars.

In sports, your New Jersey Devils won their first Stanley Cup, the San Francisco 49ers won the Super Bowl, and the Atlanta Braves won the World Series. Oh, and your massive desktop PC (if you were one of the lucky ones who owned one) was running the brand new, lightning fast Windows 95.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Doyle. Any opinions expressed are Bill Doyle's own.

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