- Google was born but hardly anyone knew about it outside of Stanford (USA)
- Football nearly came home in the Euro’s when Terry Venables took England to the semi finals of Euro 96
- In 12 months the number of Internet host computers goes from 1 million to 10 million
- Along came Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep
- The web browser of choice was Netscape Navigator, followed by Microsoft Internet Explorer as a distant second (Microsoft launched IE 3 in 1996)
- The IRA explodes a bomb in the Arndale shopping centre in Manchester and by some miracle, no one died
- Most people used dial-up Internet connections