OMG, it’s the 1990s, a decade of relative peace and prosperity, grunge and hip-hop culture, and something called the “World Wide Web.”

In New York’s Times Square, revelers greeted Jan. 1, 1990, in the pouring rain and a record-setting 43 degrees. While Dick Clark got soaked in the Big Apple, his West Coast co-hosts — 25-year-old Lori Loughlin, star of ABC’s” Full House,” and 19-year-old Kirk Cameron from ABC’s” Growing Pains” — introduced studio performers such as Stephanie Mills, “Toy Soldiers” singer Martika, The Temptations, and “Seasons Change” trio Exposé.

In a decade of inventions, Americans would say hello to Adobe Photoshop 1.0 (1990), Sony PlayStation (1995), Tickle Me Elmo (1996) and DVDs (1996). BTW, the 140-character limit for text messages, which could be sent by Nokia cellphones beginning in 1993, led to innovative abbreviations and acronyms. The trend extended beyond texts: Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC in 1991.

Hungry? The 1990s produced staples such as Kid Cuisine (1990) and the George Foreman Grill (1994). In 1992, salsa outsold ketchup in the U.S. for the first time.

Speaking of food, don’t mention broccoli to President George H.W. Bush, who famously banned the vegetable from Air Force One. Bush’s March 1990 promise to provide merit pay to federal employees “in broccoli” sparked a nationwide scandal and a rash of “broccoli-themed political incidents.” California broccoli growers led the charge by sending a 10-ton truckload of broccoli to the White House. The result? D.C.-area homeless shelters had a short-term surge of broccoli on the menu, and national sales increased.

While the 1990s had its share of successes and failures, rapid technological advancements, particularly the internet and mobile phones, heightened people’s expectations for instant results and information, propelling society swiftly toward a new century.

Before the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, people with disabilities faced significant barriers in everyday life. Riding the bus, navigating sidewalks and finding accessible housing were only some of the issues that limited individuals’ independence and opportunity. In the workplace, many faced barriers and discrimination.

It was — and is — no small issue. An estimated 43 million Americans, or about 17% of the population, were living with movement, cognitive, hearing, vision or other disabilities in 1990, according to USA Facts.

Years of intensifying advocacy by grassroots organizations, including the American Association of People with Disabilities, raised public awareness and sympathy for the legislation.

No event, however, was more memorable than the March 12, 1990, “Capitol Crawl,” when more than 1,000 people marched to the U.S. Capitol in support of the bill.

But that’s not all: about 60 of those individuals cast aside their wheelchairs to crawl up the Capitol steps, dramatizing the need for accessibility. Eight- year-old Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, who was born with cerebral palsy and was already a seasoned advocate, captured the nation’s heart as she declared, “I’ll take all night if I have to.”

The ADA was passed with broad bipartisan support. Among those joining President George H.W. Bush when he signed the measure on July 26, 1990, was Dan Piper, an Iowa resident with Down syndrome, who had testified before Congress in favor of its passage.

Many Americans were not aware of tiny Kuwait in 1990.

But after Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded the oil-rich nation on Aug. 2, 1990, approximately 697,000 U.S. personnel were deployed to the region as part of Operation Desert Shield. The U.S. led a 3 5-nation coalition that included the United Kingdom, Egypt and Saudi Arabia in a mission to suppress further Iraqi aggression.

The Desert Storm offensive was launched Jan. 17, 1991, with air attacks followed by a ground assault on Feb. 24. After only 100 hours of intense ground combat, Iraqi forces withdrew, and Kuwait was liberated on Feb. 28, 1991.

While Iraqi military deaths were counted in the thousands, 147 U.S. personnel and 47 British troops were killed in action, and an additional 1,000 coalition troops were wounded.

Considered a military success, the Persian Gulf War led to environmental disaster as departing Iraqi soldiers set fire to Kuwaiti oil fields, emitting dense smoke and a mixture of toxic chemicals. Following the war, many veterans complained of a cluster of physical and psychological conditions that came to be known as Gulf War syndrome.

Leaving a destabilized political landscape in the Middle East, the war set the stage for continued conflict in the next decade.

The “World Wide Web” or “W3” was more of a concept than a reality when it was introduced to the public in 1991.

According to internet Live Stats, a paltry 10 websites had been created by the end of 1992 and 130 by the end of 1993.

Sound disappointing? Perhaps not, considering fewer than 2% of Americans were “online” in 1992 and fewer than 10% by 1995, according to World Bank Group.

Once individuals and businesses could create websites, everything changed. More than 2,000 sites were active by 1995 and 23,500 by 1996.

Early internet adopters may remember the harsh buzzing, whining and static of internet dial-up connections with a sense of … nostalgia. Introduced by Sprint in 1 99 2, early dial-up modems offered inter net speeds of 14.4 kbps, or kilobits per second. Later versions offered a dizzying 56 kbps, starting in 1998.

As the internet grew, users needed a way to find and sort information, leading to the first internet search engines: Archie in 1990, followed by Veronica (1992), Mosaic (1993), and WebCrawler and Lycos (1994). Latecomer Google made its debut in 1998.

By the mid-1990s, the internet prompted revolutions in shopping, culture, business and education, fueling consumerism and accelerating even the most basic tasks.

Need a new pair of shoes or a lawnmower? Try Amazon or eBay, founded in 1995 and 1996, respectively. Need some romance? Try the first online dating site, Match (1995). Need a vacation? Try Travelocity (1996), the first online travel site. Trying to reconnect? Visit SixDegrees (1997), the first social media site, which offered innovative features such as user profiles and connections.

By the end of the decade, 45% of Americans were online with millions of sites to visit, according to WBG.

Considering the transformation of the typical home and office computer s during the 1990s, it is no surprise that technology fueled economic growth as well as speculative investing.

Microsoft Windows 3.0 graced the screens of many American workers in 1990. The system offered a new graphical user interface for DOS computers. In October, Apple introduced an all-in-one Macintosh Classic that featured a 9-inch display, 512 x 342-pixel resolution and a generous 4 MB memory.

Apple and Microsoft were only two of many technology companies that drove a decade of economic growth that came to be known as the “dot-com bubble.”

Looking for their share of the action, investors poured money into dot-com stocks. Data from the New York Stock Exchange shows the stock market closed at $2,679 on average in 1990 but topped $10,481 in 1999 — a 391% increase. Even more impressive, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose from a n average close of $409 in 1990 to $2,728 in 1999 — a 667% increase. Nasdaq increased 85.59% in 1999 alone, according to Macro Trends.

Although some investments took off, many companies collapsed, bursting the dot-com bubble. The downturn began in 2000 with rising interest rates and declining consumer confidence, trends that intensified after the attacks of 9/11.

The economic good times of the 1990s — the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history — coincided with the presidency of Bill Clinton, the nation’s first baby boomer president.

The 46-year-old governor of Arkansas won a three-way race in 1992 with only 43% of the popular vote against incumbent President George H.W. Bush and Texas businessman Ross Perot.

Characterized as a centrist Democrat, Clinton supported school choice and opposed illegal immigration. His backing of family values and a balanced-budget amendment attracted the support of “Reagan Democrats” and some Republicans, who had become disenchanted with President Bush after the 1990 Omnibus bill raised personal and corporate taxes.

While technology and communication companies drove the stock market, the Clinton administration worked with Congress in 1993 to pas s legislation that reduced the federal deficit through a combination of tax increases and budget cuts. The president also pushed for the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement, a measure that had a mixed economic impact.

Clinton tallied legislative victories in the areas of welfare reform, health insurance for low-income children and measures to improve public safety through funding for new police officers, prisons and crime prevention programs.

Despite successes on the economic and political fronts, Clinton was impeached in December 1998 for perjury and obstruction of justice after denying a n affair with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The formal impeachment coincided with Clinton’s highest approval rating of 73% on Dec. 19, according to Gallup data.

In February 1999, Clinton was acquitted by the Senate, once again demonstrating his ability to survive scandal and live up to the nickname he earned in the 1992 campaign, “The Comeback Kid.”

Though Clinton enjoyed high approval ratings for most of his presidency, that wasn’t always the case.

In fact, failure to pass health care reform and a sluggish economy in his first two years led to sweeping Republican victories in the 1994 midterm elections.

By adding 54 seats in the House of Representatives and eight seats in the Senate, the GOP took control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

The party proposed a “Contract with America,” a series of policy initiatives including tax cuts, welfare reform and a balanced-budget amendment.

Written by Rep. Dick Armey of Texas and Rep. Newt Gingrich, who would serve as the speaker of the House of Representatives, the initiative was credited with creating 11 million new jobs, four consecutive balanced budgets and reducing the national debt by as much as $400 billion, according to an article in Roll Call.

In homes, offices, airports and public spaces, Americans crouched around their television sets for eight months in 1995 to watch the trial of sports icon and accused murderer O.J. Simpson.

Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and her friend, Ron Goldman, 25, had been brutally stabbed to death outside her Los Angeles apartment on June 12, 1994.

After the 46-year-old former NFL running back refused to turn himself in to police, 95 million people watched live as he fled in his white 1993 Ford Bronco. According to the Associated Press, the event was “like a parade — with the police, media and fans following ‘The Juice’” in a 90-minute, low-speed chase along several Los Angeles-area highways. Crowds gathered along the route to gawk and cheer.

With so many people watching live and reluctant to step away from their screens, Domino’s Pizza reported its busiest day ever at the time, according to an interview with Business Insider.

The chase ended as the SUV pulled into Simpson’s Brentwood, Calif., estate. After drinking a glass of juice and speaking with his mother on the phone, according to the Los Angeles Times, Simpson surrendered.

An all-star legal team, including Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kardashian and others, was assembled to defend Simpson. In a closing argument, lead defense attorney Johnnie Cochran famously instructed the jury, “If [the glove used in the murder] doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

The glove, which had been soaked in blood and subsequently frozen and thawed, did not fit Simpson’s hand, and thus the jury did acquit him on Oct. 3, 1995, as more than 150 million people watched on television.

Later, in a 1997 civil trial, Simpson was found liable for the deaths of Brown and Goldman and ordered to pay $33.5 million to their families.

As the 1990s and the 20th century drew to a close, Americans took stock.

What were the century’s top novels? Its top movies and movie stars? Its most influential people? Was the century’s top song Judy Garland’s 1938 “Over the Rainbow” or John Lennon’s 1971 “Imagine”?

While few may have agreed on the rankings, Americans of the 1990s agreed that they loved making lists.

Americans also said goodbye to many groundbreaking and public figures in the 1990s.

Musician, actor and activist Tupac Shakur, considered by many to be one of the most influential and talented rappers of all time, was killed in a drive-by shooting on Sept. 13, 1996, at the age of 25.

American musician Kurt Cobain died by suicide April 8, 1994, at the age of 27. Hailed as the “voice of his generation,” the Seattle native was a founding member of the grunge band Nirvana.

U.S. President Richard Nixon died April 22, 1994, following a stroke at the age of 81. The California native served as a U.S. congressman, senator and vice president to President Dwight D. Eisenhower before his election as the 37th president in 1968. Nixon resigned his post on Aug. 9, 1974, following the 1972 Watergate scandal.

Across the pond, Diana, Princess of Wales, died Aug. 31, 1997, in a car crash in Paris.

John F. Kennedy Jr., son of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999, at the age of 38. Also killed were his wife, Carolyn Bessette, 33, and her sister, Lauren. An attorney, journalist and magazine publisher, Kennedy was also remembered for saluting his father’s casket as a 3-year-old in 1963.

Katrina Jesick Quinn is a professor at Slippery Rock University. She is an editor of “From the Arctic to the Orient: Adventure Journalism in the Gilded Age” (McFarland) and “The Civil War Soldier and the Press” (Routledge).