Here's an interesting piece of information for those with a history streak: 1991 was a tumultuous year. The coup in Moscow, tanks driving around in the city and Jelzin becoming the first president of Russia is surely remembered by those who's memory dates back to then. But there were three other things, small at the time but with a massive impact 20 years later:
Within 6 weeks, the first GSM networks were launched, Linux saw the day of light and the World Wide Web was started. All three things probably went unnoticed by most people then but have evolved quite a bit since then. Imagine how the world would look like today without these technologies.
I find it also quite interesting to tie these technology launches to a (totally unrelated) political event you can still remember and to set things into perspecive of how long some things have already been there, when you first heard about them (probably only many years after they went public) and how long it took them to mature and reach a wider audience.
Via: The Ericsson History pages