9 Things That Turn 20 This Year — Prepare to Feel Old

Aug. 24, 1995, gave birth to the innovative operating system Windows 95, which made personal computing so much easier. Microsoft debuted the "Start" button, a taskbar, and a background desktop.

After raising venture capital in 1995, Hotmail became one of the first free, web-based email services — you could access your email from anywhere, imagine that. Microsoft bought it in 1997 for $400 million, and since 2013, Hotmail.com redirects to Outlook.com.

Sandra Bullock brought the World Wide Web to mainstream pop culture when The Net debuted in July 1995. The cyber thriller features crazy new concepts like telecommuting, online dating, and digital identity theft.

Before there was eBay, there was AuctionWeb, launched on Sept. 3, 1995, by Pierre Omidyar. It was a side project until his Internet provider wanted to start charging him more for bandwidth. So he decided to charge a fee for users. It remained AuctionWeb until 1997, when it changed its name to eBay. In 1998, when the company went public, Omidyar became a billionaire. In 2005, The New York Times reflected on the early days: "First the techies came, buying and selling computer parts. Then the collectors came — at one point, more than 6 percent of all sales were for Beanie Babies. Then everyone came."

Amazon.com went online in 1995, after Jeff Bezos left his Wall Street job to get in on the tech boom. He decided to start by selling books, since they are relatively inexpensive and in demand internationally. Plus, there are millions of books in print that could be stored in a "virtual" warehouse.

In 1995, Craig Newmark began emailing his friends about local events around San Francisco. His distribution list basically went "viral," and people began using it to advertise things like job openings. By 1996, he brought the whole thing online, but he didn't quit his day job until 1998. As you can guess from today's interface, not much of the original layout has changed.

The "cyberpunk" film starring Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller hit theaters in September 1995, making the moviegoing public more aware of the Internet. It quoted The Hacker's Manifesto, which is a foundation of the hacker world and much of Internet culture in general.

Buzz, Woody, and the gang were part of the first-ever computer-animated motion picture when Toy Story debuted in November 1995. It was also Pixar's first theatrical film release.

Finally, in 1995, MTV News did its best to explain the Internet, which it described as "special-interest truck stops called websites." Watch that truly amazing video below: