The year of Braveheart, OJ and the mighty Boks

WHEN the world's rugby powers gathered in South Africa 30 years ago for the Rugby World Cup, the soundtrack was Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise while OJ Simpson's flee from justice was one of the first "crimes" captured on television.

- MIKE GREENAWAY

The American football star would be found not guilty by a court of murdering his girlfriend Nicole Brown, with 150 million people watching on live television, but many apartheid villains would not be as Nelson Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa.

It was a cleansing experience for a Rainbow Nation that continued its welcome into the wider world after democratic elections in 1994.

This was the year when Microsoft's Windows '95 swept the across the world and altered how we operated computers.

This was the first year that the internet was entirely privatised, with the United States government no longer providing public funding, marking the beginning of the "Information Age."