December 6, 1995

By the winter of 1995, Clinton was in the White House and the federal minimum wage stood at $4.25/hr — the U.S. Senate was locked in a high-stakes standoff with the White House over the federal budget, with congressional Republicans and the Clinton administration heading toward what would become a historic government shutdown. On the cultural front, "Boyz II Men" held the number one spot on the charts with "On Bended Knee" while "Forrest Gump" had just swept the Oscars, taking home Best Picture and cementing itself as one of the defining films of the decade. The Houston Rockets had claimed the NBA championship that year, and on January 9th, Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov surpassed 366 consecutive days aboard the Mir space station, breaking the world record for the longest single spaceflight in human history.