by Brian GalindoBuzzFeedBuzzFeed StaffSenior Editor, Nostalgia Nerd

At its peak in 2000, Blockbuster made $800 million from one thing customers absolutely HATED: late fees. If you're too young to remember, by the late '90s and early '00s, the video rental giant dominated the home entertainment industry, with thousands of stores worldwide and millions of customers renting VHS tapes and DVDs each week. But if customers forgot to return a movie on time, the penalties added up fast, and those charges became a huge part of the company's business model.

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According to reports, late fees accounted for about 16% of Blockbuster's revenue in 2000. Though it brought in hundreds of millions of dollars annually, the company announced in 2004 that it would eliminate late fees in an effort to compete with Netflix. However, they had to go back to charging late fees because customers would keep popular DVDs for long periods of time. By 2009, the company was only making $134 million on late fees, which was about 3% of the company's revenue — though by that time it was already in dire straits. The final corporate-owned Blockbuster closed in January 2014.

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Feeling nostalgic for a previous decade isn't a new thing. People have always looked back and idealized earlier times, especially when society was undergoing rapid change. For example, while many people today feel nostalgic for the 1990s, people in the 1920s were doing something very similar with the 1890s. That earlier era was remembered as a simpler, more carefree time compared to the fast modernization of the early 20th century. In fact, the phrase "The Gay Nineties" was popularized in the 1920s to romanticize the 1890s.

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The label actually helped turn the decade into a kind of cultural memory, shaped more by nostalgia than by historical accuracy, which in turn made it an extremely popular decade. In fact, 1890s nostalgia would continue throughout much of the 20th century, as seen in films like 1944's Meet Me in St. Louis and the 1964 musical (later movie) Hello, Dolly! Even TGI Fridays, which opened in 1965, used Gay Nineties decor to evoke nostalgia and create a fun atmosphere.

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"Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys is without a doubt an absolute classic, but it's also one of the most expensive songs ever recorded. It was created in 1966 by Brian Wilson, who treated the studio almost like an instrument and pieced the song together in sections instead of recording it all at once. The process stretched across months and involved multiple studios, dozens of musicians, and over 90 hours of recorded tape. By the time it was finished, estimates suggest it cost between $50,000 and $75,000, which is somewhere between $400k and $700k today.

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That was an enormous amount for a single pop song at the time. Most singles in the '60s were recorded quickly and cheaply, often in a single session. The cost of "Good Vibrations" was even higher than the entire production cost of the Beach Boys' landmark 1966 album, Pet Sounds, which cost around $70,000, and that itself was considered extremely expensive for an album at the time. Despite the cost, the song became a massive success, reaching No. 1 and changing expectations for what music could sound like.

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If you watched ABC's Dinosaurs growing up, you probably remember it as a goofy family sitcom about talking dinosaurs. What you might not remember is that the final episode ended the series in shockingly bleak fashion. Even though it was a family show, the series, produced by Disney and Jim Henson Productions, often dealt with surprisingly mature themes such as sexism, consumerism, and environmental destruction.

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In the last episode, titled "Changing Nature," the dinosaurs accidentally trigger an environmental catastrophe after corporations try to control nature for profit. Their actions create a chain reaction that blocks out the sun and causes an ice age. The episode ends with the Sinclair family sitting together in their home as snow falls outside, listening to a news report explaining that temperatures will continue dropping and that there is likely no way to stop it. The series concluded by implying that every character would die.

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For most of its modern history, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has remained in France, but the painting actually left Europe once during a major diplomatic tour in the 1960s. In 1963, French President Charles de Gaulle agreed to lend the painting to the United States at the request of first lady Jackie Kennedy, who helped persuade the French government to allow the trip as a symbol of friendship between the two count

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