The day Aug. 29, 1997, is a historic date for movie rentals as it’s the day that Netflix was introduced. Exactly 25 years to the day later, the streaming platform looks back fondly at its journey with a celebration of its 25th anniversary. As many have specifically attributed the rise of Netflix and similar streaming services to the death of the brick-and-mortar video rental store, its tremendous success cannot be denied.

Netflix has also released a video celebrating the occasion which you can check out in the tweet below.

Originally, Netflix was years away from streaming when the company was birthed in 1997; its official website Netflix.com did not even launch until the following year. At the start, Netflix offered subscribers DVDs to be shipped by mail and sent back for other rentals. There were no late fees as customers only paid for a monthly subscription and were allowed to watch the films at their leisure.

The very first DVD ever shipped just happened to be the movie Beetlejuice, which featured Winona Ryder, who also happens to be a star of the hit Netflix show Stranger Things. Nine years later, streaming was introduced with the first Netflix Original, Lilyhammer, premiering in 2012. Its success would later on bring about hit Netflix Original shows like Money Heist, Stranger Things, The Queen’s Gambit, and more.

Netflix Celebrates With Some Fun Facts About Its History

     Netflix

Netflix has stated that it will be releasing some fun facts, throwback photos and more on its social media channels throughout the day in honor of the 25th anniversary celebration. Additionally, Netflix has also released a new list of 25 fun facts you may not know about the streaming platform. You can check out that list below. And to do some celebrating yourself, you can always pick out a movie to stream on Netflix.com to recognize the milestone anniversary.

  • On April 14, 1998, NetFlix.com launched. The first DVD shipped was Beetlejuice (March 10, 1998). The No. 1 most used profile icon globally: Boss Baby, 11 million profiles. The first Netflix DVD envelope was white, not red. One Netflix fan created a dress out of 1,500 DVD envelopes. In 2007, Netflix began streaming. On Jan. 6, 2016, Netflix went live in 130 countries simultaneously. The first Netflix Original was Lilyhammer. The show with the most MyList Adds is Money Heist. Subscriber No. 500,000 was invited to a company meeting and given a lifetime subscription. At one time, Netflix had over 70,000 “secret codes.” Today, we have 30,000. (Shh, it’s not a secret.) The original name for Netflix was Kibble — yes, like the dog food. Netflix invented the original streaming box but decided to spin it off into Roku. Following the launch of The Queen’s Gambit, there was a 125% increase in chess board sales. Netflix’s live experiences have played host to a whopping 42 marriage proposals around the world (and counting). The tally stands at 35 proposals from The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Experience, 6 from La Casa de Papel: The Experience and 1 from Stranger Things: The Experience. The first Netflix game downloaded was Stranger Things: 1984. Netflix is available in 37+ languages and 190 countries worldwide. Netflix has offices in 28 cities across the globe. In 2015, binge-watch was declared the word of the year and was added to Merriam-Webster in 2017. The first recorded use of the phrase “Netflix and chill” was in a tweet by “NoFaceNina” (La Shanda Rene Foster) on Jan. 21, 2009. The iconic Netflix sound was nearly a bleating goat before landing on tudum. There was a campaign for “Netflix socks,” which detected when you fell asleep and paused the show or movie you were watching. Netflix had its own awards show called The Flixies. In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s created a Netflix & Chill’d ice cream flavor. Squid Game is Netflix’s most popular title ever.