Eurovision Song Contest

The Eurovision Song Contest (French: Concours Eurovision de la chanson), often shortened to ESC or Eurovision, is the longest-running annual TV song competition, held, primarily, among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) since 1956. The competition was based upon the existing Sanremo Music Festival held in Italy.

Each participating country submits an original song to be performed on live television and radio and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine the most popular song in the competition. The contest has been broadcast every year for sixty years, since its inauguration in 1956, and is one of the longest-running television programmes in the world. It is also one of the most watched non-sporting events in the world, with audience figures having been quoted in recent years as anything between 100 million and 600 million internationally. Eurovision has also been broadcast outside Europe to several countries that do not compete, such as the USA and China. An exception was made in 2015, when Australia was allowed to compete as a guest entrant as part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the event. In November 2015, the EBU announced that Australia would return in 2016. Since 2000, the contest has also been broadcast over the Internet, via the Eurovision website.

Song Contest

Song Contest may refer to:

Eurovision Song Contest 1995

The Eurovision Song Contest 1995 was the 40th Eurovision Song Contest and was held on 13 May 1995 in the Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. The presenter was Mary Kennedy. This year's competition was the last with only one host until 18 years later in 2013 in Malmö, Sweden. This contest broke the chain of victories that Ireland enjoyed in 1992, 1993, and 1994. This was Ireland's 3rd year in succession to host the contest - and to mark the 40th show, it was opened with a 4-minute retrospective showing images from the contest's history. The Norwegian group Secret Garden was the winner of this contest with the mostly instrumental song, "Nocturne". Incidentally, Secret Garden's violinist was Fionnuala Sherry, who is Irish.

Two of Ireland's winners attended the contest; Dana, who was Ireland's first winner, winning the contest in 1970 with "All Kinds of Everything", and Mr Eurovision himself, Johnny Logan, winning the contest as a singer in 1980 and 1987 ("What's Another Year?" and "Hold me Now" respectively), and also for writing Linda Martin's 1992 winning song "Why Me?". It was his birthday that night, but according to host Kennedy, "He wouldn't say which one!" Nonetheless, the audience sang "Happy Birthday" for him, assisted by the orchestra.

1995

1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday (dominical letter A) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1995th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 995th year of the 2nd millennium, the 95th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1990s decade.

This was the year that the Internet entered public consciousness and also the year it was completely privatized and the United States Government no longer funded it with public money - in April 1995 the NSFNET was retired.America Online and Prodigy offered access to the World Wide Web system for the first time this year, releasing browsers that made it easily accessible to the general public.

Events

January

Secret Garden

Secret Garden may refer to:

In literature