The song spawned a cultural phenomenon like no other. At a time when television, radio, print publications and the fast-growing internet atomized audiences, catering to ever-more specific cultural niches, the entire country came together to swing their hips, bend their arms and sing the Macarena, a song ad libbed at a party by two middle-age Spaniards who went by the name Los Del Rio. The titular character was originally named Magdalena, for Mary Magdalene, a seductive woman, and later changed to Macarena for their native Seville neighborhood. So started the Macarena craze.

On this day, August 3, in 1996, shortly after reaching Miami shores from Latin America, “Macarena (Bayside Boys Remix)” hit #1 on the Billboard charts. Credit (or blame) a Miami radio disk jockey, Jammin’ John Caride for first picking up the song, and for two music producers, Carlos De Yarza and Mike Triay, “The Bayside Boys,” for adding English vocals and speeding up the tempo to make it a dance hit.

Macarena stayed on the charts for an astonishing 60 weeks, a record, and infected every public and social event. Everywhere in the world, from small-town clubs to entire sports stadiums stood up to do the Macarena. In Devon, England, 2,226 staff and students from the Eggbuckland Community College danced it for over five minutes, setting a new Guinness record — previously held by an Ontario, Canada high school.