THROWBACK: Here's What Exactly Happened When Sushmita Sen Beat Out Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for the Miss Universe Crown

So, noone quite understood why media darling Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (plain and simple Aishwarya Rai at the time) was beaten out by the underdog of 1994, Sushmita Sen at the time.

Well, we've just discovered the reason behind the 'mysterious win': intelligence points!

With zero disrespect meant, at the time the intelligence/personality question round was where Sushmita broke the tie between the two and overtook Aishwarya.

Aishwarya was asked the question "If you have to look for qualities in a husband, would you look for the qualities in Ridge Forrester from Bold & Beautiful or in Mason Capwell from Santa Barbara?", to which her response was "Mason. They do have a lot in common, but from what we see, Mason has a very caring side to him, and a terrific sense of humour. And that really gels with my character."

Sushmita, on the contrary, was asked "What do you know about the textile heritage of your country and how long has it been around?" Her answer: "I think it all started with Mahatma Gandhi's Khadi. It has gone a long way since then but the basics of Indian textile heritage has been from there." The results were that Sushmita beat out Aishwarya by a mere 0.2 percent! And the world is as is.

Interesting, non?