2000 History, Facts, and Trivia

Quick Facts from 2000

• World Changing Event: Y2K arrived on January 1, 2000, and the world did not end. Planes did not fall from the sky. ATMs did not fail. Power grids stayed on. The $300 billion spent globally preparing for potential computer failures produced the most anticlimactic disaster in history. One NASA spacecraft was not so lucky.
• Top Song: Independent Women Part I by Destiny’s Child
• Influential Songs: Goodbye Earl by The Dixie Chicks, Stan by Eminem, and Graduation by Vitamin C
• Must-See Movies: Cast Away, Erin Brockovich, Remember the Titans, Unbreakable, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Emperor’s New Groove, and The Perfect Storm
• Most Famous American: Probably George W. Bush, by November
• People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive: Brad Pitt
• Notable Books: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
• Russet Potatoes (5 lbs): 79 cents; Dell Dimension computer with monitor: $899.00; Samsung MP3 player: $399.00; Sony PlayStation: $299.00
• The Funny Guy: Lewis Black
• The Conversation: “So why were we so worried about Y2K again?”
• Super Bowl XXXIV ad cost: $2,200,000 for 30 seconds
• PopCultureMadness.com went online on January 8, 2000, after nearly two weeks of planning

Top Ten Baby Names of 2000

Girls: Emily, Hannah, Madison, Ashley, Sarah Boys: Jacob, Michael, Matthew, Joshua, Christopher

Fashion Icons and Sex Symbols

Gisele Bündchen, Jessica Biel, Claudia Schiffer, Britney Spears, Heidi Klum, Estella Warren, Shannon Elizabeth, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Alba, Piper Perabo

The Hot Guys

Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Bon Jovi, Mel Gibson, Ricky Martin, Mark Wahlberg, Casper Van Dien, Jesse L. Martin, Tyrese, Derek Jeter, Johnny Depp, Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Alex Rodriguez, Prince William

The Quote

“I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?” — Robert De Niro as Jack Byrnes, Meet the Parents

Time Magazine Person of the Year

George W. Bush

Time Magazine Person of the Century

Albert Einstein

Miss America and Miss USA

Miss America: Heather French, Maysville, KY
Miss USA: Lynnette Cole, Tennessee

Y2K: What Actually Happened

The Y2K bug, also called the Millennium Bug, was a genuine computer programming issue. Most software written before the 1990s stored years as two digits, meaning computers might interpret “00” as 1900 rather than 2000, potentially corrupting data or crashing systems. Governments, banks, airlines, utilities, and hospitals spent an estimated $300 billion worldwide correcting the problem before midnight on December 31, 1999.

When January 1, 2000 arrived, almost nothing went wrong for ordinary people, because the fixes had worked. A small number of systems had minor glitches; some slot machines in Delaware malfunctioned, a few hundred bus ticket machines in Australia failed, and some radiology equipment in the UK incorrectly dated X-rays. But no planes fell, no power went out, no banks collapsed.

One genuine Y2K casualty: NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft lost communication contact less than one second after January 1, 2000, likely because its onboard time tracker overflowed. The spacecraft was lost.

The debate about whether Y2K was a genuine near-disaster averted through preparation, or mass hysteria about a minor problem, continues. The people who spent $300 billion fixing it tend to favor the first interpretation.

The Dot-Com Bubble Burst

The NASDAQ Composite Index peaked at 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000, the zenith of the dot-com bubble. Within a year, it had lost 78% of its value, falling to around 1,114. Trillions of dollars in market value evaporated.

Companies with no revenue, no profit, and sometimes no actual product had been valued in the billions based purely on the idea that the internet would change everything. It did change everything; most of those companies just weren’t the ones that would do it.

Among the notable casualties: Pets.com, Webvan, Boo.com, eToys.com, and Kozmo.com. Among the survivors who emerged stronger from the wreckage: Amazon and Google.

The AOL-Time Warner merger, announced in January 2000 and valued at $162 billion, was the largest corporate merger in history at the time. By 2002, it was widely considered the worst corporate merger in history. AOL’s value had been inflated by the bubble; once it burst, the deal destroyed more shareholder value than almost any transaction in corporate history.

The 2000 Presidential Election

The U.S. presidential election on November 7, 2000, between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore was one of the closest and most contested in American history.

Florida’s 25 electoral votes were decisive. The initial count showed Bush leading by 1,784 votes out of nearly 6 million cast, triggering an automatic machine recount under Florida law. Manual recounts began in several counties; disputes arose over “hanging chads,” “dimpled chads,” and “pregnant chads” — terms describing partially punched paper ballots that ballot-counting machines could not read consistently.

The Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide manual recount. On December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court halted it in a 5-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore, effectively awarding Florida and the presidency to George W. Bush. Bush received 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266. Gore won the national popular vote by approximately 540,000 votes.

The phrase “every vote counts” has been used more sincerely in every election since.

We Lost in 2000

Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts, died February 12, at age 77, the night before his final comic strip was published. He had announced his retirement weeks earlier due to declining health.
Big Pun (Christopher Rios), rapper, died February 7, age 28, from respiratory failure related to obesity.
Don Martin, Mad Magazine cartoonist, died January 6, age 68
Walter Matthau, actor (The Odd Couple, Grumpy Old Men), died July 1, age 79
Sir Alec Guinness, actor (Star Wars, The Bridge on the River Kwai), died August 5, age 86
Jason Robards, actor — died December 26, age 78 Victor Borge, comedian and pianist, died December 23, age 91
Hedy Lamarr, actress and inventor, died January 19, age 85
Steve Allen, comedian and first Tonight Show host , died October 30, age 78
Carl Barks, Disney artist and creator of Scrooge McDuck, died August 25, age 99

The Scandals

Jennifer Lopez wore a plunging green Versace jungle-print dress to the 2000 Grammy Awards that became arguably the most famous red carpet moment of the decade. It was so widely searched on Google immediately after the telecast that it directly led to the creation of Google Image Search. We owe J.Lo the internet as we know it.

Meg Ryan left husband Dennis Quaid for Russell Crowe in 2000. The relationship with Crowe did not last. Her career trajectory changed significantly regardless.

Robert Downey Jr. was found with cocaine and valium at a Merv Griffin Hotel in Palm Springs in 2000. It was not his first arrest of this nature. His career would eventually recover in the most spectacular way possible.

The Mexican government released official documents in 2000 confirming that the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, in which government-employed agents dressed as protesters provoked police into firing on a crowd, killed an estimated 300-400 civilians, and resulted in 1,345 arrests. The suppressed documents had been secret for 32 years.

Japan passed its first anti-stalking law in November 2000, following the murder of 21-year-old student Shiori Ino by her stalker. She had been turned away by police multiple times before her death.

Pop Culture Facts and History

2000 was the first year Martin Luther King Jr. Day was officially observed in all 50 states. South Carolina was the last holdout, adding it to its calendar that year.

The first episode of Survivor aired on June 1, 2000. Richard Hatch, who won, was naked for much of the season and walked away with $1 million. Reality television had arrived and was not leaving.

Hot or Not (originally HotorNot.com) launched in October 2000, allowing users to rate strangers’ photos on a scale of 1-10. It was the first major participation-based website on the internet, a direct ancestor of social media, and an experiment in human nature that probably should not have been conducted.

In October 2000, Heinz introduced colored EZ Squirt ketchup, starting with green. Purple followed in 2001, mystery colors (pink, orange, or teal) in 2002, and blue in 2003. All were discontinued in 2006. The experiment confirmed that Americans preferred their ketchup red.

November 2, 2000, was the last day all humans were simultaneously on Earth. Since that date, the International Space Station has been continuously occupied. Someone has been in space every single day since.

J.K. Rowling gave her father the first edition of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for Father’s Day 2000, signing it “Lots of love from your firstborn.” Three years later, he sold it for $44,000 (£27,500).

A cave containing some of the largest natural crystals ever found was discovered by miners beneath the Sierra de Naica Mountain in Mexico in 2000. Some crystals measured up to 36 feet long and weighed 55 tons.

The last operating reactor at Chernobyl, Reactor No. 3, was finally decommissioned on December 15, 2000, fourteen years after the 1986 disaster. Three of the four reactors had continued producing power through the intervening decades.

In July 2000, Turner Classic Movies aired The Wizard of Oz with the option of listening to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon on a separate audio feed, giving the famous fan theory an official airing.

An American-British consortium offered $250 million to each of the four Beatles to reunite in 2000. All four declined. The offer remains the largest known reunion offer in entertainment history.

The country of Tuvalu joined the United Nations in 2000 after years of being unable to afford the $100,000 membership fee. It raised the money by selling its internet domain suffix, .tv, to media companies.

A Brazilian electronics company named Gradiente trademarked the word “iPhone” in Brazil in 2000, seven years before Apple’s product launched. They are legally entitled to use the name in Brazil and share it with Apple.

All arcade games imported into North America between 1989 and 2000 displayed the FBI motto “Winners Don’t Use Drugs” in their attract mode, as required by federal law. An entire generation internalized this message while playing Street Fighter II.

The first viral video was 405, a three-minute film made in June 2000 on a $300 budget, depicting an airliner landing on a Los Angeles freeway. It was created by Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt. The California Highway Patrol issued them $140 in citations for walking on the highway shoulder while filming. The officer, Dana Anderson, is thanked in the credits.

A 2,700-year-old statue of King Taharqa was discovered being used as a bicycle rack in the basement of a Southampton museum in 2000. It had been ignored for approximately 100 years.

Andrew Toma, a Hungarian soldier taken prisoner by the Red Army in 1945, was discovered living in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000, fifty-five years after the war ended. He was the last prisoner of World War II to be repatriated.

Spain’s Paralympic basketball team was ordered to return their gold medals from the 2000 Sydney Games after it was revealed that nearly all their players had no intellectual disability whatsoever. The Paralympic movement tightened classification standards significantly afterward.

Sholom Weiss was sentenced to 845 years in prison in Florida in 2000 for fraud and racketeering, later reduced to 835 years upon full restitution of $125,016,656. He was the longest-sentenced white-collar criminal in U.S. history.

Between 1900 and 2000, the world population grew from 1.5 billion to 6.1 billion; an increase greater than all population growth in the entire previous history of humanity.

In post-war America, experts predicted that by 2000, the standard workweek would be 20-30 hours and that people would struggle with boredom from excess leisure time. The average American in 2000 was working more hours than in 1950. The prediction aged poorly.

In 2000, a study estimated that the Library of Congress’s 26 million books, if converted to uncompressed text, would amount to approximately 10 terabytes of data. A modern smartphone can hold more.

Bronson Arroyo wore the number 69 for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 2000 to 2002, the only MLB player to wear that number for more than one season.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was supposed to relight the Holocaust memorial flame at Yad Vashem in 2000. He turned the knob the wrong way and accidentally extinguished it.

Richard Klinkhamer’s wife disappeared in 1991. He then wrote a book about seven ways to kill a spouse. In 2000, new owners of his former home found her skeletal remains beneath the floor. He was convicted in 2001 and released in 2003 for good behavior.

A 2000 Japanese survey found that Japanese citizens considered instant noodles their country’s greatest invention of the 20th century, ranking it ahead of karaoke, the Sony Walkman, and the bullet train.

The Unexpected Paycheck

James Carter was a prisoner recorded by musicologist Alan Lomax while singing Po’ Lazarus and chopping wood at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in 1959. The recording sat in the Library of Congress for decades. When the Coen Brothers used it to open O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000, the film won a Grammy. Carter, who had been released from prison and was living quietly in his 80s, was tracked down and given thousands of dollars in royalties. He attended the Grammy ceremony and received a standing ovation.

The Doomsday Clock

9 minutes to midnight, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, reflecting cautious optimism following the end of the Cold War and ongoing arms reduction agreements.

National Toy Hall of Fame, 2000 Inductees

Bicycle, Jacks, Jump Rope, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky

Christmas Gifts and First Appearances of 2000

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire board game, Barbie Addams Family gift set

Nobel Prize Winners

Physics — Zhores I. Alferov, Herbert Kroemer, and Jack S. Kilby (for semiconductor heterostructures and the integrated circuit, foundational to modern electronics)
Chemistry — Alan J. Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa (for the discovery of conductive polymers)
Medicine — Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, and Eric R. Kandel (for discoveries about signal transduction in the nervous system)
Literature — Gao Xingjian (first Chinese-language writer to win; China condemned the award)
Peace — Kim Dae-jung (President of South Korea, for reconciliation with North Korea)
Economics — James J. Heckman and Daniel L. McFadden

Popular and Best-Selling Books of 2000

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — J.K. Rowling
Tuesdays with Morrie — Mitch Albom
The Brethren — John Grisham
The Mark: The Beast Rules the World — Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
O’Reilly Factor — Bill O’Reilly
The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession — Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
Daughter of Fortune — Isabel Allende
Drowning Ruth — Christina Schwarz
White Oleander — Janet Fitch
A Walk to Remember — Nicholas Sparks
The Poisonwood Bible — Barbara Kingsolver
Knock ’em Dead 2000 — Martin Yate

Broadway in 2000

Contact (dance musical) opened March 30, 2000, and closed September 1, 2002. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical despite containing no original music, relying solely on pre-existing recordings; a decision that sparked significant controversy in the theater community.

Best Film Oscar Winner

American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening, won Best Picture at the 2000 Academy Awards, presented for the 1999 film year.

The Bomb

Movie: Battlefield Earth, starring John Travolta and based on a novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. It won seven Razzie Awards, including Worst Picture of the Decade. Travolta had spent a decade trying to get it made.
TV: Manimal did not return in 2000, which was perhaps the wisest decision television made that year.

2000 Entries to the National Film Registry

Apocalypse Now (1979)
Dracula (1931)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Goodfellas (1990)
Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
The Land Beyond the Sunset (1912)
Let’s All Go to the Lobby (1957)
The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
Little Caesar (1930)
The Living Desert (1953)
Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)
Multiple SIDosis (1970)
Network (1976)
Peter Pan (1924)
Porky in Wackyland (1938)
President McKinley Inauguration Footage (1901)
Regeneration (1915)
Salomé (1923)
Shaft (1971)
Sherman’s March (1986)
A Star Is Born (1954)
The Tall T (1957)
Why We Fight (1943/1945)
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Top Movies of 2000

1. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
2. Cast Away
3. Mission: Impossible II
4. Gladiator
5. What Women Want
6. The Perfect Storm
7. Meet the Parents
8. X-Men
9. Scary Movie
10. What Lies Beneath

Most Popular TV Shows of 2000

1. Survivor: The Australian Outback (CBS)
2. ER (NBC)
3. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (ABC)
4. Friends (NBC)
5. Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS)
6. NFL Monday Night Football (ABC)
7. The Practice (ABC)
8. CSI (CBS)
9. Law and Order (NBC)
10. Will and Grace (NBC)

2000 Billboard Number One Songs

October 23, 1999 – January 14, 2000: Smooth — Santana featuring Rob Thomas
January 15 – January 28: What a Girl Wants — Christina Aguilera
January 29 – February 18: I Knew I Loved You — Savage Garden
February 19 – February 25: Thank God I Found You — Mariah Carey featuring Joe and 98 Degrees
February 26 – March 3: I Knew I Loved You — Savage Garden (returned to #1)
March 4 – March 17: Amazed — Lonestar
March 18 – April 7: Say My Name — Destiny’s Child
April 8 – June 23: Maria Maria — Santana featuring Wyclef Jean and The Product G&B (11 weeks)
June 24 – July 14: Be With You — Enrique Iglesias
July 15 – July 21: Everything You Want — Vertical Horizon
July 22 – July 28: Bent — Matchbox Twenty
July 29 – August 11: It’s Gonna Be Me — *NSYNC
August 12 – August 25: Incomplete — Sisqó
August 26 – September 15: Doesn’t Really Matter — Janet Jackson
September 16 – October 13: Music — Madonna
October 14 – November 10: Come On Over Baby (All I Want Is You) — Christina Aguilera
November 11 – November 17: With Arms Wide Open — Creed
November 18, 2000 – February 2, 2001: Independent Women Part I — Destiny’s Child

Santana had two separate #1 hits in 2000, with Smooth carrying over from 1999 and Maria Maria spending 11 weeks at the top. Christina Aguilera also landed two #1 hits. Destiny’s Child ended the year at #1 and stayed there into 2001.

2000 United States Census

Total U.S. Population: 281,421,906

New York, NY — 8,008,278
Los Angeles, CA — 3,694,820
Chicago, IL — 2,896,016
Houston, TX — 1,953,631
Philadelphia, PA — 1,517,550
Phoenix, AZ — 1,321,045
San Diego, CA — 1,223,400
Dallas, TX — 1,188,580
San Antonio, TX — 1,144,646
Detroit, MI — 951,270

Sports Champions of 2000

World Series: New York Yankees
Super Bowl XXXIV: St. Louis Rams (defeated Tennessee Titans 23-16; the Titans were stopped one yard short of the tying touchdown on the final play)
NBA Champions: Los Angeles Lakers
Stanley Cup: New Jersey Devils
U.S. Open Golf: Tiger Woods
U.S. Open Tennis: Men: Marat Safin | Women: Venus Williams
Wimbledon — Men: Pete Sampras | Women: Venus Williams
NCAA Football: Oklahoma
NCAA Basketball: Michigan State
Kentucky Derby: Fusaichi Pegasus

Sports Highlight: At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team competed without a gold medal for the first time in years; Romanian Andreea Raducan won the all-around gold but was stripped of her medal after testing positive for pseudoephedrine from a cold tablet given to her by the team doctor. She was 16. Cathy Freeman lit the Olympic torch and won gold in the 400m for Australia, one of the most emotionally powerful moments in Olympic history.

FAQ — 2000 History, Facts, and Trivia

Q: What was Y2K, and did it actually cause problems?
A: Y2K was a genuine software vulnerability in which computers that stored years as two digits might misread “00” as 1900 instead of 2000, potentially crashing systems. Governments and businesses spent approximately $300 billion worldwide fixing the problem before midnight on December 31, 1999. When January 1 arrived, almost nothing failed because the fixes had worked. It was either a disaster successfully averted or the most expensive overreaction in history, depending on who you ask.

Q: Who won the 2000 presidential election?
A: George W. Bush won the electoral vote 271-266, but Al Gore won the popular vote by approximately 540,000 votes. Florida’s 25 electoral votes were disputed for 36 days before the U.S. Supreme Court halted the recount in Bush v. Gore. The terms “hanging chad” and “dimpled chad” entered the permanent vocabulary of American politics.

Q: What was the dot-com bubble?
A: The dot-com bubble was a period of speculative investment in internet companies during the late 1990s. The NASDAQ peaked at 5,048 on March 10, 2000, then collapsed, losing 78% of its value within a year. Companies with no revenue were valued in the billions; most collapsed entirely. Amazon and Google survived and eventually thrived.

Q: What was the #1 song of 2000?
A: Independent Women Part I by Destiny’s Child ended 2000 at #1 and held the position through February 2001. Maria Maria by Santana had the longest single run of the year at 11 weeks.

Q: What was the biggest movie of 2000?
A: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, starring Jim Carrey, was the top-grossing film of 2000, followed by Cast Away and Mission: Impossible II.

Q: What happened to the last Chernobyl reactor in 2000?
A: Reactor No. 3 at Chernobyl, which had continued operating since the 1986 disaster, was permanently shut down on December 15, 2000, after international pressure. The other three reactors had been shut down in 1991, 1996, and 2000, respectively.

Q: When did the International Space Station become continuously occupied?
A: November 2, 2000, was the last day all humans were simultaneously on Earth. The ISS has been continuously occupied ever since, meaning someone has been living in space every day for more than 25 years.

Q: What was the AOL-Time Warner merger?
A: Announced January 10, 2000, the $162 billion merger was the largest corporate transaction in history at that time. It is now widely considered one of the worst. AOL’s value was grossly inflated by the dot-com bubble; when it burst, the combined company lost hundreds of billions in value.

Q: What was the biggest TV phenomenon of 2000?
A: Survivor: The Australian Outback was the most-watched show of the season; the original Survivor had launched in summer 2000 and become an immediate cultural phenomenon. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was also still pulling massive ratings with multiple weekly airings.

Q: What sporting event defined the 2000 Super Bowl?
A: Super Bowl XXXIV ended with the St. Louis Rams defeating the Tennessee Titans 23-16 on one of the most dramatic final plays in Super Bowl history. Titans receiver Kevin Dyson was tackled one yard short of the end zone on the final play as time expired.

Q: Who created Google Image Search and why?
A: Google launched Image Search in 2001 directly because of the massive volume of searches for Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace Grammy dress in 2000. Before that night, Google had no way to search for images. The J.Lo dress effectively created one of the internet’s most-used features.