2000 Fun Facts, Trivia and History

Quick Facts from 2000:

• World Changing Event: HotorNot.com was founded. It was the first major participation site on the internet.
• The Top Song was Independent Woman by Destiny’s Child
• Influential Songs include: Goodbye Earl by The Dixie Chicks, Stan by Eminem and Graduation by Vitamin C
• The Movies to Watch include Cast Away, Erin Brockovich, Remember the Titans, Unbreakable, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Emperor’s New Groove and The Perfect Storm
• People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive: Brad Pitt
• Notable books include: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
• Price of Russet Potatoes, 5 pounds in 2000: 79 cents
  Dell Dimension computer, 64 MB, with the monitor: $899.00
  Samsung MP3 player: $399.00
  Sony Playstation: $299.00
• The Funny Guy was: Lewis Black
• According to a poll in 2000, the Japanese believe that their best invention of the 20th century was instant noodles.
• Athletes in the Olympic Village reportedly used 70,000 condoms at the 2000 games, and 100,000 at the 2008 games. About 450,000 were provided in 2016.
• The Unexpected Paycheck: A prisoner named James Carter was leading the men in a song called Po’ Lazarus. While chopping logs, it was recorded by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins. In 2000 it was used in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which won a Grammy. Carter was tracked down and given thousands in royalties.
• The Conversation: “So, why were we so worried about Y2K again…?”

The Scandals:
The Mexican government opened fire on peaceful protestors in October 1968. An estimated 300-400 civilians were killed and an additional 1,345 were arrested. In 2000, official government documents were released that showed the government employed agents dressed as protestors to provoke the officers into the shooting.

Jenifer Lopez’s Versace Grammy Dress.

Meg Ryan left hubby Dennis Quaid for what turned out to be a fling with Russell Crowe

The police found cocaine and valium in Robert Downey Jr.’s Merv Griffin Hotel room.

In October 2000, Heinz introduced colored ketchup products called EZ Squirt, which eventually included green (2000), purple (2001), mystery (pink, orange, or teal, 2002), and blue (2003). In 2006, the products were discontinued.

Air travel was practically unaffected on January 1, 2000, even though there was a fair amount of panic about the Y2K bug.

Lowest PGA score of 63 played by Jose Maria Olazabal.

Spain’s Paralympic basketball team were ordered to return their gold medals won in Sydney after nearly all of their players were found to have no disability at all.

Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton got married on May 5, 2000.

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were married on July 29, 2000

After nearly two weeks of planning, Pop Culture Madness.com went online on January 8, 2000.

The highest-grossing stop motion animated film is Chicken Run (2000, $106,834,564), beating out The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Strictly speaking, the “20th Century” didn’t end until December 31, 2000.

Ten members of the Spanish Paralympic basketball team were ordered to hand back their 2000 Sydney Games gold medals after it was revealed that they had no intellectual disability.

A 2000 study of the Library of Congress suggested that the amount of uncompressed textual data represented by the 26 million books then in the collection was 10 terabytes.

In the year 2000, about 37 percent of Earth’s land area was agricultural land.

All arcade games imported into North America from 1989 to 2000 had the following FBI slogan included into their attract mode: “Winners Don’t Use Drugs”.

In post-war America, (1950s and 1960s) Americans were told that by the year 2000 the normal work week would be 20-30 hours, and people would be committing suicide from boredom.

Millennials are not people born after the 2000s as a lot of people seem to think. Actually it ranges from people born from 1980 until 2000!

In 2000 a mining company in Mexico discovered a cave filled with giant crystals under the Sierra de Naica Mountain.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had four reactors and only one was impacted by the 1986 meltdown; the others continued producing power for several years and one (Reactor No. 3) produced power until it was decommissioned in 2000.

405 is a three-minute film released in June 2000 had a budget of $300. It was the first “viral video”. $140 was to pay two tickets for walking on the highway shoulder while filming. It was issued to them by California Highway Patrol Officer Dana Anderson, who is listed in the “Special Thanks” section of the credits. The video created by Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt.

Based on the 2000 Census, only 6.6% of the Hawaiian population was made up of native Hawaiians.

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.

Andre Geim won the (parody prize) Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on using magnetism to levitate a frog. 10 years later, his experiments regarding graphene won him the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. This makes him the only ever recipient of both the Ig Nobel and Nobel Prizes.

Only one Major League Baseball player has worn the number 69 for more than one year- Bronson Arroyo, who wore it from 2000-2002 with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

A naked man, Richard Hatch, won $1,000,000 in the first season of CBS’s Survivor.

Cost of a Super Bowl ad in 2000: $2,200,000

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was supposed to turn the Holocaust memorial flame in Yad Vashem up. However, he turned the burner knob the wrong way and accidentally extinguished the flame.

Richard Klinkhamer’s wife “disappeared” in 1991. He then wrote a book on seven ways to kill your spouse. In 2000, the new owners of his former home found the skeletal remains of his wife, and in 2001 he was sentenced to 7 years in prison. He was released in 2003 for good behavior.

A study of 2000 high-performing CEOs found more non-college graduates (8%) than Ivy League graduates (7%).

Sholom Weiss was sentenced to 845 years in Feb 2000 in Florida, for fraud and racketeering but was reduced to 835 years on FULL payment of restitution, $125,016,656.

Between the years 1900 and 2000, the increase in world population was three times greater than during the entire previous history of humanity—an increase from 1.5 to 6.1 billion in just 100 years.

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

March 4 – March 17:
Amazed – Lonestar

March 18 – April 7:
Say My Name – Destiny’s Child

April 8 – June 16:
Maria Maria – Santana featuring Wyclef Jean and The Product G&B

June 17 – July 23:
Try Again – Aaliyah

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 (All I Want Is You) – Christina Aguilera

November 11 – November 17:
With Arms Wide Open – Creed

November 18, 2000 – February 2, 2001:
Independent Women – Destiny’s Child