2000 Fun Facts, Trivia and History

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…?”

Year 2000 History Roundup:

January 1 – New Millennium Celebrations: Global festivities marked the beginning of the 21st century and the new millennium, despite debates about the official start year.
January 10 – AOL and Time Warner Announced Merger: America Online announced a $162 billion deal to purchase Time Warner, marking the largest corporate merger at that time.
January 14 – Dow Jones Industrial Average Peak: The Dow Jones closed at 11,722.98, reflecting the peak of the Dot-com bubble.
February 13 – Final ‘Peanuts’ Comic Strip Published: The last original “Peanuts” comic strip was published.
February 17 – Microsoft Released Windows 2000: Microsoft launched Windows 2000, introducing new features for business and professional computing.
March 10 – NASDAQ Composite Index Peak: The NASDAQ reached an all-time high of 5,048.62, signaling the zenith of the Dot-com bubble.
March 26 – Vladimir Putin Elected President of Russia: Vladimir Putin won the Russian presidential election, beginning his first term as president.
April 22 – Elián González Reunited with Father: After a federal raid on his Miami relatives’ home, six-year-old Cuban boy Elián González was reunited with his father, ending an international custody dispute.
May 5 – ILOVEYOU Computer Virus Spread: The ILOVEYOU virus, originating from the Philippines, infected millions of computers worldwide, causing extensive damage.
May 11 – India’s Population Reached 1 Billion: India’s population officially reached 1 billion, marked by the birth of a baby girl named Astha.
June 26 – Human Genome Project Draft Completed: A preliminary draft of the human genome was completed, marking a significant milestone in genetics.
July 2 – Vicente Fox Elected President of Mexico: Vicente Fox won the Mexican presidential election, ending 71 years of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) rule.
July 25 – Concorde Crash in Paris: Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde aircraft, crashed shortly after takeoff in Paris, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground.
August 12 – Russian Submarine Kursk Sank: The Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea during a naval exercise, resulting in the deaths of all 118 crew members.
September 6–8 – UN Millennium Summit Held: World leaders gathered at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City for the Millennium Summit to discuss global issues and set development goals.
September 15–October 1 – Sydney Hosted Summer Olympics: The 2000 Summer Olympics were held in Sydney, Australia, featuring 10,651 athletes from 199 nations.
October 12 – USS Cole Bombing: The USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer, was attacked by suicide bombers in Aden, Yemen, resulting in the deaths of 17 sailors.
November 7 – Contested U.S. Presidential Election: The U.S. presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore resulted in a prolonged legal battle over Florida’s vote count.
December 12 – Bush v. Gore Supreme Court Decision: The U.S. Supreme Court halted the Florida recount, effectively awarding the presidency to George W. Bush.
December 15 – Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Closed: The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was officially shut down, ending operations 14 years after the catastrophic 1986 disaster.
December 24 – Christmas Eve Church Bombings in Indonesia: A series of bombings targeted churches across Indonesia, resulting in 18 deaths and numerous injuries.
December 25 – Luoyang Christmas Fire in China: A devastating fire at a shopping center in Luoyang, China, killed 309 people during Christmas celebrations.
December 31 – End of the 20th Century: The 20th and 2nd millennium concluded, leading to global reflections on the past 1000 years.
Dot-Com Bubble Burst: The collapse of numerous internet-based companies led to a significant stock market downturn, marking the end of the Dot-com bubble.

Top Ten Baby Names of 2000:

Emily, Hannah, Madison, Ashley, Sarah, Jacob, Michael, Matthew, Joshua, Chris, Topher

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 Casper Van Dien, Jessie L. Martin, Tyrese, Derek Jeter, Johnny Depp, Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Alex Rodriguez, and Prince William.

“The Quote:”

“I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?”
– Robert De Nero in Meet The Parents

Time Magazine’s Man of the Year:

George W. Bush

Time Magazine’s Person of the Century:

Albert Einstein

Miss America:

Heather French (Maysville, KY)

Miss USA:

Lynnette Cole (Tennessee)

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 November 2000, Japan passed its first anti-stalking law after Shiori Ino, a 21-year-old student, was murdered by her stalker the previous year. She had been turned away multiple times by the police.

Hip Hop Obesity Death:

Big Pun

Beloved Mad Magazine Cartoonist Death:

Don Martin

Pop Culture Facts & History:

2000 was the first year Martin Luther King Jr. Day was officially observed in all 50 states.

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.

There have been two wooden looping roller coasters in history, one built in 1895 (Flip Flap Railway at Paul Boyton’s Sea Lion Park on Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, closed 1902) and the other in 2000 (Son of Beast at Kings Island in Mason, Ohio, closed 2009).

November 2, 2000 was the last time humans were simultaneously on earth. Ever since then, the ISS has been occupied continuously.

Coca-Cola settled at a trial, where they were accused of discrimination in pay, promotions and performance evaluations towards African-American employees. They agreed to a $192 million settlement in corporate racial discrimination, the largest settlement ever.

In 2000, author J.K. Rowling gave her father the first edition of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for Father’s Day and signed it: “Lots of love from your firstborn.” Three years later, he sold it for £27,500.

For centuries, there was a secret wing at the Naples National Archaeological Museum, where all the erotic art found in Pompeii was locked away. The cabinet remained closed for over a hundred years, with the doorway even bricked up at one point, and was only fully opened to the public in 2000.

NASA spacecraft ‘Deep Impact’ is lost in space, as NASA lost communication with it due to a similar problem to the Y2K bug. It was lost less than a second after January 1st, 2000 – most likely because the time tracker onboard had overflowed.

In 2000, an American-British consortium offered $250 million to each of the group’s four members to reunite, but they turned down the offer.

Danish citizen, Stig Severinsen, held his breath for over twenty minutes while submerged in a tank filled with sharks.

A Brazilian electronics company, Gradiente, is legally allowed to call their phone ‘iPhone’ because they trademarked the word in 2000, 7 years before Apple’s iPhone. They share the name with Apple, although they are different products.

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

The country of Tuvalu could not join the United Nations until 2000, because it did not have the $100,000 fee to join. Tuvalu began selling its domain name of .tv to companies to make most of that country’s money.

The lowest PGA score of 63 played by Jose Maria Olazabal.

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

Two Egyptologists found that a 2,700-year-old 27-inch statue of King Taharqa was unknowingly being used as a bike rack by staff in the basement of a Southampton museum. It had been ignored for a century.

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 comprised 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 recipient of the Ig Nobel and Nobel Prizes.

Only one Major League Baseball player has worn the number 69 for over a 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.

World War II News

András Toma was a Hungarian soldier taken prisoner by the Red Army in 1945, then discovered living in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000. He was the last prisoner of war from the Second World War to be repatriated.

2000 Toys inducted to the National Toy Hall of Fame:

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

1st Appearances & 2000’s Most Popular Christmas Gifts, Toys and Presents:

Who wants to be a Millionaire Board Game, Barbie, Addams Family gift set

Best Film Oscar Winner:

American Beauty (presented in 2000)

2000 Entries to The National Film Registry:

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

The Big Movies: (according to boxofficemojo)

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

Broadway Show:

Contact (Dance Musical) Opened on March 30, 2000 and closed on September 1, 2002

2000’s Most Popular TV Shows:

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 & Order (NBC)
10. Will & 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

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

2000 United States Census:

Total US Population: 281,421,906
1. New York, New York – 8,008,278
2. Los Angeles, California – 3,694,820
3. Chicago, Illinois – 2,896,016
4. Houston, Texas – 1,953,631
5. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – 1,517,550
6. Phoenix, Arizona – 1,321,045
7. San Diego, California – 1,223,400
8. Dallas, Texas – 1,188,580
9. San Antonio, Texas – 1,144,646
10. Detroit, Michigan – 951,270

Sports:

World Series Champions: New York Yankees
Super Bowl XXXIV Champions: St. Louis Rams
NBA Champions: Los Angeles Lakers
Stanley Cup Champs: New Jersey Devils
U.S. Open Golf Tiger Woods
U.S. Tennis: (Men/Ladies) Marat Safin/Venus Williams
Wimbledon (Men/Women): Pete Sampras/Venus Williams
NCAA Football Champions: Oklahoma
NCAA Basketball Champions: Michigan State
Kentucky Derby: Fusaichi Pegasus