2001 History, Fun Facts and Trivia

2001 History, Fun Facts, and Trivia

Quick Facts from 2001:

• World Changing Event: September 11 terrorist attack in New York City
• The Top Song was All For You by Janet Jackson
• The Movies to Watch include Shrek, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Monsters Inc, Legally Blonde and Ocean’s 11
• The Most Famous Fictional Person in America was probably Harry Potter
• The Most Famous Real Person in America was probably Angelina Jolie
• The 21st century didn’t begin on January 1st, 2000. It actually began on January 1st, 2001. This is because the first year of a century is the year 01, never 00.
• Price of Playstation 2: $299.97
  Game Boy Advance: $89.97
  iPod (1st Generation): $399.00
• The Funny Late Night Host: Jay Leno
  The Controversial Funny Guy: Gilbert Gottfried
• The Longest English Sentence Written: The longest sentence in a book is believed to appear in the 2001 novel The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe which consisted of 13,955 words.
• Creepypasta: Although short, horror-themed stories have been told forever, the first Creepypasta story was Ted the Caver on an Angelfire website.

War On Terror:
Number of Deaths on the 9/11 attack:

American Airlines Flight 11 (hit the North Tower, NYC)
-87 passengers and crew, 5 hijackers

United Airlines Flight 175 (hit the South Tower, NYC)
-60 passengers and crew, 5 hijackers

Total World Trade Center
– 2,606 people
1366+ in North Tower
618+ in South Tower
18 was the guesstimate pedestrians killed on the street below
411 emergency workers were killed:
341 firefighters, 60 police officers, 10 paramedics & EMTs

United Airlines Flight 90 (Crashed near Shanksville, PA)
-40 passengers and crew, 4 hijackers

American Airlines Flight 77 (hit the Pentagon)
-59 passengers and crew, 5 hijackers
The Pentagon
-125 employees

The Scandals:
Angelina Jolie gave a passionate open-mouth kiss to her brother, James, which made many people almost forget Bjork’s goose dress.

Barry Bonds hit 73 Home Runs*.
* steroid use was allegedly involved

Enron’s accounting scandal cost investors something close to $60 Billion, and their accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, went out of business

Gary Condit, a Democrat California congressman, had an affair with his intern, Chandra Levy, which was alleged may have also led to her murder. It looked bad, but he didn’t; Ingmar Guandique, a Salvadoran immigrant had killed her.

Renee Zellweger was in the bathroom when Hugh Grant called her up for her Golden Globe Award.

Back From The Brink:
The rarest insect in the world is the Lord Howe Island stick insect. It was believed to be extinct since 1920 until some were found again in 2001. In 2006 there were only about 50 of them, but only 2 years later their population increased to 700!

While on a trip in Kenya, the pilot of an airplane with actor-passenger Rowan Atkinson fainted, so Atkinson took control and flew it, until the pilot recovered.

Millions watched Britney Spears dance with a python at the MTV’s Music Video Awards

HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey got his name; it’s not IBM minus one. Both Clarke and 2001 director Stanley Kubrick characterized this idea as “utter nonsense! I thought that by now every intelligent person knew that H-A-L is derived from Heuristic ALgorithmic computer”.

In 2001, 269 newborn baby boys in the US were named ‘Keanu’.

In 2001 Stan Lee was given the opportunity to ‘re-imagine’ DC’s heroes and he made Batman black, Wonder Woman Hispanic, and The Flash a teenage girl.

Hidden within the files to the 2001 Spiderman game, there are numerous angry rants targeted towards an employee named ‘Matt’.

Before the 20th century, people reported mostly dreaming in color. But in 1942, 70% of college sophomores “rarely/never” had color dreams. By 2001 that rate had dropped to 17%. The change is thought to be because of the influence of black and white media in the mid-1900s.

Ten-year-old named Laura Buxton released a balloon with her name and address in the hope of finding a pen pal. The balloon traveled 140 miles before coming down and was found by an almost-ten-year old also named Laura Buxton. They share a number of other similarities.

In 1986, nurse Sandra Clarke could not stay with a patient who asked her to stay. When she returned, the patient had died alone. In 2001, she was key in starting No One Dies Alone, a program where volunteers sit with terminal patients who have no one else. The program is now world-wide.

Pizza Hut Delivered a Pizza to the International Space Station. It cost over a million dollars.

Cost of a Super Bowl ad in 2001: $2,100,000

The Habits:
iPod was released in October 2001.

The X-Box came out in November 2001.

…Everybody else was watching SpongeBob Squarepants

2001 Billboard Number One Songs:
November 18, 2000 – February 2, 2001:
Independent Women – Destiny’s Child

February 3 – February 16:
It Wasn’t Me – Shaggy Featuring Ricardo “RikRok” Ducent

February 17 – February 23:
Ms. Jackson – OutKast

February 24 – March 23:
Stutter – Joe

March 24 – April 6:
Butterfly – Crazy Town

April 7 – April 13:
Angel – Shaggy Featuring Rayvon

April 14 – July 1:
All For You – Janet Jackson

June 2 – July 6:
Lady Marmalade – Christina Aguilera / Lil’ Kim / Mya / Pink

July 7 – August 3:
U Remind Me – Usher

August 4 – August 17:
Bootylicious – Destiny’s Child

August 18 – September 28:
Fallin’ – Alicia Keys

September 29 – November 2:
I’m Real – Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule

November 3 – December 14:
Family Affair – Mary J. Blige

December 15, 2001 – January 25, 2002:
U Got It Bad – Usher