2010 History, Facts, and Trivia
Quick Facts from 2010
Top Ten Baby Names of 2010
Girls: Isabella, Sophia, Emma, Olivia, Ava Boys: Jacob, Ethan, Michael, Jayden, William
Fashion Icons and Sex Symbols
Katy Perry, Olivia Munn, Eva Mendes, Kim Kardashian, Blake Lively, Audrina Patridge, Lady Gaga, Lauren Conrad, Beyoncé, Amanda Bynes, Bar Refaeli, Olivia Wilde, Marisa Miller, Scarlett Johansson, Milla Jovovich, Christina Aguilera, Nicole Scherzinger, Danica Patrick
The Heartthrobs
Leonardo DiCaprio, Hugh Laurie, Taylor Lautner, Zac Efron, Adam Levine, Colin Firth, David Beckham, Justin Bieber, Joe Manganiello, Tim Tebow
The Quote
“I am not part of the PlayStation generation.” — Prince Charles, admitting he is baffled by modern technology
Time Magazine Person of the Year
Mark Zuckerberg — founder of Facebook, which by 2010 had 500 million users. The Social Network was also released this year, depicting his founding of the company. He saw it and reportedly said it was “a movie about someone who’s kind of a jerk.”
Miss America and Miss USA
Miss America: Caressa Cameron, Virginia
Miss USA: Rima Fakih, Michigan — the first Arab American to win the title
We Lost in 2010
J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, died January 27, age 91, in self-imposed seclusion in New Hampshire. He had not published since 1965.
Alexander McQueen, fashion designer, died February 11, age 40
Lena Horne, singer and actress, died May 9, at age 92
Gary Coleman, actor (Diff’rent Strokes), died May 28, age 42
Dennis Hopper, actor (Easy Rider, Blue Velvet), died May 29, age 74
Rue McClanahan, actress (The Golden Girls), died June 3, age 76
Harvey Pekar, comic book author (American Splendor), died July 12, age 70
Patricia Neal, actress, died August 8, at age 84
Eddie Fisher, singer, died September 22, age 82
Tony Curtis, actor (Some Like It Hot), died September 29, age 85
Tom Bosley, actor (Happy Days), died October 19, age 83
Sparky Anderson, baseball Hall of Fame manager, died on November 4, at age 76
Leslie Nielsen, actor (Airplane!, The Naked Gun), died November 28, age 84
Elizabeth Edwards, author and political figure, died December 7, age 61
Blake Edwards, director (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther) — died December 15, age 88
The Scandal
Jesse James cheated on Sandra Bullock, who had just won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Blind Side the previous month. The timing was remarkable in the worst possible way.
2010 History Roundup
January 12 — A catastrophic 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, killing over 220,000 people and leaving approximately 1 million homeless. It was the worst natural disaster in Haitian history.
January — NBC pushed Conan O’Brien out of The Tonight Show after seven months, returning the desk to Jay Leno. Conan received a $45 million settlement and agreed not to appear on television for several months. The internet declared Team Coco and has not changed its position since.
February 12–28 — The 2010 Winter Olympics were held in Vancouver, Canada, featuring 2,566 athletes from 82 nations. The U.S. won the most medals overall; Canada won the men’s hockey gold.
April 3 — Apple released the iPad. Over 300,000 were sold on the first day. Publishers, educators, and children everywhere began rethinking everything.
April 10 — Polish President Lech Kaczyński, along with 95 others, including senior military and government officials, died when their plane crashed near Smolensk, Russia, en route to a memorial ceremony. The near-simultaneous loss of Poland’s senior leadership was unprecedented in modern peacetime.
April 20 — The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and triggering the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history. 4.9 million barrels of oil flowed into the Gulf over 87 days. BP paid over $65 billion in penalties, claims, and cleanup costs.
June 11–July 11 — Spain won its first FIFA World Cup, defeating the Netherlands 1–0 in the final in South Africa. The tournament was also the first World Cup held on African soil.
August 5 — Thirty-three miners became trapped 700 meters underground at the Copiapó mine in northern Chile following a cave-in. They survived for 69 days underground before all were rescued on October 12 in a globally televised operation watched by an estimated 1 billion people.
October 3 — Germany made its final WWI reparation payment — 70 million euros — concluding obligations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The debt had taken 92 years to pay off.
October 6 — Instagram launched. It reached 1 million users in less than three months. Within two years, Facebook bought it for $1 billion.
November 2 — Republicans gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm elections, creating a divided Congress and setting the stage for two years of legislative gridlock.
December 17 — Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire in protest of police harassment. His act sparked nationwide protests in Tunisia and ignited the Arab Spring — a wave of pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.
US News
George Washington borrowed The Law of Nations from the New York Society Library in 1789 and never returned it. Mount Vernon returned the book in 2010 — 221 years overdue. The library said they were “not actively pursuing the overdue fines” but would appreciate having it back. The fine, at standard late fees, would have exceeded $300,000.
In the last 90 years of American history, only two decades saw GDP growth every single year — the 1960s and the 2010s.
World News
The UK held its first televised election debates in 2010 — 50 years after the U.S. first did so in 1960.
The eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano in April 2010 triggered the largest air traffic shutdown since World War II — 95,000 flights canceled over six days. News anchors worldwide spent a week mispronouncing the volcano’s name.
Since 2010, the International Space Station has operated a water purification system that reclaims 93% of all liquid on board — including sweat, washing water, and urine. Astronauts drink yesterday’s coffee twice.
26.5 million Canadians — 80% of the entire country — watched Canada defeat the United States in the men’s hockey gold medal game at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
Germany made its final WWI reparation payment on October 3, 2010 — 92 years after the war ended.
A traffic jam in China that began on August 13, 2010, lasted two weeks, stretched over 100 kilometers, and moved at approximately 1 kilometer per day. Vendors set up roadside stands to sell food to stranded drivers.
Israel’s national lottery on October 16, 2010, drew the exact same six numbers that had appeared three weeks earlier. Statisticians calculated the probability at one in four trillion. More than 100 people shared prizes in both draws.
In 2010, Sweden removed the statute of limitations for prosecuting murder, primarily because the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme remained unsolved despite 30 years and 10,000 people questioned.
The town of Shitterton, England, solved its chronic town sign theft problem in 2010 by installing a 1.6-ton concrete block bearing the town’s name. It has not been stolen since.
Pop Culture Facts and History
Instagram launched on October 6, 2010. The first photo ever posted on Instagram was of South Beach, San Francisco, by co-founder Kevin Systrom. It had a filter on it. This detail has apparently always mattered to someone.
The iPad, released April 3, 2010, sold 300,000 units on its first day and 3 million in its first 80 days. Publishers declared it would save print media. It did not save print media, but it did give everyone a very expensive way to read the same things they were already reading.
Barbra Streisand became the only artist in history to have Billboard 200 #1 albums in six consecutive decades — from the 1960s through the 2010s.
The best-selling books of the 2010s were Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed — in that order. E.L. James wrote all three. Literature’s relationship with quality remained complicated.
MTV officially dropped “Music Television” from its logo in 2010, formally acknowledging what everyone had known for years — that it was no longer a music channel.
Gift cards worth $27 billion went unredeemed between 2010 and 2018. If you have old gift cards in a drawer, check them.
Kansas State University professor Mark Haub ate mainly Twinkies, Oreos, and Doritos for two months in 2010 — maintaining a calorie deficit — and lost 27 pounds. He argued that calorie counting matters more than nutritional content. Nutritionists disagreed with his methods while conceding his math.
93% of shark attacks worldwide between 1580 and 2010 were on males. Researchers believe this reflects differences in ocean activity, not shark preference.
The U.S. Postal Service mistakenly used an image of a replica of the Statue of Liberty at the New York-New York Hotel in Las Vegas for its “Lady Liberty Forever” stamp in 2010, rather than the original statue in New York Harbor. The sculptor of the replica sued for copyright infringement and was awarded $3.5 million.
South Park parodied Family Guy in its two-part episode “Cartoon Wars” in 2010. The Simpsons writing staff sent them flowers.
Betty White was made an honorary U.S. Forest Ranger in 2010. She had wanted to be a forest ranger as a child, but was told women couldn’t do that. At the time of the honor, more than a third of Forest Service employees were women.
The ManhattAnt — a unique ant species found only in New York City’s Broadway medians — was discovered by biologists in 2010. It doesn’t match any of the 13,000 known ant species. It subsists on a diet high in corn. It is, apparently, a New Yorker.
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is the only song in Spotify’s top 100 most-streamed tracks to have been released before 2010 (as of 2020). Freddie Mercury would have been baffled by Spotify but pleased by the data.
Altoids discontinued its sour varieties in 2010. Mourning was brief but sincere.
Encyclopedia Britannica published its final print edition in 2010, ending a 244-year run as the definitive English-language reference work. The internet did not send flowers.
In 2010, an Irish airline passenger was arrested after Slovak security officials had placed explosives in his luggage during a training exercise — and then forgot to remove them before the plane took off. He was released. Slovakia apologized.
The U.S. Air Force built the fastest computer in the Defense Department in 2010 by linking 1,760 PlayStation 3 consoles. Sony was not consulted.
Microsoft banned an Xbox Live user for listing his address as Fort Gay, West Virginia — a real place. It took a personal appeal from the town’s mayor to convince Microsoft the town existed.
Airplane! (1980) was added to the National Film Registry in 2010 as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Surely the committee was serious — and don’t call them Shirley.
Jon McLoone ran 15 million computer simulations of Hangman in 2010 and found the hardest word for a computer to guess is “jazz.”
Andre Geim won the Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for using magnets to levitate a frog. He won the actual Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for his work on graphene, making him the only person in history to win both the Ig Nobel and the Nobel Prize.
The Doomsday Clock stood at 6 minutes to midnight in 2010 — the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted progress in nuclear arms-reduction talks between Washington and Moscow, tempered by growing climate concerns.
The Habit
The partially-shaved head — popularized by Willow Smith, Rihanna, and model Amber Rose
National Toy Hall of Fame — 2010 Inductees
The Game of Life, Playing Cards
Christmas Gifts and First Appearances of 2010
iPad, Zhu Zhu Pets, Nook e-readers
Nobel Prize Winners
Physics — Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov (for graphene — Geim is the only person to win both the Nobel and the Ig Nobel Prize)
Chemistry — Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi, and Akira Suzuki
Medicine — Robert G. Edwards (for the development of in vitro fertilization — IVF)
Literature — Mario Vargas Llosa
Peace — Liu Xiaobo (Chinese democracy advocate, imprisoned at the time of the award — China condemned the selection and pressured other nations to boycott the ceremony)
Economics — Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen, and Christopher A. Pissarides
Popular and Best-Selling Books of 2010
The Help — Kathryn Stockett
Have a Little Faith — Mitch Albom
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — Stieg Larsson
Freedom — Jonathan Franzen
Safe Haven — Nicholas Sparks
The Hunger Games — Suzanne Collins (paperback surge)
Unbroken — Laura Hillenbrand
Game Change — John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
The Lost Symbol — Dan Brown
Eat, Pray, Love — Elizabeth Gilbert (film release renewed interest)
Broadway in 2010
Red by John Logan won the Tony Award for Best Play, a drama about abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko.
La Cage aux Folles won Best Revival of a Musical.
American Idiot — based on Green Day’s album, opened April 20, 2010.
Best Film Oscar Winner
The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, won Best Picture at the 2010 Academy Awards, presented for the 2009 film year. Bigelow became the first woman ever to win the Academy Award for Best Director. She defeated her ex-husband James Cameron’s Avatar for the prize.
The Bomb
Movie: Jonah Hex — a DC Comics adaptation starring Josh Brolin that earned $10 million on a $47 million budget and is now mostly used as a cautionary tale in film school.
TV: The Jay Leno Show — NBC gave Jay Leno a 10 p.m. weeknight talk show to avoid losing him to another network. It was canceled after four months, when affiliates complained it was destroying their local news ratings.
2010 Entries to the National Film Registry
Airplane! (1980)
All the President’s Men (1976)
The Bargain (1914)
Cry of Jazz (1959)
Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967)
The Empire Strikes Back(1980)
The Exorcist (1973)
The Front Page (1931)
Grey Gardens (1976)
I Am Joaquin (1969)
It’s a Gift (1934)
Let There Be Light (1946)
Lonesome (1928)
Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
Malcolm X (1992)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Newark Athlete (1891)
Our Lady of the Sphere (1969)
The Pink Panther (1963)
Preservation of the Sign Language (1913)
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Study of a River (1996/1997)
Tarantella (1940)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
A Trip Down Market Street (1906)
Top Movies of 2010
Most Popular TV Shows of 2010
2010 United States Census
Total U.S. Population: 308,745,538
New York, NY — 8,175,133
Los Angeles, CA — 3,792,621
Chicago, IL — 2,695,598
Houston, TX — 2,099,451
Philadelphia, PA — 1,526,006
Phoenix, AZ — 1,445,632
San Antonio, TX — 1,327,407
San Diego, CA — 1,307,402
Dallas, TX — 1,197,816
San Jose, CA — 945,942
2010 Billboard Number One Songs
(Source data did not include week-by-week chart — most popular songs of 2010 by chart performance)
Tik Tok — Ke$ha (9 weeks at #1 — longest run of the year)
Need You Now — Lady Antebellum
Baby — Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris
OMG — Usher featuring will.i.am
California Gurls — Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg
Love the Way You Lie — Eminem featuring Rihanna
Just the Way You Are — Bruno Mars
Teenage Dream — Katy Perry
Like a G6 — Far East Movement
Raise Your Glass — Pink
Sports Champions of 2010
World Series: San Francisco Giants
Super Bowl XLIV: New Orleans Saints (their first Super Bowl title)
NBA Champions: Los Angeles Lakers
Stanley Cup: Chicago Blackhawks
U.S. Open Golf: Graeme McDowell
U.S. Open Tennis — Men: Rafael Nadal | Women: Kim Clijsters
Wimbledon — Men: Rafael Nadal | Women: Serena Williams
NCAA Football: Auburn Tigers
NCAA Basketball: Duke Blue Devils
Kentucky Derby: Super Saver
FIFA World Cup: Spain
Sports Highlight: The longest tennis match in history was played at Wimbledon on June 22–24, 2010 — John Isner defeated Nicolas Mahut 6–4, 3–6, 6–7, 7–6, 70–68 in a match lasting 11 hours and 5 minutes over three days. The fifth set alone lasted 8 hours and 11 minutes.
FAQs: 2010 History, Facts, and Trivia
Q: What major apps launched in 2010?
A: Instagram launched on October 6, 2010, and the iPad debuted on April 3. Between them, they fundamentally changed how people consume media, share photos, and interact with the internet.
Q: What was the biggest natural disaster of 2010?
A: The Haiti earthquake on January 12, 2010 — magnitude 7.0 — killed over 220,000 people and left approximately 1 million homeless. It was the deadliest natural disaster of the year and one of the deadliest in modern history.
Q: What was the #1 song of 2010?
A: Tik Tok by Ke$ha spent nine weeks at #1 — the longest run of any song that year.
Q: What was the biggest movie of 2010?
A: Toy Story 3 was the top-grossing film of 2010, followed by Alice in Wonderland and Iron Man 2.
Q: What was the late-night feud of 2010?
A: NBC forced Conan O’Brien out of The Tonight Show after seven months to return it to Jay Leno. Conan received $45 million and the internet’s permanent loyalty. Jay Leno got the desk back. The internet has opinions about this to this day.
Q: What environmental disaster defined 2010?
A: The Deepwater Horizon oil spill — following an April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers — released 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days. It remains the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history.
Q: What was the Chilean miners’ story?
A: On August 5, 33 miners were trapped 700 meters underground in Chile after a mine collapse. All 33 were rescued on October 12 after 69 days underground — a globally televised event watched by approximately 1 billion people.
Q: Who was Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2010?
A: Mark Zuckerberg — founder of Facebook, which had reached 500 million users. The Social Network was also released that year. Zuckerberg reportedly described the film as depicting “someone who’s kind of a jerk.”
Q: What Nobel Prize story caused international controversy in 2010?
A: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese democracy advocate who was imprisoned at the time. China condemned the decision, pressured other nations to boycott the ceremony, and launched its own rival “Confucius Peace Prize” in response.
Q: What was the longest tennis match ever played?
A: John Isner defeated Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon 2010 in a match lasting 11 hours and 5 minutes over three days — with a final set score of 70–68. The fifth set alone took longer than most complete tennis matches.
Q: What sports milestone happened in 2010?
A: The New Orleans Saints won their first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XLIV — just four years after Hurricane Katrina had devastated the city and put the team’s future in question.
Q: How many U.S. presidents were born in 2010?
A: None — but this is when their children are currently in school.