2013 Fun Facts, Trivia and History

2013 Pop Culture History

Quick Facts from 2013:

• The Mis-heard Event: Public schools in Philadelphia went on lockdown in 2013 after a teacher misheard The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song lyrics as “shooting some people outside of school,” instead of “shooting some b-ball.”
• When Ed Sheeran’s “The A-Team” received a Grammy nomination Elton John tried to get Ed a performance slot at the award show, but was told he was not high-profile enough. Elton decided to perform with Ed to solve the problem.
• The Top Song was Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke with T.I. and Pharrell
• The Movies to Watch include Frozen, 12 Years a Slave, The Great Gatsby, The Lone Ranger, Saving Mr. Banks, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Gravity, Oz the Great and Powerful, and Captain Phillips
• People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive: Adam Levine
• Notable books include: American Sniper by Chris Kyle with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice and Happy, Happy, Happy by Phil Robertson with Mark Schlabach
• Price of Lipton Teabags in 2013: $3.99/100
  Price of a movie ticket: $8.00
  Price of extra-large eggs: $2.40/dozen
• The Funny Co-Hosts were: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler
• Electronic Arts was voted “The Worst Company In America” by The Consumerist for 2 years in a row in 2012 and 2013
• The Rap Record: Eminem set the Guinness World Record with Rap God for most words in a hit single. The song has a record-breaking 1560 words in 6 minutes 4 seconds and averaging 4.28 words per second.
• The Game Sensation: Flappy Bird was a free-to-play casual mobile game released on the iOS App Store on May 24, 2013, and on Google Play on January 30, 2014, by mobile app developer Dong Nguyen. On February 9th, he took the game off the market.

“The Quotes”
“If we left, they wouldn’t have nobody,” the 34-year-old Alvarez says. (see the California shut down an elder care facility story below)

Prince used an image of Dave Chappelle dressed as him on the cover of his 2013 single, Breakfast Can Wait. When asked about it Chappelle said, “What am I going to do… sue him for using a picture of me dressed up like him? That’s checkmate right there.”
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

The Terrible:
April 15 – two bombs built from explosive-packed pressure cookers went off near the Boston Marathon finish line, killing three and wounding over 260 people.

November 8th – Typhoon Haiyan plowed through the Philippines, with winds of more than 150 miles an hour. The storm killed more than 6,000 people and displaced more than three million.

The Scandals:
Edward Snowden released thousands of classified US government documents. The leaks showed that the NSA has collected millions of phone records, spied on US citizens, and tapped the phones of foreign leaders.

Healthcare.gov melted down. The health insurance marketplace that was supposed to be a keystone of the administration’s landmark Affordable Care Act. The website froze under relatively low traffic and produced errors that made getting insurance, or finding if you were eligible, almost impossible. Costs are still adding up, but the website itself has cost US taxpayers over a billion dollars.

Lance Armstrong admitted to doping in all seven of his Tour de France victories.

In February,  US Postal Service announces the cessation of Saturday first-class mail delivery from August 2013. By spring, they announced it was not going to happen after all.

Oscar Pistorius, a South African amputee sprint runner, was charged with the murder of Reeva Steenkamp.

Pop Culture Facts & History:
May 21st – Microsoft announced the release of Xbox One.

Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013 but announced it in Latin. One reporter, Italian wire service reporter Giovanna Chirri, got the scoop and broke the story because she understood Latin. Most other reporters waited for official translations.

Twitter, one of the hottest initial public offerings of 2013, raising about $2.1 billion.

Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation as of February 28, the first pope to resign since 1415.

Hannah Warren, who was born without a trachea, at 2, becomes the youngest patient to receive a stem cell bioengineered organ, a new trachea.

Yahoo purchased Tumbler for $1.1 Billion

Scientists used the internet to link the brains of two rats separated by thousands of miles, with one in the researchers’ lab at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and the other in Natal, Brazil.

The European Space Agency revealed new information that indicates that the universe is 13.82 billion years old. Our guess is, that they are not finished yet. 🙂

Cat Stevens, Hall & Oates, Kiss, Linda Ronstadt, and Nirvana were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Estonia became the first country to establish a national system of fast chargers for electric cars.

Sony launches the Playstation Four, selling one million units on the first day, November 15th.

Broadway Show – Kinky Boots (Musical) Opened on April 4, 2013

Broadway Show – Matilda the Musical (Musical) Opened on April 11, 2013 and closed on January 1, 2017