2014 Facts, Fun Trivia and History

2014 Pop Culture History

Quick Facts from 2014:

• World Bold Event: CVS stopped selling tobacco products in favor of promoting good health.
• The Top Song was Happy by Pharell Williams
• The Movies to Watch include Interstellar, Jersey Boys, John Wick, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Big Hero 6, and The LEGO Movie
• People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive: Chris Hemsworth
• Notable books include: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Price of a postage stamp in 2014: 49 cents
  Keurig coffee maker: $149.99
  Titleist golf balls: $39.99/12
• The number 2147483647 is the biggest possible number in 32-bit computing. In December 2014, “Gangnam Style” exceeded the 32-bit integer limit for view count, necessitating YouTube to upgrade the variable to a 64-bit integer.
• The beard of Tutankhamun’s golden mask fell off during the cleaning process in the Egyptian Museum in 2014. The workers used epoxy glue to reattach the beard, but since that was not the professional method and permanent damage was done to the mask. They were later prosecuted for this.
• The Funny Musician was: Weird Al Yankovic
  The Feud: Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins and Anderson Cooper had a public feud that began when Cooper openly mocked Corgan on his show because Corgan posed with his cats on the cover of Paws Chicago, a cat magazine.
• The Challenge: The Ice Bucket Challenge took place in the Summer of 2014, supporting the ALS Association.

The Scandals:
Pablo Escobar’s personal hitman, John J. Velásquez, responsible for 3500 murders, was released from jail in 2014 and is now a YouTube personality with 250,000 subscribers.

When the MV Sewol Ferry started sinking in South Korea in 2014, the captain told the passengers, mostly secondary school students, to not move and just stay put. 304 passengers and crew members died in the disaster.

In 2014, more people died in Mexico as a result of armed conflict than in Pakistan or Sudan, both regions with active military conflicts.

Pia Farrenkopf died in 2009… but her body wasn’t discovered until 2014, largely because she had auto-pay set up for her bills. Her mummified body was found in the garage of her newly foreclosed home only after her bank account finally ran dry.

Michelle Carter, a 17-year-old girl, was charged with manslaughter for encouraging her 18-year-old boyfriend to commit suicide.

The Trost family had to leave their $450,000 home in Weldon Spring, MO after it was infested with 4,500 – 6,000 brown recluse spiders and exterminators were not able to get rid of them.

Greenpeace ruined the ancient South American UNESCO World Heritage Site- The Nazca Lines for a publicity stunt of their own.

South Korean Christians put up a Christmas tree visible from the North Korean Border. North Korea responded by calling it a “tool for psychological warfare” and threatened to bomb it.

Charles Manson was granted a marriage license, but the wedding was canceled after it was discovered that 26-year-old Afton Elaine “Star” Burton only wanted to marry Manson so she and a friend Craig “Gray Wolf” Hammond could use his corpse as a tourist attraction after he died.

An 8-year-old boy named Tyler Doohan saved 6 members of his family from his burning house before finally succumbing to the fire himself while trying to save the last victim, his disabled grandfather.

So far, Comcast has won the “Worst Company in America” award twice, first in 2010 and second in 2014.

In 2014, Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon and owner of WaPo) was named the world’s worst boss by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), an organization with 176 million members in 162 countries.

When James Brady (the man paralyzed by a gunshot wound from the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt) died in 2014, it was ruled a homicide 33 years after the incident.

During a concert, Kanye West halted the performance of Good Life, due to not the entire audience standing. The person he signaled out was in a wheelchair.

Romania shipped a reputed 93.4 Tons of gold to Russia in 1916 so that Russia would safely keep the Romanian Treasure in the Kremlin until the end of the war. And, as of 2014, they got back only 33 kg of it.

Namibia raised over $350k by auctioning off the right to hunt one endangered black rhino. The rhino was past breeding age and detrimental to the rest of the herd. The money was used to protect endangered animals.

Pop Culture Fun Facts:
In 2014, Betty White was awarded the Guinness World Record for “Longest TV Career for an Entertainer (Female)”, with a 1939 debut.

The US Murder rate in 2014 is less than half of what it was in 1990 and far lower than the ’70s and ’80s.

“Dagobertducktaks” – the 2014 Dutch word of the year – is an extra tax for the super-rich, named after Donald Duck’s uncle Dagobert, known in English as Scrooge McDuck.

As of 2014, the USA ranked 25th worldwide in internet download speeds and 40th in upload speeds. Though this accounting varies daily, America’s download speeds were never in the top 20 countries.

Google became more valuable than Russia’s entire stock market in December 2014.

Original Top Model winner Adrianne Curry fended off an attacker with a bullwhip while dressed as Catwoman at San Diego Comic-Con

Mazda recalled 42,000 cars because the yellow sac spider would climb into the gas tank and form a web inside, blocking airflow. This was the second recall- the first was in 2011 for the exact same reason.

Cheetos made a fragrance called Chateau in 2014.

Early one morning in St. Petersburg, Florida, a Starbucks drive-thru customer decided to pay for the next customer’s order, which ignited an 11 hour long pay-it-forward chain that lasted from 7 a.m. and ended at 6 p.m. later that evening when customer No. 379 declined to participate.

In 2014 Hilton Worldwide sold the famous Waldorf Astoria New York hotel to a Chinese Insurance Company for just under $2 billion, with plans to turn the Art Deco landmark into luxury apartments.

As of 2014, only two artists have had their first two singles reach #1 and #2 on the Billboard charts: The Beatles and Iggy Azalea.

Superman would have entered the public domain on 1 January 2014 if copyright terms in the United States had not been extended in the late 1990s. At this moment, 2033 is the next date to look for possible changes.

In 2014 the ALS Association received $100.9 million in donations compared to $2.8 million during the same period the year before thanks to the ice bucket challenge.

ISTAT, the Italian government’s National Institute of Statistics, won an “IG Nobel Prize” (a parody of the Nobel prizes) in economics, for ” including revenue from illegal drug sales, prostitution, smuggling, etc., in GDP reporting, in order to meet an EU regulatory mandate.”

Godzilla was only seen for about 8 minutes in the 2014 film Godzilla.

Taylor Swift accidentally released 8 seconds of white noise on iTunes for $1.29. It became #1 in Canada almost immediately before being removed.

English YouTube star Zoella uploaded a picture to Instagram of a “random man & his dog” on the beach. The “random man” was Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.

A Swiss Bank Deposit Vault containing 8 million five centime coins, or 400,000 Swiss francs was sold. It has been described as “the perfect gift for a real-life Scrooge McDuck”.

In 2014, bots outnumbered humans on the internet for the first time in history, making up 60 percent of all web traffic.

Molecular biologist James Watson put his Nobel Prize up for auction in 2014 due to financial hardships. It sold for $4.1 million and was promptly returned to him by the buyer.

Shavarsh Karapetyan who was a 17-time world champion swimmer and heard that a bus crashed in the water. He went in the deep water and rescued 20 people from drowning. After 10 years he rescued more people from a burning hospital. He also carried the torch in the Winter Olympics of 2014.

At the 2014 Kid’s Choice Awards for Nickelodeon, nominees for “Favorite Book” included Harry Potter, which ended in 2007, and The Hobbit, which was published in 1937.

In 2014 only 7 humans were killed by sharks while an estimated 63,000,000 sharks were killed by humans.

111-year-old Alexander Imich was a survivor of both the Holocaust and the Soviet gulags. Mr. Imich also became the World’s Oldest Living Man in 2014.

United Passions opened in 10 US theatres on its three day opening weekend and only grossed $941, the lowest opening in US box office history.

If all the K-cups sold in 2014 were laid end to end, they would circle the Earth at least 10 times.

“The Simpsons Guy”, the 2014 crossover between The Simpsons and Family Guy, was described by one critic as a “blight on humanity itself”.

During the Super Bowl and Puppy Bowl, Nat Geo Wild showed the “Fish Bowl”, a 4-hour clip of a goldfish swimming in a bowl.

Because the NFL owns and enforces the trademark for the term “Super Bowl,” almost all ads and commercial uses will instead reference “The Big Game” or something similar. Stephen Colbert even used “The Superb Owl” in 2014.

Cost of a 30 second Superbowl ad: 4.25 Million dollars.

A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO serial number 3851GT sold at Bonham’s Quail Auction on August 14, 2014, for $34,650,000.00 ($38,115,000.00 including buyers premium), breaking the record previously held by a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R race car

Dr. Oz The Good Life began publication

Broadway Show – Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (Musical) Opened on January 12, 2014

Broadway Show – Aladdin (Musical) Opened on March 20, 2014

Broadway Show – Les Miserables (Musical) Opened on March 23, 2014, and closed on September 4, 2016 (revival)