2015 Pop Culture History
Quick Facts from 2015
- USA Changing Event: On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, making marriage equality the law of the land in all 50 states. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion; its final paragraph has been widely called one of the most eloquent passages in Supreme Court history.
- Top Song: Uptown Funk! by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars
- Must-See Movies: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Inside Out, Ex Machina, and The Martian
- People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive: David Beckham
- Notable Books: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Humans of New York: Stories by Brandon Stanton
- 1 oz. of gold: $1,060.00; 30-second Super Bowl ad: $4.5 million
- The Funny Late Late Night Host: James Corden
- The Conversation: Is the dress blue and black, or white and gold? The answer is blue and black. This has not ended the argument.
- Doomsday Clock: 3 minutes to midnight — the closest it had been since 1984
Top Ten Baby Names of 2015
Girls: Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Ava, Isabella Boys: Noah, Liam, Mason, Jacob, William
Fashion Icons and Sex Symbols
Erin Andrews, Hayley Atwell, Elizabeth Banks, Melissa Benoist, Ashley Benson, Alison Brie, Priyanka Chopra, Emilia Clarke, Lauren Cohan, Kaley Cuoco, Alexandra Daddario, Cara Delevingne, Kat Dennings, Zooey Deschanel, Natalie Dormer, Hilary Duff, Gal Gadot, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Gigi Hadid, Lena Headey, Sarah Hyland, Holly Holm, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Kendall Jenner, Scarlett Johansson, Dakota Johnson, Jennifer Lawrence, Blake Lively, Demi Lovato, Olivia Munn, Lupita Nyong’o, Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Olsen, Katy Perry, Emily Ratajkowski, Rihanna, Margot Robbie, Ronda Rousey, Zoe Saldana, Taylor Swift, Sophie Turner, Kate Upton, Sofia Vergara, Alicia Vikander, Emma Watson
The Quote
“I can’t believe I burned down a tree older than Jesus.” — Sarah Barnes, after setting fire to the Senator, a 3,500-year-old cypress tree in Florida — the fifth oldest tree in the world — while smoking methamphetamine inside its hollow trunk. She was turned in by friends after they showed her photos. The tree had survived ice ages, hurricanes, and 3,500 years. It did not survive Sarah Barnes.
Time Magazine Person of the Year
Angela Merkel, for her leadership during Europe’s refugee crisis and ongoing eurozone financial pressures, was characterized by Time as the “Chancellor of the Free World.”
Miss America and Miss USA
Miss America: Kira Kazantsev, New York
Miss USA: Olivia Jordan, Oklahoma
We Lost in 2015
Leonard Nimoy, actor (Star Trek’s Mr. Spock), died February 27, aged 83. His final tweet, sent two weeks before his death: “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP.” Live Long and Prosper. B.B. King, blues guitarist, died May 14, aged 89
Wes Craven, horror film director, died August 30, aged 76
Yogi Berra, baseball Hall of Famer and philosopher, died September 22, at age 90. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
Scott Weiland, Stone Temple Pilots vocalist, died on December 3, at the age of 48
Lemmy Kilmister, Motörhead frontman, died December 28, aged 70
Wayne Rogers, actor (M*A*S*H), died December 31, age 82
Maureen O’Hara, actress (Miracle on 34th Street), died October 24, age 95
Roger Rees, actor, died July 10, age 71
Percy Sledge, soul singer, died April 14, age 73
Ben E. King, singer (Stand By Me), died April 30, age 76
Omar Sharif, actor, died July 10, age 83
Christopher Lee, actor — died June 11, age 93
Marriage Equality
On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Jim Obergefell had sued the state of Ohio after it refused to list him as the surviving spouse on his husband John Arthur’s death certificate — Arthur had died of ALS in 2013. The case worked its way to the Supreme Court.
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion concluded: “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to fulfill its promise for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity under the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.”
The White House was lit in rainbow colors that night. President Obama called Jim Obergefell personally. Obergefell said: “It’s a great day to be an American.”
The Dress
On February 25, 2015, a photo of a dress — actually blue and black — was posted to Tumblr with the caption “guys please help me — is this dress white and gold, or blue and black?” Within 24 hours, BuzzFeed’s post about it had 28 million views. Twitter had 10 million tweets. The dress became the most viral internet moment since the early social media era.
The reason half of the people saw white and gold and half saw blue and black was a genuine neurological variation in how human brains process color in ambiguous lighting conditions. Neither group was wrong about what they saw. The dress is, objectively, blue and black. This has not settled anything.
Pop Culture Facts and History
Hamilton, the musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda dramatizing the life of Alexander Hamilton through hip-hop, R&B, and Broadway music, opened on Broadway on August 6, 2015. It was already legendary before opening night — the original cast recording had been released in advance, and tickets were impossible to obtain. It won 11 Tony Awards in 2016, including Best Musical. The original cast included Miranda as Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr, and Daveed Diggs as both Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson. It is widely considered the most significant Broadway musical of the 21st century and one of the most culturally impactful in history.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened December 18, 2015 — the first Star Wars film in 10 years and the first under Disney’s ownership. It earned $2 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2015 and the third-highest-grossing film of all time at that point. It introduced Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac to the Star Wars universe. Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill all returned.
Inside Out, Pixar’s 2015 film about the personified emotions inside a child’s mind, earned $857 million worldwide and is widely considered one of the most emotionally sophisticated animated films ever made. The concepts of “core memories” and “personality islands” immediately entered conversations in parenting and psychology.
American Pharoah won the Triple Crown in 2015 — the Kentucky Derby on May 2, the Preakness Stakes on May 16, and the Belmont Stakes on June 6. It was the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years, since Affirmed in 1978. Jockey Victor Espinoza rode all three races. The spelling “Pharoah” is a deliberate error — the owner’s submission of the name contained the misspelling and the Jockey Club approved it. The horse that ended a 37-year drought is named after an Egyptian ruler with the wrong letters.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins sold 20 million copies worldwide and spent 13 weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. It was compared endlessly to Gone Girl and represented the peak of the psychological thriller genre’s mainstream popularity.
More people died taking selfies in 2015 (12 deaths) than from shark attacks (8 deaths). The leading causes of selfie-related death were falling from heights, being struck by trains, and drowning. The selfie stick was introduced in 2014.
Words added to major dictionaries in 2015 included twerk, binge-watch, microaggression, meme, photobomb, mansplain, and bae. The English language was absorbing the internet faster than lexicographers could track it.
Eminem’s Rap God was recognized in the 2015 Guinness Book of World Records for the most words in a hit single — 1,560 words in 6 minutes and 4 seconds. The fastest section required 97 words in 15 seconds.
Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters broke his leg by falling off the stage during a concert in Gothenburg, Sweden, on June 12, 2015. He refused to cancel the show. He returned in a custom throne, had his leg attended to by a doctor during the performance, and finished the concert. The internet declared this the most rock-and-roll thing to happen in 2015. It was genuinely close.
The mysterious radio signal that Australian astronomers at the Parkes Observatory had been puzzling over since 1998, generating papers, speculation, and theories about its origin, was finally traced in 2015 to the microwave oven in the observatory’s kitchen. Staff were generating the signal by opening the microwave before it finished its cycle. Seventeen years of scientific investigation were resolved by turning off a kitchen appliance.
Sgt. Henry “Black Death” Johnson was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2015, 97 years after the action for which it was earned. Johnson, a Black soldier in WWI, had single-handedly fought off a German raid of 12 or more soldiers on the night of May 15, 1918, while wounded 21 times, using his rifle as a club when he ran out of ammunition, and saving his fellow soldier from capture. France had awarded him the Croix de Guerre in 1918. The United States Army refused to recognize his heroism for nearly a century due to racial discrimination.
Japan lifted its 67-year ban on dancing after midnight in 2015 — a law that had been enacted in 1948 under the American occupation, ostensibly to prevent prostitution in dance halls. The ban had become a source of international embarrassment as it technically outlawed nightclubs. It was finally repealed, and Japanese nightlife emerged from its technical illegality.
Microbeads — tiny plastic abrasive particles found in exfoliating soap products and toothpastes — were banned in the United States in 2015 after researchers found that billions of them were passing through water treatment systems and entering waterways, where fish consumed them. A single tube of facial scrub could contain 330,000 microbeads.
The population of London in 2015 exceeded its previous peak — set in 1939 — by approximately one person, after spending 76 years below its pre-WWII maximum.
Until 2015, more humans had walked on the moon (12) than had completed a continuous thru-hike of the Grand Canyon. The Canyon’s terrain is so extreme that the canyon-to-rim distance makes a through-hike more physically demanding than almost any comparable trail.
The Doomsday Clock was moved to 3 minutes to midnight in January 2015, citing unchecked climate change, nuclear weapons modernization by the U.S. and Russia, and failures of international leadership. It was the closest the clock had been to midnight since 1984, during the height of Cold War tensions under Reagan and Gorbachev.
In 2015, there were 3.5 million skydive jumps in the United States with 21 fatalities — one fatality for every 166,667 jumps. Skydiving is statistically safer than driving to the drop zone.
A man called into C-SPAN in 2015 and began speaking about West Philadelphia, then seamlessly transitioned into the first two stanzas of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song before being cut off. He never broke character. It is one of the finest achievements in the history of public access television.
2015 was the binary number 11111011111 — a palindrome year. The next palindrome year in binary will be 2047 (11111111111).
Henry “Black Death” Johnson’s Medal of Honor ceremony was attended by President Obama, who said Johnson “gave everything he had for a country that hadn’t always given everything to him.”
Doomsday Clock
3 minutes to midnight in 2015 — the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists citing unchecked climate change, nuclear weapons modernization, and failures of international political leadership as reasons for advancing the clock to its most alarming position in over three decades.
National Toy Hall of Fame — 2015 Inductees
Puppet, Twister, Super Soaker
Christmas Gifts and First Appearances of 2015
New Nintendo 3DS, Hamilton cast recording, hoverboards (which kept catching fire)
Nobel Prize Winners
Physics — Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald (for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, showing that neutrinos have mass — overturning a fundamental assumption of particle physics)
Chemistry — Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar (for mechanistic studies of DNA repair)
Medicine — William C. Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura, and Tu Youyou (for discoveries concerning therapies against parasitic diseases and malaria — Tu Youyou was the first Chinese scientist to win a Nobel Prize in a scientific category)
Literature — Svetlana Alexievich (Belarusian author of oral histories documenting the Soviet and post-Soviet experience)
Peace — Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet (for their decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia following the Arab Spring)
Economics — Angus Deaton (for analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare)
Popular and Best-Selling Books of 2015
The Girl on the Train — Paula Hawkins
Humans of New York: Stories — Brandon Stanton
Go Set a Watchman — Harper Lee (the controversial “sequel” to To Kill a Mockingbird)
The Martian — Andy Weir (adapted into the film the same year)
All the Light We Cannot See — Anthony Doerr (won the Pulitzer Prize)
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up — Marie Kondo
A Little Life — Hanya Yanagihara
Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates
Broadway in 2015
Hamilton opened on August 6, 2015, redefining what Broadway could be.
Fun Home won the Tony for Best Musical before Hamilton arrived and would have been the story of the season in any other year. The two productions together made 2015 one of the most significant Broadway seasons in decades.
Best Film Oscar Winner
Birdman, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Michael Keaton, won Best Picture at the 2015 Academy Awards, presented for the 2014 film year. It was filmed to appear as a single continuous take — a technical achievement that dominated film conversation in early 2015.
The Bomb
Movie: Fantastic Four — Fox’s attempted reboot of the Marvel franchise earned $56 million on a $120 million budget and received reviews so negative that the director publicly distanced himself from the final product.
TV: The final season of several long-running shows — Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, and David Letterman’s Late Show — left television simultaneously, creating a cultural moment about endings.
2015 Entries to the National Film Registry
Being There (released in 1979)
Black and Tan (released in 1929)
Dracula (Spanish language version) (released in 1931)
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (released in 1906)
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (released in 1974)
Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (released in 1894)
A Fool There Was (released in 1915)
Ghostbusters (released in 1984)
Hail the Conquering Hero (released in 1944)
Humoresque (released in 1920)
Imitation of Life (released in 1959)
The Inner World of Aphasia (released in 1968)
John Henry and the Inky-Poo (released in 1946)
L.A. Confidential (released in 1997)
The Mark of Zorro (released in 1920)
The Old Mill (released in 1937)
Our Daily Bread (released in 1934)
Portrait of Jason (released in 1967)
Seconds (released in 1966)
The Shawshank Redemption (released in 1994)
Sink or Swim (released in 1990)
The Story of Menstruation (released in 1946)
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (released in 1968)
Top Gun (released in 1986)
Winchester ’73 (released in 1950)
Top Movies of 2015
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens
- Jurassic World
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Inside Out
- Furious 7
- Minions
- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2
- The Martian
- Cinderella
- Spectre
Most Popular TV Shows of 2015
- Sunday Night Football (NBC)
- The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
- NCIS (CBS)
- The Walking Dead (AMC)
- Empire (Fox)
- Modern Family (ABC)
- Dancing with the Stars (ABC)
- Criminal Minds (CBS)
- Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
- The Voice (NBC)
2015 Billboard Number One Songs
November 29, 2014 – January 16, 2015: Blank Space — Taylor Swift
January 17 – April 24, 2015: Uptown Funk! — Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars (14 weeks — tied for second-longest run in Hot 100 history at that point)
April 25 – June 5, 2015: See You Again — Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth (written as a tribute to the late Paul Walker for Furious 7)
June 6 – July 24, 2015: Bad Blood — Taylor Swift featuring Kendrick Lamar
July 25 – August 21, 2015: Cheerleader — OMI (originally recorded in 2012; went worldwide after a 2014 remix by German DJ Felix Jaehn)
August 22 – September 18, 2015: Can’t Feel My Face — The Weeknd
September 19 – October 2, 2015: What Do You Mean? — Justin Bieber (his first-ever #1 on the Hot 100)
October 3 – November 13, 2015: The Hills — The Weeknd (replacing his own Can’t Feel My Face — one of the rare instances of an artist displacing themselves at #1)
November 14, 2015 – January 22, 2016: Hello — Adele (debuted with 1.1 million digital downloads in its first week — the largest first-week digital sales total in Hot 100 history at that point)
Biggest Pop Artists of 2015
Adele, Chris Stapleton, Demi Lovato, DJ Snake, Drake, Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding, Fall Out Boy, Fetty Wap, Hozier, Justin Bieber, Kendrick Lamar, Luke Bryan, Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars, Meek Mill, Meghan Trainor, Mumford and Sons, Muse, OMI, One Direction, Pitbull, Rachel Platten, Sam Smith, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, Walk the Moon, The Weeknd, Wiz Khalifa, Zac Brown Band
Sports Champions of 2015
World Series: Kansas City Royals (their first title since 1985)
Super Bowl XLIX: New England Patriots (defeated Seattle Seahawks 28-24 — the “Beast Quake” nearly ended it, but Malcolm Butler’s goal-line interception with 26 seconds left sealed it)
NBA Champions: Golden State Warriors (their first title since 1975)
Stanley Cup: Chicago Blackhawks (their third title in six years)
U.S. Open Golf: Jordan Spieth
U.S. Open Tennis — Men: Novak Djokovic | Women: Flavia Pennetta
Wimbledon — Men: Novak Djokovic | Women: Serena Williams
NCAA Football: Alabama NCAA Basketball: Duke
Kentucky Derby: American Pharoah (Triple Crown winner — first in 37 years)
Sports Highlight: American Pharoah ended a 37-year drought by winning the Triple Crown — the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes — in 2015. At the Belmont, the crowd of 90,000 roared from the final turn. Jockey Victor Espinoza rode all three races. The horse’s name contains a deliberate misspelling — the Jockey Club approved “Pharoah” instead of “Pharaoh” from the owner’s submission — meaning the horse that ended the longest drought in Triple Crown history is named incorrectly.
Super Bowl XLIX on February 1, 2015, ended on one of the most debated play calls in NFL history. Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll chose to pass from the one-yard line with 26 seconds remaining instead of handing it to Marshawn Lynch. Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler intercepted the pass. New England won 28-24. The decision is still being argued.
FAQ — 2015 Trivia, Fun Facts, and Pop Culture History
Q: What Supreme Court ruling changed America in 2015?
A: Obergefell v. Hodges, decided June 26, 2015, established that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry under the 14th Amendment. The 5-4 decision made marriage equality the law in all 50 states. The White House was lit in rainbow colors that night.
Q: What was “The Dress” controversy?
A: A photo of a dress posted to Tumblr in February 2015 sparked a worldwide debate — half of viewers saw it as white and gold, half as blue and black. The neurological explanation concerns how the brain processes color under ambiguous lighting. The dress is objectively blue and black. The debate has not been fully resolved.
Q: What musical opened on Broadway in 2015 and changed theater?
A: Hamilton, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and dramatizing Alexander Hamilton’s life through hip-hop and Broadway music, opened August 6, 2015. It won 11 Tony Awards. Tickets became the most sought-after in Broadway history. It is widely considered the most culturally significant musical of the 21st century.
Q: What was the biggest movie of 2015?
A: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which earned over $2 billion worldwide after its December 18 opening — the highest-grossing film of 2015 and third-highest-grossing of all time at that point.
Q: What Triple Crown winner ended a 37-year drought in 2015?
A: American Pharoah — deliberately misspelled in the Jockey Club registration — won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes in 2015, ending the longest gap between Triple Crown winners since the award’s modern recognition.
Q: What was the most viral internet moment of 2015?
A: The Dress — though Uptown Funk! spending 14 weeks at #1 and Hamilton redefining Broadway were also cultural touchstones. The Dress generated 28 million BuzzFeed views and 10 million tweets within 24 hours.
Q: What ended a 17-year scientific mystery in 2015?
A: The mysterious radio signal that had baffled Australian astronomers at the Parkes Observatory since 1998 was identified as being caused by the observatory’s own microwave oven when staff opened it before the cycle finished. Seventeen years of investigation resolved by a kitchen appliance.
Q: What 1918 hero was finally recognized in 2015?
A: Sgt. Henry “Black Death” Johnson, a Black WWI soldier who fought off a German raid while wounded 21 times, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2015 — 97 years after the action. France had awarded him the Croix de Guerre in 1918. Racial discrimination had prevented U.S. recognition for nearly a century.
Q: What selfie statistic made headlines in 2015?
A: More people died taking selfies (12) than from shark attacks (8) in 2015 — the leading causes being falls from heights, train strikes, and drowning. The statistic prompted widespread commentary about risk perception.
Q: Who won Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2015?
A: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, recognized for her leadership during Europe’s refugee crisis and ongoing eurozone financial pressures. Time described her as the “Chancellor of the Free World.”
