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
  • The price of a postage stamp in 2014 was 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 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, the mask was permanently damaged. 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.

Top Ten Baby Names of 2014:

Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Isabella, Ava, Noah, Liam, Mason, Jacob, William

Fashion Icons and Sex Symbols:

Erin Andrews, Alessandra Ambrosio, Gillian Anderson, Hayley Atwell, Morena Baccarin, Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Ashley Benson, Julie Benz, Tia Blanco, Alison Brie, Emilia Clarke, Lauren Cohan, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Kaley Cuoco, Alexandra Daddario, Brooklyn Decker, Kat Dennings, Zooey Deschanel, Gal Gadot, Karen Gillan, Ellie Goulding, Ariana Grande, Gigi Hadid, Lena Headey, Sarah Hyland, Katie Holmes, Samantha Hoopes, Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Scarlett Johansson, Victoria Justice, Jennifer Lawrence, Evangeline Lilly, Demi Lovato, Tatiana Maslany, Rose Mciver, AJ Michalka, Aly Michalka, Kate Middleton, Olivia Munn, Rachel Nichols, Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Olsen, Rita Ora, Katy Perry, Emily Ratajkowski, Bar Refaeli, Rihanna, Margot Robbie, Emmy Rossum, Ronda Rousey, Zoe Saldana, Nicole Scherzinger, Léa Seydoux, Shakira, Taylor Swift, Ivanka Trump, Sophie Turner, Sofia Vergara, Emma Watson, Deborah Ann Woll

The Oscars Selfie:

(Taken by Bradley Cooper at the 2014 Oscars ceremony, including Jennifer Lawrence, Jared Leto, Channing Tatum, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ellen DeGeneres, Kevin Spacey, Bradley Cooper, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong’o, Angelina Jolie)
Oscars2014

Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year:

Ebola Fighters

Miss America:

Nina Davuluri

Miss USA:

Nia Sanchez

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 could not get rid of them.

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

South Korean Christians made 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 six 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 because the entire audience was not 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 war’s end. 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, blocking airflow. This was the second recall- the first was in 2011 for the 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. Currently, 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, 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 of a “random man & his dog” on the beach to Instagram. 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, 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, a 17-time world champion swimmer, heard that a bus had crashed in the water. He went into 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, published in 1937.

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

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 ten 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.

The cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad is 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 buyer premium), breaking the record previously held by a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R race car

Dr. Oz’s The Good Life began publication

2014 Toys inducted to the National Toy Hall of Fame:

Little Green Army Men, Bubbles, Rubik’s Cube

1st Appearances & 2014’s Most Popular Christmas Gifts, Toys and Presents:

New Nintendo 3DS XL

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)

Best Film Oscar:

12 Years a Slave (presented in 2014)

2014 Entries to The National Film Registry:

13 Lakes (released in 2004)
Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day (released in 1913)
The Big Lebowski (released in 1998)
Down Argentine Way (released in 1940)
The Dragon Painter (released in 1919)
Felicia (released in 1965)
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (released in 1986)
The Gang’s All Here (released in 1943)
House of Wax (released in 1953)
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (released in 2000)
Little Big Man (released in 1970)
Luxo Jr. (released in 1986)
Moon Breath Beat (released in 1980)
Please Don’t Bury Me Alive! (released in 1976)
The Power and the Glory (released in 1933)
Rio Bravo (released in 1959)
Rosemary’s Baby (released in 1968)
Ruggles of Red Gap (released in 1935)
Saving Private Ryan (released in 1998)
Shoes (released in 1916)
State Fair (released in 1933)
Unmasked (released in 1917)
V-E Day +1 (May 91945) (released in 1945)
The Way of Peace (released in 1947)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (released in 1971)

The Big Movies: (according to boxofficemojo)

1. American Sniper
2. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
5. The LEGO Movie
6. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
7. Transformers: Age of Extinction
8. Maleficent
9. X-Men: Days of Future Past
10. Big Hero 6

Sports:

World Series Champions: San Francisco Giants
Superbowl Champions: Seattle Seahawks
NBA Champions: San Antonio Spurs
Stanley Cup Champs: Los Angeles Kings
US Open Golf: Martin Kaymer
US Tennis: (Men/Ladies): Marin Cilic/Serena Williams
Wimbledon (Men/Women): Novak Djokovic/Petra Kvitová
NCAA Football Champions: Ohio State
NCAA Basketball Champions: Connecticut
Kentucky Derby: California Chrome
FIFA World Cup (Soccer): Germany