2000 History, Trivia and Fun Facts

• Sports Scandal: Spain's Paralympic basketball team were ordered to return their gold medals won in Sydney in 2000 after nearly all of their players were found to have no disability.
• The Top Song was Independent Woman by Destiny's Child
• The Big Movies included How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Cast Away and Mission Impossible II
• In 2000, the peak year of CD sales in America, consumers bought 943 million CDs.
• Price of a gallon of gas in 2000: $1.56
  Sony Playstation: $299.00
  Scott toilet paper: 6.99/12 pack
• The World Population was ~ 6,088,000,000
• FYI: The 20th Century ended on December 31st 2000, not December 31st 1999.
• The Chernobyl Power Plant continued operating and producing electricity until 2000, 14 years after the Chernobyl Disaster.
• Princess Angela (born in Panama) of Liechtenstein is the first person of African heritage to marry into a ruling European Royal Family
• Photography: A man looking for a barber chair at a garage sale purchased a two deteriorated boxes of items for $45. He later found the boxes contained 65 glass plate negatives from photographer Ansel Adams worth $200 million.
• And... Wilson (the Volleyball) won the Critics' Choice Award "Best Inanimate Object" for his role in Cast Away.

DJ Carl Cox played the Millennium (1999 to 2000) on New Year's Eve twice, by performing in Sydney, Australia and again in Hawaii after flying back over the International Date Line.

The creator of The Sims, (released January 31, 2000) Will Wright, was inspired to make the game after losing his home and most of his material possessions in a fire in 1991. Thinking about the value of material needs as he rebuilt his life gave him the idea of a game where players managed the life of a suburban household.

Blockbuster Video declined the chance to buy Netflix for $50 million in 2000.

Due to the massive success and popularity of Eminem's Stan, the Oxford Dictionary made a definition of "Stan" - 'an obsessive fan of a particular celebrity'.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans faced a low-tech Y2K when they pre-ordered headstones with "19-" inscribed for their death date, then lived past the year 2000.

Pope John Paul II gave his blessing to the Pokémon franchise, saying the games did not have "any harmful moral side effects" and were based on "ties of intense friendship".

The term CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford of Carnegie Mellon University.

McCall's magazine released it's first issue in 1873 and was one of America's oldest and longest running magazines until Rosie O'Donnell took control of it in 2000, renamed it "Rosie", and by 2002, it was defunct.

Lowest PGA score of 63 played by Jose Maria Olazabal.

A fight broke out while Warren Zevon was performing Werewolves of London at the Bowery Ballroom in New York. Zevon stopped, waited for the fight to end, said "I bet this never happens at Sting concerts," and continued the song.

Rick Norsigian, looking for a barber chair at a garage sale, purchased a two deteriorated boxes of items for $45. He later found the boxes contained 65 glass plate negatives from photographer Ansel Adams worth $200 million.

People Magazine voted Neil DeGrasse Tyson "Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive."

Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton got married on May 5, 2000.

The Norwegian Heathen Society won the right in 2000 to yell "God does not exist!" from rooftops in Oslo after Muslims were granted the right to make prayer calls.

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were married on July 29,2000.

When the cast of "Friends" wouldn't come down from their $1,050,000/episode salary demands, NBC produced promos saying "You've loved them for seven years, see how it all ends with the series finale of Friends this Thursday". The cast agreed to lower salaries.

According to a poll in the year 2000, the Japanese believe that their best invention of the 20th century was instant noodles.

There is a $1000 Canadian Bill (discontinued after 2000) and by 2012 there was still nearly a million unaccounted for.

After nearly two weeks of planning, PopCultureMadness.com went online on January 8, 2000.

Andre Geim won the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on using magnetism to levitate a frog. 10 years later, his experiments regarding graphene won him the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. This makes him the only ever recipient of both the Ig Nobel and Nobel Prizes.

A naked man, Richard Hatch, won $1,000,000 in the first season of CBS's Survivor.

The Code of Hammurabi, written nearly 4000 years ago, had laws such as minimum wage, the right to be born a free man, the need to work off your debt, and no incest.

According to a 2000 study from Carnegie Mellon University, 87% of the US Population can be uniquely identified using only date of birth, gender, and ZIP code.

Heracleion, an ancient Egyptian city that was swallowed by the Mediterranean Sea 1,200 years ago, was discovered in 2000 and has been the site of an underwater excavation since then.

Cost of a Superbowl ad in 2000: $2,200,00.

At the 2000 Sydney Games, the stock of 70,000 condoms was not enough for the athletes, prompting a second order of 20,000 additionally. Since then, a standing order of 100,000 condoms has to be made per Olympics to accommodate all the sex that occurs at the Olympic Village during the downtime.

Australia's largest ever petition of 792,985 signatures was submitted to parliament in 2000 to protest rising beer prices.

Sony Playstation 2, Who wants to be a Millionaire Board Game , Barbie, Mary-Kate and Ashely merchandise, Addams Family gift set, The Sims computer game

2000 was the first year Martin Luther King Jr. Day was officially observed in all 50 states.

O, The Oprah Magazine began publication

Food & Family Magazine (Kraft Foods) began publication

Real Simple began publication

Born June 13, 1986, the twins got their careers started on Television's Full House (1987-1995)
Video Games:

The New Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley (1999, Game Boy Color, Mary-Kate and Ashley: Dance Party of the Century (1999, PC), Mary-Kate and Ashley: Get a Clue (2000, Game Boy Color), Mary-Kate and Ashley: Magical Mystery Mall (2000, PlayStation), Mary-Kate and Ashley: Pocket Planner (2000, Game Boy Color), Mary-Kate and Ashley: Winner's Circle (2001, PlayStation, Game Boy Color), Mary-Kate and Ashley: Crush Course (2001, PlayStation, PC, Game Boy Color), Mary-Kate and Ashley: Girls' Night Out (2002, Game Boy Advance), Mary-Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16 - Licensed to Drive (2002, Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2)

(according to boxofficemojo)
1. How The Grinch Stole Christmas
2. Cast Away
3. Mission Impossible II
4. Gladiator
5. What Women Want
6. The Perfect Storm
7. Meet The Parents
8. X-Men
9. Scary Movie
10. What Lies Beneath

Big Momma's House, Cast Away, Charlie's Angels, Chicken Run, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Dinosaur, Erin Brockovich, Gladiator, Gone in 60 Seconds, Highlander: Endgame, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Mission Impossible II, Meet the Parents, Miss Congeniality, The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, The Patriot, The Perfect Storm, Pitch Black, Remember the Titans, The Road to El Dorado, Scary Movie, Traffic, Unbreakable, What Lies Beneath, What Women Want, X-Men