2010 Annual History Facts

2010 Annual History Facts

  • War Room: In 2010, one of the fastest supercomputers in the US Defense Department was primarily compromised of 1760 PlayStation 3 Consoles.
  • The Top Song was Tik Tok by Ke$ha
  • The Big Movies included Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, and Iron Man 2
  • Price of Nyquil liquigels in 2010: $5.69/12
    Ground Beef (90%): $3.99/pound
  • The World Population was ~ 6,860,000,000
  • The somewhat annoying Vuvuzela Horn, used during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, became a Pop Culture Phenomenon.
  • And… Moriusaq, Greenland, had a population of 3 in 2009. A 2010 self-defense case, ending in the death of one individual, dropped the population to 2 people.

World Series Champions

San Francisco Giants

Superbowl XLIV Champions

New Orleans Saints

National Basketball Association Champions

Los Angeles Lakers

NHL Stanley Cup Champions

Chicago Blackhawks

US Open Golf

Graeme McDowell

US Open Tennis (Men Ladies)

Rafael Nadal/ Kim Clijsters

Wimbledon (Men/Women)

Rafael Nadal/Serena Williams

FIFA World Cup Soccer

Spain

NCAA Football Champions

Auburn

NCAA Basketball Champions

Duke

Bowl Games

Orange Bowl: January 5, 2010 – Iowa over Georgia Tech
Rose Bowl: January 1, 2010 – Ohio State over Oregon
Sugar Bowl: January 1, 2010 – Florida over Cincinnati
Puppy Bowl VI: February 7, 2010 Most Valuable Puppy: Jake (a Chihuahua/Pug Mix)

Kentucky Derby

Super Saver

Westminster Kennel Best in Show Dog

Roundtown Mercedes of Maryscot

Time Magazine’s Man of the Year

Mark Zuckerberg

Miss America

Caressa Cameron

Miss USA

Rima Fakih (Dearborn, Michigan)

Fashion Icons and Movie Stars

Lily Allen, Erin Andrews, Victoria Beckham, Ashley Benson, Julie Benz, Emily Blunt, Amanda Bynes, Rose Byrne, Kari Byron, Emilia Clarke, Marion Cotillard, Kaley Cuoco, enélope Cruz, Miley Cyrus, Alexandra Daddario, Brooklyn Decker, Cameron Diaz, Natalie Dormer, Hilary Duff, Selita Ebanks, Alice Eve, Anna Faris, Jenna Fischer, Megan Fox, Gal Gadot, Karen Gillan, Jessica Gomes, Selena Gomez, Ashley Greene, Maggie Grace, Amber Heard, Tricia Helfer, Julianne Hough, Scarlett Johansson, ngelina Jolie, January Jones, Rashida Jones, Milla Jovovich, Kim Kardashian, Ellie Kemper, Ke$ha, Mila Kunis, Joanna Krupa, Padma Lakshmi, Evangeline Lilly, Blake Lively, AnnaLynne McCord, Eva Mendes, Maria Menounos, Aly Michalka, Marisa Miller, Olivia Munn, Michelle Obama, Hayden Panettiere, Anna Paquin, Danica Patrick, Audrina Patridge, Katy Perry, Bar Refaeli, Rihanna, Zoe Saldana, Nicole Scherzinger, Allison Scagliotti, Emma Stone, Yvonne Strahovski, Charlize Theron, Carrie Underwood, Laura Vandervoort, Sofia Vergara, Olivia Wilde

“The Quotes”

“I am not part of the PlayStation generation.”
– Prince Charles, admitting he is baffled by modern technology.

Prince declared the Internet to be over as a platform for music distribution and said, “All these computers and digital gadgets… just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

2010 Pop Culture History

Sandra Bullock accepted her Golden Raspberry Award in person for Worst Actress for her role in All About Steve. The following night, Bullock won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Blind Side.

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

McDonald’s started offering free wifi throughout the USA in January 2010. Starbucks began to provide free wifi in July 2010.

Bill Murray walked into Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes at SXSW with RZA and GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan and started bartending. No matter what anyone ordered, he gave them shots of tequila.

The KOR-fx, a device that sits around the shoulders and translates stereo sound into stereo vibrations for gaming consoles, mp3s, and more, was invented.

Kodak discontinued the famed Kodachrome film. The last roll was shot by acclaimed National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry, best known for his portrait ‘Afghan Girl.’ The last 36 slides captured images around New York and a tribe in India on the verge of extinction.

The Plain Writing Act became law. It requires all federal agencies to use clear prose that the public can readily understand.

Microsoft banned a user from Xbox Live for putting Fort Gay (A real location in West Virginia) as his address. Microsoft refused to believe that Fort Gay existed, and eventually took an appeal from the town’s Mayor, David Thompson, for the issue to be corrected.

The US Department of Defense connected 1,760 Playstation 3 consoles to create the Condor Cluster supercomputer. It cost $2 million to build and only uses about 10% of the energy consumption of a comparable supercomputer.

Finland became the first country worldwide to make Internet access a legal right.

A Kansas State University professor went on a Twinkie diet, where he ate mainly Twinkies, Oreos, and Doritos to prove to his students that calorie counting is the important part of losing weight, not nutritional content. He lost 27 pounds in 2 months.

Earth is shadowed by a minor planet called 2010 TK7, a 300-meter diameter trojan asteroid that orbits the sun in a spiral pattern every 365.3 days, 60° ahead of Earth’s track through space. It has a gravitational force 1/20000 that of Earth and was only discovered in 2010.

The Republic of Fiji lost its declaration of independence and had to ask Britain for a photocopy.

Tupac’s song Dear Mama was inducted into The Library of Congress Registry, with The LOCR stating it is “a moving and eloquent homage to both the murdered rapper’s mother and all mothers struggling to maintain a family in the face of addiction, poverty, and societal indifference.”

Before 2010, proper nouns were not considered valid words for Scrabble, although many players still do not allow them.

Conan O’Brien follows only one person on Twitter, a randomly chosen fan (Sarah Killen) who, since being tracked in 2010, has gone from 3 to over 300k followers.

Actress Emma Stone celebrated her mom being two years cancer-free in 2010 by writing a letter to Paul McCartney asking him to sketch two birds’ feet because The Beatles’ song “Blackbird” was her mother’s favorite. Paul sketched the birds that Emma and her mom took and used to get matching wrist tattoos.

Someone broke the Asteroids world record that had stood for 27 years. It took 58 hours.

England only abolished Slavery in 2010, and only did so as a formality, because the status of “Slave” never existed in English Common Law. Thus, a person could not be charged with “Slavery.” Owning a person was made illegal much, much earlier.

Sony was still producing the Cassette Walkman up until this year.

Five scientists observed 60,000 episodes combined of 73 cows lying down to determine that (1) the longer the cow has been lying down, the more likely the cow will soon stand up, and (2) once the cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again. (SAC Research, King’s Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JG, Scotland, UK)

Volvo Cars was owned by Ford since 1935, then sold to the Chinese company Geely in 2010. The Swedish-owned Volvo only makes Trucks and Buses.

Alexander J. Yee & Shigeru K. broke a world record by calculating Pi to 5 trillion digits at home on a desktop computer (twin 6core Xeon processors, 96 GB RAM, and 20x 2TB hard drives.) It took 90 days, and 3.8 TB of disk space was needed to store the final output of decimal and hex digits.

The violent 2010 film Machete is a spin-off of the 2001 children’s film Spy Kids.

Sugarcane is the world’s largest crop. In 2010, it was cultivated on 23.8 million hectares in more than 90 countries, with a worldwide harvest of 1.69 billion tons.

Taco Bell secretly reduced the sodium content of its food at 150 Dallas area restaurants by 23%. Without telling anyone, they replaced the salt with “other spices and other ingredients.” Two months later, they had received exactly zero complaints about the changes.

A mock political party (The Best Party) in Reykjavik, Iceland, openly stated they would keep none of their campaign promises. They won 34.7% of the city vote, with their founder, Jon Gnarr, becoming mayor.

26.5 million Canadians tuned into the gold medal final in men’s hockey during the 2010 Winter Olympics. That’s 80% of the entire country’s population.

40.8% of children born in the US in 2010 were to unmarried women.

43% of British pilots admitted to falling asleep during flights, and 33% of them reported waking up to find that their co-pilots had fallen asleep as well, according to a survey carried between 2010 and 2012.

Manhattan had 2.3 million residents in 1910 vs. 1.5 million in 2010.

If you bought ONE share of Coca-Cola stock in 1920, it would be worth $6.7 million by 2010.

According to a 2010 survey, Canadians were asked to choose if they would prefer bacon or sex. 43% chose bacon.

In 2010, in the United States, 3 out of every five people who died from gunshot wounds took their own life.

3.2 billion people, or 46.4 percent of the global population, watched the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

50% of Harvard’s class of 2010 went into finance and consulting.

Cost of a 30-second Superbowl ad: 3.1 Million dollars

RIP, Scandals, Sad and Odd News

The mummified corpse of Sogen Kato thought to be Tokyo’s oldest man, was found in his bedroom by government officials. He had died in 1978. The family pretended he was alive to continue getting his pension.

Mattel launched Computer Engineers Barbie. With the accompanying book, we learned that CE Barbie needed the help of two men to code the game she was designing. They also needed to help her after she accidentally infected her and her sister Skipper’s computers with a virus.

Abraham Lee Shakespeare was an American casual laborer who won a $30 million lottery jackpot, receiving $17 million in 2006. In 2009, his family declared him missing, and in January 2010, his body was found buried under a concrete slab in the backyard of an acquaintance.

A heat wave in Russia led to the deaths of over 1,000 people, most of whom drowned because of swimming while drunk.

Vuvuzelas were so prolific during the 2010 Soccer World Cup that TV broadcasters received hundreds of complaints and had to work to filter the annoying sound out.

An unlucky 49-year-old un-named airline passenger was arrested in Ireland after Slovak security officials placed explosives in his luggage for training, then forgot to remove them before the plane took off.

MI6 spy Gareth Williams’ decomposing corpse was found locked inside a duffle bag in a London flat’s bathtub. A re-investigation by the Metropolitan Police concluded that his death was “probably an accident.”

A Chinese National Highway Traffic Jam was the longest-duration traffic jam in history, lasting 12 days and locking up 62 highway miles.

Haiti’s second-largest airport is named after the former leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. This was partly due to Venezuela’s pledge to give $1.2 billion to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, of which $222 million has been released so far. Hugo Chavez died in 2013.

China had a traffic jam that lasted 12 days and spanned 62 miles.

In Paris, an un-named 18-month-old boy fell from a 6th-story window, bounced off the awning of a cafe below, and was then caught, unharmed, by a doctor who happened to be walking by.

Dave Grohl was admitted to the hospital due to a drug overdose… He had consumed too much caffeine from coffee while recording a new album.

Over 9000 women were sterilized in Puning, China, for violating China’s one-child policy during a 20-day campaign 2010. Families of women (or men) refusing to report to sterilization clinics were forcibly detained until the parents complied.

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

New York City officials admitted they forgot about a stalled train during the 2010 blizzard, which left dozens of passengers stranded for 7 hours. The subway chief said at a hearing they “forgot about that train.”

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

After Kenny Waters was convicted of murder, his sister went through college and law school to prove his innocence. She worked with the Innocence Project to get DNA tested, and he was freed. The 2010 movie “Conviction,” starring Hillary Swank, was based on his story.

Firsts and the Biggest Christmas Gifts

Ipad, Zhu Zhu Pets, Nooks
Video Games: Red Dead Redemption, Pokemon Black and White, Kinect Adventures, Call of Duty: Black Ops

The Habits

The partially-shaved head trend was big with celebrities, including Willow Smith, Rihanna, and model Amber Rose.

When Google replaced its logo with a playable Pacman, users spent an extra 36 seconds on the page. Assuming this time was wasted, it resulted in a $120M loss in man hours.

Reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

United States 2010 Census

Total US Population: 308,745,538
1. New York, New York – 8,175,133
2. Los Angeles, California – 3,792,621
3. Chicago, Illinois – 2,695,598
4. Houston, Texas – 2,099,451
5. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – 1,526,006
6. Phoenix, Arizona – 1,445,632
7. San Antonio, Texas – 1,327,407
8. San Diego, California – 1,307,402
9. Dallas, Texas – 1,197,816
10. San Jose, California – 945,942

2010/11 Biggest Television Shows

(according to Nielsen TV Research)
1. American Idol (FOX)
2. Dancing with the Stars (ABC)
3. Sunday Night Football (NBC)
4. NCIS (CBS)
5. NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS)
6. The Mentalist (CBS)
7. Body of Proof (ABC)
8. Criminal Minds (CBS)
9. The Good Wife (CBS)
10. 60 Minutes (CBS)

Popular Music Artists

The Biggest Pop Artists of 2010 include
Arcade Fire, The Band Perry, Black Eyed Peas, B.o.B, Bruno Mars, Eminem, Flo Rida, George Strait, Glee Cast, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Kesha, Lady Gaga, Lady Antebellum, Maroon 5, Pink, Rihanna, Sade, Sugarland, Susan Boyle, Taio Cruz, Taylor Swift, Train, Usher, Vampire Weekend

(Data is compiled from charts, including Billboard’s Pop, Rock, Airplay, R&B/Dance, and Singles Charts. The Hot 100 is the primary chart used for this list.)

Number One Hits of 2010

November 28, 2009 – January 1, 2010: Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind

January 2, 2010 – March 5, 2010: Kesha – Tik Tok

March 6, 2010 – March 19, 2010: The Black Eyed Peas – Imma Be

March 20, 2010 – March 26, 2010: Taio Cruz featuring Ludacris – Break Your Heart

March 27, 2010 – April 30, 2010: Rihanna – Rude Boy

May 1, 2010 – May 14, 2010: B.o.B featuring Bruno Mars – Nothin’ on You

May 15, 2010 – May 21, 2010: Usher featuring will.i.am – OMG

May 22, 2010 – June 18, 2010: Eminem – Not Afraid

June 19, 2010 – July 30, 2010: Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg – California Gurls

July 31, 2010 – September 17, 2010: Eminem featuring Rihanna – Love the Way You Lie

September 18, 2010 – October 1, 2010: Katy Perry – Teenage Dream

October 2, 2010 – October 29, 2010: Bruno Mars – Just the Way You Are

October 30, 2010 – November 12, 2010: Far East Movement featuring The Cataracs and Dev – Like a G6

November 13, 2010 – November 19, 2010: Kesha – We R Who We R

November 20, 2010 – December 3, 2010: Rihanna featuring Drake – What’s My Name?

December 4, 2010 – December 10, 2010: Rihanna – Only Girl (In the World)

December 11, 2010 – December 17, 2010: Pink – Raise Your Glass

December 18, 2010 – January 7, 2011: Katy Perry – Firework

Popular Movies

(according to boxofficemojo)
1. Toy Story 3
2. Alice In Wonderland
3. Iron Man 2
4. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
6. Inception
7. Despicable Me
8. Shrek Forever After
9. How To Train Your Dragon
10. Tangled

Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, Despicable Me, Grown Ups, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 1, How to Train Your Dragon, Inception, Iron Man 2, The Karate Kid, The King’s Speech, The Last Airbender, Little Fockers, Megamind, Shrek Forever After, Shutter Island, Tangles, Toy Story 3, Tron Legacy, True Grit, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

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