2011 History, Trivia and Fun Facts

• Natural Disaster: The Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami killed over 16,000 people and meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant are still being dealt with today.
• Language: "OMG" and "LOL" were added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011 and are now officially words.
• The Top Song was We Found Love by Rihanna
• The Big Movies included Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
• Price of Docker's Men's pants in 2011: $44.99
  Price of Docker's Women's pants in 2011: $34.99
  Chaps men's slippers: $58.00
• The World Population was ~ 6,940,000,000
• The 2011 Fad: Planking
• And... In 2011, contestants in the Davis County, Utah rodeo queen contest were forced to use stick ponies due to an outbreak of horse herpes.

Hayley Atwell, Morena Baccarin, Kate Beckinsale, Ashley Benson, Julie Benz, Beyonce, Alana Blanchard, Emily Blunt, Katrina Bowden, Jordana Brewster, Alison Brie, Rose Byrne, Emilia Clarke, Marion Cotillard, Kaley Cuoco, Penélope Cruz, Miley Cyrus, Alexandra Daddario, Kat Dennings, Cameron Diaz, Jenna Fischer, Karen Gillan, Jessica Gomes, Selena Gomez, Ashley Greene, Anne Hathaway, Lena Headey, Katie Holmes, Julianne Hough, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Scarlett Johansson, January Jones, Rashida Jones, Kim Kardashian, Anna Kournikova, Mila Kunis, Padma Lakshmi, Jennifer Lawrence, Demi Lovato, AJ Michalka, Aly Michalka, Lea Michele, Kate Middleton, Maria Menounos, Olivia Munn, Rachel Nichols, Michelle Obama, Jessica Pare, Katy Perry, Natalie Portman, Bar Refaeli, Margot Robbie, Léa Seydoux, Irina Shayk, Allison Scagliotti, Nicole Scherzinger, Cobie Smulders, Brittany Snow, Sophie Turner, Sofia Vergara, Emma Watson, Kristen Wiig, Michelle Williams

Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Taylor Lautner, Rob Pattinson

María Santos Gorrostieta Salazar, the mayor of Tiquicheo Mexico, survived three assassination attempts and despite her wounds refused to resign. In 2011 her term as mayor ended and her police protection was withdrawn. In November 2012 she was abducted, stabbed and brutally beaten to death.

Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov was declared dead of a heart attack in 2011. She was discovered to have survived the attack when she woke up at her own funeral and then promptly died of a heart attack.

NFL player Dave Duerson committed suicide, shooting himself in the chest. He left a note specifically requesting his brain be used for research into a neurodegenerative disease (CTE) which can be caused by playing football. Researchers did later confirm he had the disease.

Masao Yoshida, the plant manager at Fukushima in 2011, disobeyed orders to stop pumping seawater into the nuclear reactor. This stopped a greater disaster that would have affected millions of lives. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, more than 200 Japanese pensioners, all over 60, volunteered to tackle the nuclear crisis. The organizer said "Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 or 30 years or longer to develop. I probably have 13 to 15 years left to live".

Researchers let 100 paper planes go 23 miles above Germany. Some have since been found in Canada, USA, Australia and South Africa.

A third of all divorce filings of 2011 in the US contained the word 'Facebook'.

The average size of a new American home in 1950 was 983 square feet; by 2011, the average new home was 2,480 square feet. In 1950, an average of 3.37 people lived in each American home; in 2011, that number had shrunk to 2.6 people.

Avery Blandin killed his wife inside the South Carolina Walmart she was working at. Rather than close the store, they chose to just rope off the gore-splattered area while police investigated.

A Swedish man was arrested for attempting to split atoms in his kitchen. Radium, americium and uranium were all found in his home.

If you happened to be in Samoa at the end of 2011, you never experienced December 30, 2011. The country decided to change timezones, thus switching sides of the international date line and skipping December 30th altogether.

550 doctors and physicians took out ads in American newspapers calling for Ronald McDonald's retirement.

The longest film ever made (Modern Times Forever, 2011) has a duration of 240 hours or 10 days, and shows centuries of decay, compressed into the span of the film.

In 2011, Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm were found guilty of colluding with each other to repress employee wages.

Between 2009 and 2015, Usain Bolt won every World Championship and Olympic gold medal in the 100m, 200m and 4×100m relay - except the 2011 100m World Championship, where he had a false start.

Skrillex lost an entire unreleased album because his laptops and hard drives were stolen from his hotel in Milan.

In 2011 a bishop watched a television interview with Boy George, and discovered that an 18th century stolen Cypriot icon was hanging in the singer's living room. Boy George immediately agreed to return the artefact and received a gift in return.

In 1984 women earned 37% of computer science degrees. In 1998, women were at 27%. In 2011, only 12% of CS degrees went to women.

Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murder who killed 77 people in 2011, threatened to go on a hunger strike in prison last year if the government did not upgrade his PS2 to a PS3.

The Florida School for Boys, a reform school shut down in 2011, gained a reputation for abuse, beatings, rapes, torture, and even murder of students by staff. 50 unmarked and undocumented graves have been located on the property using radar.

More middle-aged Canadian men died by suicide in 2011 than by motor vehicle accidents, homicide, and HIV combined.

Four months after approving the merger of Comcast and NBC in 2011, Meredith Attwell Baker, the FCC commissioner who approved the deal, was hired as a lobbyist by Comcast.

Portland Oregon discarded 7.8 MILLION GALLONS of drinking water because a man urinated into the reservoir.

A 75 year old Georgian (not the US state) woman cut off internet access to the whole of Armenia when she severed a single cable while digging with a shovel.

Charlie Sheen was fired his popular TV Show Two and a Half Men.

Nintendo's 3DS, LeapFrog LeapPad, Amazon Kindle Fire

Video Games: Terraria, Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Minecraft, Mario Kart 7

HGTV Magazine began publication

(according to boxofficemojo)
Every film below was either a sequel (9/10) or an old cartoon reboot.
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
4. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
5. Kung Fu Panda 2
6. Fast Five
7. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
8. The Hangover Part II
9. The Smurfs
10. Cars 2
*In 1981, 8 of the top 10 grossing movies were original stories; in 2011, none of the top 10 were original stories.

Bridesmaids, Captain America: The First Avenger, Fast Five, The Hangover Part II, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, The Help, Kung Fu Panda 2, Pirates of the Carabbean: On Stranger Tides, Prometheus, Puss in Boots, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Thor, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, X-Men: First Class