2014 History, Trivia and Fun Facts

• The Missing Airplane: Malaysian Airliner MH370 vanished without a trace, with 239 people on board.
• The Top Song was Happy by Pharrel Williams
• The Big Movies included American Sniper, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and Guardians of the Galaxy
• Price of Canon Coolpix Camera in 2014: $199.99
  Price of a daily paper: $1.00
  Advil liquigels: $429.00/20
• The World Population was ~ 7,170,000,000
• Grand Budapest Hotel was shot at 1.37, 1.85 and 2.35:1 to inform the viewer where he is in the timeline, which alternates between 1985, 1968 and the 1930s.
• Famed molecular biologist James Watson put his 1962 Nobel Prize up for auction in 2014 due to financial hardships caused by a controversial statement in 2007. It sold for $4.1 million, and was promptly returned to him by the buyer.
• And... The Bermuda Land Snail was thought to have gone extinct in the 70s. In 2014, many were rediscovered in a Hamilton city alleyway. The snails had colonized the alley early on and the surrounding city shielded them from the threats that wiped out the rest of the species.

In 2014, Betty White was awarded the Guiness World Record for "Longest TV Career for an Entertainer (Female)", with a 1939 debut.

The US Murder rate in 2014 is less that half of what it was in 1990, and far lower than the 70's and 80's.

CVS stopped selling tobacco products in favor of promoting good health.

An 89 year old WW2 veteran, Bernard Shaw went missing from his nursing home in the UK. It turned out that he went to Normandy for the 70th anniversary of D-Day landings against the nursing home's orders. He left the home wearing a grey mack concealing the war medals on his jacket.

"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.

The Bermuda Land Snail was thought to have gone extinct in the 70s. In 2014, many were rediscovered in a Hamilton city alleyway. The snails had colonized the alley early on and the surrounding city shielded them from the threats that wiped out the rest of the species.

Original Top Model winner Adrianne Curry fended off an attacker with a bull whip 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 inside, blocking airflow. This was the second recall- the first was in 2011 for the exact same reason.

Cheetos made a fragrance called Cheeteau 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 public domain on 1 January 2014 if copyright terms in the United States had not been extended in the late 1990s. At this moment, 2033 is the next date to look for possibel 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, in order 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 to Instagram of a "random man & his dog" on the beach. 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 in history, 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 who was a 17-time world champion finswimmer and heard that a bus crashed in the water. He went in 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, which was published in 1937.

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

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 10 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 Supurb Owl" in 2014.

Cost of a 30 second Superbowl ad: 4.25 Million dollars.

A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO serial number 3851GT sold at Bonham's Quail Auction on August 14, 2014 for US $34,650,000.00 ($38,115,000.00 including buyers premium), breaking the record previously held by a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R race car

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 were not able to get rid of them.

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

South Korean Christians put up 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 cancelled 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 6 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.

Marriott was fined $600,000 by the FCC in 2014 for blocking customers' personal Wi-Fi so customers were forced to pay for internet.

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, due to not the entire audience standing. The person he signaled out was in a wheelchair.

Romania shipped a reputed 93.4 Tons of gold to Rusia in 1916 so that Russia would safe keep the Romanian Treasure in the Kremlin until the end of the war. 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.

New Nintendo 3DS XL

Dr. Oz The Good Life began publication

(according to Nielsen TV Research)
1. Sunday Night Football (NBC)
2. The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
3. NCIS (CBS)
4. NCIS: New Orleans (CBS)
5. Empire (FOX)
6. Thursday Night Football (CBS)
7. Dancing With The Stars (ABC)
8. Criminal Minds (CBS)
9. Madam Secretary (CBS)
10. Scandal (ABC)

(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

American Sniper, Big Hero 6, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gaurdians of the Galaxy, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, The LEGO Movie, Maleficent, Transformers: Age of Extinction, X-Men: Days of Future Past