2010 History, Facts and Trivia

Quick Facts from 2010:

• World-Changing Event: The Instagram app became available, and the iPad tablet was released.
• The Top Song was Tik Tok by Ke$ha
• The Movies to Watch include Toy Story 3, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Inception, and Megamind.
• The Most Famous Person in America was probably (tie) David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Conan O’Brien.
• Notable books include The Help by Kathryn Stockett and Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom.
• Price of… Xbox 360 in 2010: $199.00
  Fisher-Price Follow Me Thomas: $39.99
  Whole Pineapple: $3.99
• The Funny Guy was: Kevin Hart
• The Late Night Feud: Jay Leno vs David Letterman vs Conan O’Brien
• The Conversation: Who should get Jay Leno’s ‘Tonight Show’ host job? David Letterman or Conan O’Brien?

2010 History Roundup:

• January 12 – Haiti Devastated by Earthquake: A catastrophic 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, resulting in over 220,000 deaths and leaving approximately 1 million people homeless.
• February 12–28 – Vancouver Hosted Winter Olympics: The 2010 Winter Olympics took place in Vancouver, Canada, featuring 2,566 athletes from 82 nations competing in 86 events.
• April 10 – Polish President Killed in Plane Crash: Polish President Lech Kaczyński, along with 95 others, died in a plane crash near Smolensk, Russia, while en route to a memorial service.
• April 20 – Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Began: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico led to a massive oil spill, becoming one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
• May 2 – Eurozone Agreed to Greek Bailout: The eurozone and the International Monetary Fund agreed to a €110 billion bailout package for Greece to address its severe debt crisis.
• May 6 – UK General Election Resulted in Hung Parliament: The United Kingdom’s general election resulted in a hung parliament, leading to a coalition government between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats.
• June 11 – July 11 – Spain Won FIFA World Cup: Spain secured its first FIFA World Cup title by defeating the Netherlands 1-0 in the final held in South Africa.
• July 25 – WikiLeaks Released Afghan War Documents: WikiLeaks published over 75,000 classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan, sparking global controversy and debate over military transparency.
• August 5 – Chilean Miners Trapped Underground: Thirty-three miners became trapped 700 meters underground in a mine in northern Chile, leading to a dramatic rescue operation.
• August 10 – WHO Declared End of H1N1 Pandemic: The World Health Organization declared the end of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, stating that worldwide flu activity had returned to typical seasonal patterns.
• August 19 – Operation Iraqi Freedom Ended: The United States declared an end to combat operations in Iraq, transitioning to Operation New Dawn to focus on stability operations.
• September 28 – China Surpassed Japan as Second-Largest Economy: China officially surpassed Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy, reflecting its rapid economic growth.
• October 3 – Germany Made Final WWI Reparation Payment: Germany made its final payment of reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, concluding its obligations from World War I.
• October 10 – Netherlands Antilles Dissolved: The Netherlands Antilles was officially dissolved, resulting in new constitutional statuses for its constituent islands.
• October 12 – Chilean Miners Rescued: All 33 trapped Chilean miners were successfully rescued after 69 days underground, in a globally televised event.
• October 22 – WikiLeaks Released Iraq War Logs: WikiLeaks published nearly 400,000 classified U.S. military documents detailing operations in Iraq, revealing previously unreported incidents.
• November 2 – U.S. Midterm Elections Shifted Power: The Republican Party gained control of the House of Representatives in the U.S. midterm elections, leading to a divided Congress.
• November 28 – WikiLeaks Released U.S. Diplomatic Cables: WikiLeaks began releasing a cache of U.S. diplomatic cables, exposing confidential communications and causing diplomatic tensions.
• December 17 – Tunisian Protests Sparked Arab Spring: The self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia led to nationwide protests, eventually inspiring the broader Arab Spring movements across the Middle East and North Africa.
• December 21 – Total Lunar Eclipse Coincided with Solstice: A total lunar eclipse occurred on the same day as the northern winter solstice, a rare astronomical event that last happened in 1638.

Top Ten Baby Names of 2010:

Isabella, Sophia, Emma, Olivia, Ava, Jacob, Ethan, Michael, Jayden, William

Fashion Icons and Sex Symbols:

Katy Perry, Olivia Munn, Eva Mendes,  Kim Kardashian, Blake Lively, Audrina Patridge, Lady Gaga, Lauren Conrad, Beyonce, Amanda Bynes. Bar Refaeli, Olivia Wilde, Marisa Miller, Scarlett Johansson, Milla Jovovich, Christina Aguilera, Nicole Scherzinger, Danica Patrick

The Heartthrob(s):

Leonardo DiCaprio, Hugh Laurie, Taylor Lautner, Zac Efron, Adam Levine, Colin Firth, David Beckham, Justin Bieber, Joe Manganiello, Tim Tebow

“The Quote:”

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

Time Magazine’s Person of the Year:

Mark Zuckerberg

Miss America:

Caressa Cameron

Miss USA:

Rima Fakih

The Scandal:

Jesse James cheated on Sandra Bullock.

US News:

George Washington borrowed The Law of Nations from the New York Society Library and didn’t return it. Mount Vernon estate returned the book in 2010 (221 years overdue) after the Head librarian joked they were “not actively pursuing the overdue fines,” they would appreciate having it back.

During the last 90 years of American history, there have been only two decades with the GDP increasing every year – the 1960s and the 2010s.

World News:

The UK didn’t have televised election debates until 2010.

The largest air traffic shut down since World War II happened in 2010 due to the Eyjafjallajökull eruption. 95,000 flights were canceled in a 6-day period.

Since 2010, the International Space Station has a water purification system (from washing, sweat, even urine), allowing the ISS to reclaim 93% of all liquid on the station.

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

Germany finished paying WWI reparations from the Treaty of Versailles on October 3, 2010, with a final payment of 70 million euros to government and private banks in the US, France, and Britain.

There was a traffic jam in China that started on August 13th, 2010; it lasted two weeks, jammed traffic for over 100km (over 62 miles), and allowed drivers to move roughly 1km a day.

Israel’s weekly state lottery drew exactly the same 6 numbers (,000, with more than 100 people sharing smaller prizes.

The numbers that rolled out during a live television broadcast were (36, 33, 32, 26, 14, 13and the additional ‘strong’ number 2) as the draw 3 weeks earlier, and event statisticians said was a one in four trillion chance.

In 2010, Sweden removed the statute of limitations for prosecuting murder because the 1986 assassination of their prime minister, Olof Palme, had still not been solved. Though 10,000 people have been questioned, the killer remains unknown to this day.

The town of Sh*tterton, England, kept getting its town sign stolen. In 2010, they finally solved the problem by installing a 1.6-ton concrete slab with the town name inscribed on it.

Pop Culture Facts & History:

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.

Barbra Streisand is the only artist to have Billboard 200 #1 albums in six decades, from the 1960s to the 2010s.

The best-selling book of the 2010s was Fifty Shades of Grey. The second best-selling was Fifty Shades Darker. The third best-selling was… Fifty Shades Freed.

MTV was not focusing on music anymore. As part of their re-branding, they dropped the long-running tagline “Music Television” from their logo, officially ending their music video era.

Gift cards worth $27 billion have gone unredeemed between 2010 and 2018.

Kansas State University professor Mark Haub 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.

93 percent of shark attacks worldwide between 1580 and 2010 were on males.

The USPS mistook a Las Vegas replica for the real Statue of Liberty when creating the Lady Liberty “forever” stamp in 2010, resulting in a $3.5m payout to the replica’s sculptor for violating his copyright.

Barbie’s toddler sister Kelly was discontinued in 2010 and replaced with a 6-year-old sister named Chelsea in 2011.

When South Park parodied Family Guy in the 2010 two-part episode ‘Cartoon Wars’, The Simpsons writing staff sent them flowers.

In 2010, the Forest Service made Betty White an honorary forest ranger. White said in previous interviews that she wanted to be a forest ranger as a little girl but that women were not allowed to do that then. When White received the honor, more than 1/3 of Forest Service employees were women.

The ManhattAnt is a unique species of ant found only in New York City. Biologists stumbled upon them in the Broadway medians at 63rd and 76th streets in 2010, and the biologists claim the ant species does not match any of the 13,000 known species. The ants subsist on a diet high in corn.

Bohemian Rhapsody is the only song in the top 100 most streamed songs on Spotify to be published before 2010 (as of 2020).

Altoids once came in sour varieties but were discontinued in 2010.

Encyclopedia Britannica was the oldest continuously published reference source in the English language. The last printed edition was published in 2010. The publisher was at that time 244 years old.

In 2010, an unnamed, unlucky 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.

In 2010, The U.S. Air Force made the fastest computer in the US Defense Department with 1,760 PlayStation 3s.

In 2010, Microsoft banned a user from Xbox Live for putting Fort Gay as his address. When he tried to tell them that Fort Gay exists in West Virginia, it took an appeal from the town’s mayor to correct it.

The 1980 Comedy film Airplane was judged “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” significant and added to the National Film Registry in 2010.

Jon McLoone ran 15 million computer simulations of the game Hangman and discovered that the most difficult word for that program to guess is “Jazz”.

Andre Geim won the (parody prize) 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 recipient of the Ig Nobel and Nobel Prizes.

Doomsday Clock:

6 minutes to midnight, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
2010: “We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons” is the Bulletin’s assessment. Talks between Washington and Moscow for a follow-on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty are nearly complete, and more negotiations for further reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenal are already planned. The dangers posed by climate change are growing, but there are pockets of progress. Most notably, at Copenhagen, the developing and industrialized countries agree to take responsibility for carbon emissions and to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.

The Habit:

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

2010 Toys inducted to the National Toy Hall of Fame:

The Game of Life, Playing cards

2010’s Most Popular Christmas Gifts, Toys and Presents:

Ipad, Zhu Zhu Pets, Nooks

Best Film Oscar Winner:

The Hurt Locker (presented in 2010)

2010 Entries to The National Film Registry:

Airplane! (released in 1980)
All the President’s Men (released in 1976)
The Bargain (released in 1914)
Cry of Jazz (released in 1959)
Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (released in 1967)
The Empire Strikes Back (released in 1980)
The Exorcist (released in 1973)
The Front Page (released in 1931)
Grey Gardens (released in 1976)
I Am Joaquin (released in 1969)
It’s a Gift (released in 1934)
Let There Be Light (released in 1946)
Lonesome (released in 1928)
Make Way for Tomorrow (released in 1937)
Malcolm X (released in 1992)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (released in 1971)
Newark Athlete (released in 1891)
Our Lady of the Sphere (released in 1969)
The Pink Panther (released in 1963)
Preservation of the Sign Language (released in 1913)
Saturday Night Fever (released in 1977)
Study of a River (released in 1996/1997)
Tarantella (released in 1940)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (released in 1945)
A Trip Down Market Street (released in 1906)

The Big 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

2010/11 Most Popular TV Shows:

1. American Idol (Fox)
2. NBC Sunday Night Football (NBC)
3. The Voice (NBC)
4. Modern Family (ABC)
5. Dancing With The Stars (ABC)
6. Big Bang Theory (CBS)
7. Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
8. Survivor: Nicaragua (CBS)
9. NCIS (CBS)
10. Glee (Fox)

2010 United States 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

Sports:

World Series Champions: San Francisco Giants
Super Bowl Champions: New Orleans Saints
NBA Champions: Los Angeles Lakers
Stanley Cup Champs: Chicago Blackhawks
U.S. Open Golf Graeme McDowell
U.S. Tennis: (Men/Ladies) Rafael Nadal/ Kim Clijsters
Wimbledon (Men/Women): Rafael Nadal/Serena Williams
NCAA Football Champions: Villanova Wildcats
NCAA Basketball Champions: Duke
Kentucky Derby: Super Saver
World Cup (Soccer): Spain

The longest tennis match took place at Wimbledon 2010 when John Isner of the United States beat Nicolas Mahut of France 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 70-68 in a match that lasted 11 hours and five minutes, played over three days, June 22, 23 and 24.