![]() |
2014 Annual History Facts |
|
---|
World Series Champions |
San Francisco Giants |
Superbowl Champions |
Seattle Seahawks |
National Basketball Association Champions |
San Antonio Spurs |
NHL Stanley Cup Champions |
Los Angeles Kings |
US Open Golf |
Martin Kaymer |
US Open Tennis (Men/Ladies) |
Marin Cilic/Serena Williams |
Wimbledon (Men/Women) |
Novak Djokovic/Petra Kvitová |
FIFA World Cup Soccer |
Germany Before the FIFA World Cup 2014 Semi Final Match in which they lost 7-1 to Germany, Brazil hadn’t lost a single match at a home stadium in competitive matches since 1975. |
NCAA Football Champions |
Ohio State |
NCAA Basketball Champions |
Connecticut |
Bowl Games |
Orange Bowl: January 3, 2014 – Clemson over Ohio State Rose Bowl: January 1, 2014 – Michigan State over Stanford Sugar Bowl: January 2, 2014 – Oklahoma over Alabama Puppy Bowl X: February 2, 2014 Most Valuable Puppy: Loren (a Brittany) |
Kentucky Derby |
California Chrome |
Westminster Kennel Best in Show Dog |
Afterall Painting The Sky |
Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year |
Ebola Fighters |
Miss America |
Nina Davuluri |
Miss USA |
Nia Sanchez (Nevada) |
Fashion Icons and Movie Stars |
Erin Andrews, Alessandra Ambrosio, Gillian Anderson, Hayley Atwell, Morena Baccarin, Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Ashley Benson, Julie Benz, Tia Blanco, Alison Brie, Emilia Clarke, Lauren Cohan, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Kaley Cuoco, Alexandra Daddario, Brooklyn Decker, Kat Dennings, Zooey Deschanel, Gal Gadot, Karen Gillan, Ellie Goulding, Ariana Grande, Gigi Hadid, Lena Headey, Sarah Hyland, Katie Holmes, Samantha Hoopes, Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Scarlett Johansson, Victoria Justice, Jennifer Lawrence, Evangeline Lilly, Demi Lovato, Tatiana Maslany, Rose Mciver, AJ Michalka, Aly Michalka, Kate Middleton, Olivia Munn, Rachel Nichols, Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Olsen, Rita Ora, Katy Perry, Emily Ratajkowski, Bar Refaeli, Rihanna, Margot Robbie, Emmy Rossum, Ronda Rousey, Zoe Saldana, Nicole Scherzinger, Léa Seydoux, Shakira, Taylor Swift, Ivanka Trump, Sophie Turner, Sofia Vergara, Emma Watson, Deborah Ann Woll |
2014 Pop Culture History |
In 2014, Betty White was awarded the Guinness World Record for “Longest TV Career for an Entertainer (Female),” with a 1939 debut. The US Murder rate in 2014 is less than 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. 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 bullwhip 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, blocking airflow. This was the second recall- the first was in 2011 for the 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 the public domain on January 1, 2014, if copyright terms in the United States had not been extended in the late 1990s. Currently, 2033 is the next date to look for possible 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, 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 of a “random man & his dog” on the beach to Instagram. 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, 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, a 17-time world champion fin swimmer, heard that a bus crashed in the water. He went into the deep water and rescued 20 people from drowning. Ten years later, he saved 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, published in 1937. In 2014, only seven humans were killed by sharks, while humans killed an estimated 63,000,000 sharks. 111-year-old Alexander Imich was a survivor of 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 ten 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 the buyer premium), breaking the record previously held by a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R race car |
RIP, Scandals, Sad and Odd News |
Pablo Escobar’s hitman, John J. Velásquez, responsible for 3,500 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, not to move and stay put. Three hundred four passengers and crew members died in the disaster. In 2014, more people died in Mexico due to 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, mainly 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 could not get rid of them. Greenpeace ruined the ancient South American UNESCO World Heritage Site- The Nazca Lines, for their own publicity stunt. South Korean Christians put up a Christmas tree visible from the North Korean Border. North Korea called it a “tool for psychological warfare” and threatened to bomb it. Charles Manson was granted a marriage license, but the wedding was canceled 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 six family members from his burning house before finally succumbing to the fire 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 Russia in 1916 so that Russia would safely keep the Romanian Treasure in the Kremlin until the war’s end. 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. |
Firsts and the Biggest Christmas Gifts |
New Nintendo 3DS XL Dr. Oz’s The Good Life began publication |
The Habits |
The Ice Bucket Challenge |
2014 Biggest Television Shows |
(according to Nielsen TV Research) |
Popular Music Artists |
The Biggest Pop Artists of 2014 include: Ariana Grande, Beyonce, The Black Keys, Blake Shelton, Coldplay, Eminem, Florida Georgia Line, Frozen Soundtrack, Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1, Iggy Azalea, J. Cole, Jason Aldean, John Legend, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, Miley Cyrus, One Direction, Pharrell Williams, Pitbull, Taylor Swift, Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, Weird Al Yankovic, Wiz Khalifa (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 2014 |
December 21, 2013 – January 17, 2014: Eminem featuring Rihanna – The Monster
January 18, 2014 – February 7, 2014: Pitbull featuring Kesha – Timber February 8, 2014 – March 7, 2014: Katy Perry featuring Juicy J – Dark Horse March 8, 2014 – May 16, 2014: Pharrell Williams – Happy May 17, 2014 – June 6, 2014: John Legend – All of Me June 7, 2014 – July 25, 2014: Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX – Fancy July 26, 2014 – September 5, 2014: Magic! – Rude September 6, 2014 – September 19, 2014: Taylor Swift – Shake It Off September 20, 2014 – November 28, 2014: Meghan Trainor – All About That Bass November 29, 2014 – January 16, 2015: Taylor Swift – Blank Space |
Popular Movies |
(according to boxofficemojo) American Sniper, Big Hero 6, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians 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 |