2007 Annual History Facts

2007 Annual History Facts

  • The Top Song was Crank That (Soulja Boy) by Soulja Boy Tell’em
  • The Big Movies included Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Transformers, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
  • Price of a postage stamp in 2007: 41 cents
    iPhone was released at $599.00
    Pepperidge Farm Nine Grain bread loaf: $3.29
  • The World Population was ~ 6,602,000,000
  • Time Magazine called the iPhone the “Invention of the Year.”
  • One ounce of gold value: $836.50
  • The Viral Phrase: “Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” when police tasered Andrew Meyer after asking a pointed question at then-presidential candidate John Kerry.
  • And… Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards said he had snorted his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine.

World Series Champions

Boston Red Sox

Superbowl XLI Champions

Indianapolis Colts

National Basketball Association Champions

San Antonio Spurs

NHL Stanley Cup Champions

Anaheim Mighty Ducks

US Open Golf

Angel Cabrera

US Open Tennis (Men Ladies)

Roger Federer/Justine Henin

Wimbledon (Men/Women)

Roger Federer/ Venus Williams

NCAA Football Champions

LSU

NCAA Basketball Champions

Florida

Bowl Games

Orange Bowl: January 2, 2007 – Louisville over Wake Forest
Rose Bowl: January 1, 2007 – USC over Michigan
Sugar Bowl: January 3, 2007 – LSU over Notre Dame
Puppy Bowl III: February 4, 2007 Most Valuable Puppy: Bomber (a Samoyed)

Kentucky Derby

Street Sense

Westminster Kennel Best in Show Dog

Felicity’s Diamond Jim

Time Magazine’s Man of the Year

Vladimir Putin

Miss America

Lauren Nelson (Lawton, OK)

Miss USA

Rachel Smith (Nashville, Tennessee)

Fashion Icons and Movie Stars

Jessica Alba, Christina Aguilera, Elizabeth Banks, Kate Beckinsale, Julie Benz, Jessica Biel, Rachel Bilson, Sophia Bush, Rose Byrne, Kari Byron, Lacey Chabert, Emilia Clarke, Elisha Cuthbert, Alexandra Daddario, Cameron Diaz, Natalie Dormer, Hilary Duff, Carmen Electra, Fergie, Jenna Fischer, Megan Fox, Nelly Furtado, Gal Gadot, Jennifer Garner, Maggie Grace, Katherine Heigl, Jennifer Hudson, Kate Hudson, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, January Jones, Kim Kardashian, Minka Kelly, Jaime King, Heidi Klum, Keira Knightley, Beyonce Knowles, Ali Larter, Evangeline Lilly, Padma Lakshmi, Ali Larter, Avril Lavigne, Adriana Lima, Eva Longoria, Lindsay Lohan, Kate Mara, Rose McGowan, Eva Mendes, Maria Menounos, Marisa Miller, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Minnillo, Olivia Munn, Bar Refaeli, Rihanna, Rebecca Romijn, Maria Sharapova, Nicole Scherzinger, Shakira, Ashlee Simpson, Jessica Simpson, Amy Smart, Yvonne Strahovski, Carrie Underwood, Sara Jean Underwood

“The Quote”

“I personally believe the US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe they should our education over here in the US should help the US or should help South Africa or should help the Iraq and Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.”
– Miss South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin Upton
(to be fair, with nerves and a slightly convoluted question, it could happen to anyone)

2007 Pop Culture History

After The Man From Earth was illegally shared via BitTorrent, the producer publicly thanked the file sharers because it “lifted the film profile far beyond the financier’s expectations”.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had a contest to complete the phrase “as Canadian as ____” (by analogy with “as American as apple pie”). The winner: “as Canadian as possible, under the circumstances”.

Oklahoma declared watermelon a vegetable and made it their official state vegetable.

Singer-songwriter Prince started purging unauthorized uses of his work online in 2007 after a mother uploaded a 29-second video of her children dancing to Let’s Go Crazy. The reason given was he wanted to “reclaim his art on the internet.”

In July, convenience store chain 7-Eleven converted 11 stores in the United States and one in Canada (Coquitlam) into Kwik-E-Marts to promote The Simpsons Movie.

Devin Gaines earned five bachelor’s degrees with honors simultaneously at the University of Connecticut, averaging 24 credits/semester and 3 hours of sleep/night. He drowned in 2007 because he didn’t know how to swim.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg commissioned David Choe to paint murals for their office. Although he thought the Facebook business model was “ridiculous and pointless,” Choe, an avid gambler, chose to receive stock instead of cash. His shares were valued at $200 million by Facebook’s IPO.

Serbian vandals drove a stake into former president Slobodan Milosevic’s grave to prevent him from returning as a vampire.

When Android was unveiled in 2007, Nokia was quoted as saying, “we don’t see this as a threat,” a member of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile team stated, “I don’t understand the impact that they are going to have.”

The Chinese Yongle encyclopedia, completed in 1408, was the biggest encyclopedia ever created until Wikipedia finally surpassed it in 2007.

According to a study from researchers at the University of Copenhagen, all blue-eyed people can be traced back to one person who lived near the Black Sea 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The Mona Lisa has no visible eyelashes or eyebrows. An engineer used high-resolution scans to show the painting was initially painted with clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes, and they gradually disappeared over time, possibly because of overcleaning.

Nerd Legend Freddy Andersson completed Super Mario Bros 3 in only 11 minutes and 3 seconds.

Leonardo DiCaprio/Warner Bros. won a bidding war against Brad Pitt/Paramount Pictures for the rights to Jordan Belfort’s memoir The Wolf of Wall Street.

A Bowhead whale was discovered with the end of a harpoon embedded in its neck from a previous hunt. It was found that the harpoon tip was originally manufactured in 1890, indicating the whale had survived a human attack more than a century ago.

Todd Davis, CEO of LifeLock, who used his actual Social Security number in LifeLock advertisements, was a victim of identity theft 13 times in 2007 and 2008 alone.

Cost of a Superbowl ad in 2007: $2,600,000

Holland Electro Wave TV created a combo Microwave and TV with a DVD player.

André Brugiroux was named “greatest traveler on Earth”, after visiting every country and territory in the world between 1955 and 2005.

Two armed intruders stormed their way into a nuclear plant to store weapons-grade uranium from South Africa’s decommissioned arsenal. The coordinated assault was thwarted by an off-duty firefighter, a plant employee, and their dog.

The House of Representatives of Oklahoma declared the watermelon, a fruit, their state vegetable.

Siberia experienced orange snow. This orange snow was ruled to be most likely caused by a heavy sandstorm in neighboring Kazakhstan. Tests on the snow revealed numerous sand and clay dust particles and a high iron content, which were blown into Russia in the upper stratosphere.

Pluto, by law, is still a planet in New Mexico whenever it passes over the state.

In 1965, Bob Dylan said that if he ever sold out to a commercial interest, it would be “ladies’ garments.” In 2007, he and his music appeared in a Victoria’s Secret commercial.

According to a study by the University of Southern Denmark, the secret to happiness is low life expectations.

Rickrolling was invented. This is when you click on something online, and instead get the video for Rick Asley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.

RIP, Scandals, Sad and Odd News

A parking garage in Triberg, Germany, ended up with two parking bays that had a peculiar shape and required a complicated parking maneuver to park there. Officials declared them Men’s Parking Spaces to discourage unskilled drivers from attempting the maneuver.

Catalan activist Enric Duran took out 68 loans from 39 banks between 2006-2008, with no collateral, and no intention of repaying, and used the money to finance activist movements as an act of ‘financial civil disobedience’.

In 2007, toasters killed 87 times more people than sharks.

Philip Workman – executed in Tennessee in 2007 – requested that a vegetarian pizza be given to a homeless person instead of a last meal, but was denied. The next day, homeless shelters received vegetarian pizzas from people nationwide, honoring Workman’s previous meal request.

Disneyland had to close the “It’s a Small World” ride for several months in 2007 for renovations because people were too fat for the ride, and the boats were regularly getting stuck.

A study was released in 2007, which emphasized that Generation X’s men made less (by 12%) than their fathers had at that same age in 1974, thus reversing a historical trend.

Paris Hilton spent 23 days in jail for her DUI.

Anna Nicole Smith died from a drug overdose at age 39.

Britney Spears shaved off her hair.

Lindsey Lohan, as of 2007, went to rehab 3 times.

Howie Hubler, a Morgan Stanley bond trader, is responsible for the most significant loss on trades in history: $9 billion in 2007 during the housing market collapse. He was allowed to resign instead of being fired in October 2007, receiving $10 million in back pay upon leaving.

CBS released a CSI toy with a fingerprint dusting powder containing up to 5% asbestos. Finally, 20 months after an asbestos victims organization made this fact public a recall was carried out.

China tested a missile and shot down one of its satellites, accidentally creating 2,087 pieces of space debris on crazy orbits, all of which must be tracked to avoid space collisions.

Children were shown The Hills Have Eyes 2 instead of Megamind in a Massachusetts theater. The opening scene of THHE2 features a chained naked woman giving birth to a deformed baby.

Mika Brzezinski (an MSNBC news anchor) refused to report on the lead story of Paris Hilton’s release from jail, then after being pressured again to do the story, she attempted to light the script on fire on live television.

Boston Police Department shut down waterways, highways, and bridges after mistakenly identifying battery-powered LED placards of characters from the Adult Swim show Aqua Teen Hunger Force as improvised explosive devices. The devices were being used as a guerrilla marketing campaign.

Firsts and the Biggest Christmas Gifts

Nintendo DS , Sony PS3

Video Games: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Wii Fit

The Habits

Finishing up the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Watching Keyboard Cat online.

2007/8 Biggest Television Shows

(according to Nielsen TV Research)
1. American Idol (FOX)
2. Dancing With the Stars (Fall, ABC)
3. Desperate Housewives (ABC)
4. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS)
5. House (FOX)
6. Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
7. Sunday Night Football (NBC)
8. CSI: Miami (CBS)
9. NCIS (CBS)
10. Without a Trace (CBS)

Popular Music Artists

The Biggest Pop Artists of 2007 include
Akon, Avril Lavigne, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Common, Daughtry, Dreamgirls Soundtrack, Fergie, High School Musical II Soundtrack, Jay-Z, John Mayer, Josh Groban, Kelly Clarkson, Maroon 5, Michael Bublé, Norah Jones, Pink, Rihanna, Timbaland

(Data is compiled from various 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 2007

December 16, 2006 – February 23, 2007: Beyoncé – Irreplaceable

February 24, 2007 – March 2, 2007: Nelly Furtado – Say It Right

March 3, 2007 – March 9, 2007: Justin Timberlake – What Goes Around… Comes Around

March 10, 2007 – March 23, 2007: MIMS – This Is Why I’m Hot

March 24, 2007 – April 6, 2007: Fergie featuring Ludacris – Glamorous

April 7, 2007 – April 20, 2007: Akon – Don’t Matter

April 21, 2007 – May 4, 2007: Timbaland featuring Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake – Give It To Me

May 5, 2007 – May 11, 2007: Avril Lavigne – Girlfriend

May 12, 2007 – May 25, 2007: Maroon 5 – Makes Me Wonder

May 26, 2007 – June 8, 2007: T-Pain featuring Yung Joc – Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)

June 9, 2007 – July 27, 2007: Rihanna featuring Jay-Z – Umbrella

July 28, 2007 – August 10, 2007: Plain White T’s – Hey There Delilah

August 11, 2007 – September 7, 2007: Sean Kingston – Beautiful Girls

September 8, 2007 – September 14, 2007: Fergie – Big Girls Don’t Cry

September 15, 2007 – September 28, 2007: Soulja Boy – Crank That (Soulja Boy)

September 29, 2007 – November 9, 2007: Kanye West – Stronger

November 10, 2007 – November 30, 2007: Chris Brown featuring T-Pain – Kiss Kiss

December 1, 2007 – January 4, 2008: Alicia Keys – No One

Popular Movies

(according to boxofficemojo)
1. Spider-Man 3
2. Shrek the Third
3. Transformers
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix
6. I Am Legend
7. The Bourne Ultimatum
8. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
9. Alvin and the Chipmunks
10. 300

300, Aliens Vs. Predator – Requiem, Alvin and the Chipmunks, American Gangster, Bee Movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, Enchanted, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Live Free or Die Hard, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Knocked Up, I Am Legend, Juno, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Ratatouille, Rush Hour 3, Shrek the Third, The Simpsons Movie, Spider-Man 3, Superbad, Transformers, Wild Hogs

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