100 Fun Facts About 2016

Which drug lord was recaptured in January 2016 after escaping a Mexican maximum-security prison?

Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán had fled in July 2015 through a tunnel nearly a mile long that opened in his cell's shower; a secret interview he gave actor Sean Penn then helped the authorities track him down.

Tsai Ing-wen was elected the first female president of which country in January 2016?

Taiwan elected Tsai Ing-wen in a landslide; when she would not endorse Beijing's 'one China' formula, the 1992 Consensus, China suspended official contact with her government that June.

Which mosquito-borne virus did the WHO declare a global public health emergency in February 2016?

Zika had been linked to a surge of babies born with unusually small heads, and several top golfers, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day among them, skipped that summer's Olympics over it.

In 2016 Pope Francis became the first pope to meet the head of which church?

The Russian Orthodox Church and Rome settled on neutral ground: Francis and Patriarch Kirill met in an airport lounge in Havana, where the Pope stopped on his way to Mexico, and signed a joint declaration.

Barack Obama's March 2016 trip to Cuba was the first by a sitting US president in 88 years, since whom?

Calvin Coolidge went to Havana in 1928 to address an international conference, the only trip abroad of his presidency; Obama's visit took in a baseball game watched beside Raúl Castro.

The March 2016 suicide bombings at Zaventem airport and a metro station struck which city?

Brussels was hit four days after police there captured Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris attacks; Belgian investigators believed his arrest pushed the bombers to strike early.

The 11.5 million leaked documents published in April 2016 became known as what?

The Panama Papers came from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca; two days after they appeared, Iceland's prime minister said he would resign over an offshore company he had never declared.

Which Beyoncé album was released in April 2016, premiering as an hour-long HBO film?

Lemonade could be streamed only on Tidal, the service Beyoncé co-owned, for exactly three years; it reached Spotify and the other platforms in April 2019.

Which club won the 2015–16 Premier League after starting the season at 5000–1 odds?

Leicester City had spent months at the bottom of the table the season before; they were confirmed champions on May 2 without kicking a ball, when Tottenham drew 2–2 at Chelsea.

Who was elected President of the Philippines in May 2016?

Rodrigo Duterte, long-time mayor of Davao, campaigned on a vow to wipe out crime within six months; the police drug war that followed killed more than 6,000 people by the government's own count.

Jamala won the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest for which country with '1944', a song about Stalin's wartime deportations?

Ukraine's Jamala drew on the story of her great-grandmother, a Crimean Tatar deported with her five children; Russian politicians urged the organisers to reject the song, but it competed and won.

Harambe, the gorilla shot in May 2016 after a boy entered his enclosure, lived at which zoo?

Cincinnati Zoo staff shot Harambe to protect a three-year-old who had fallen into the gorilla moat; the zoo was then trolled so heavily that it deleted its Twitter account that August.

The world's longest and deepest railway tunnel opened in June 2016 in which country?

Switzerland put the project to its voters, who backed it in a 1992 referendum; the 57 km Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Alps was built to shift freight from trucks to trains.

Which team won UEFA Euro 2016, beating the hosts in the final?

Portugal had drawn all three group games and scraped through in third place; in the final, with Cristiano Ronaldo off injured, substitute Eder beat hosts France from long range in extra time.

In the June 2016 Brexit referendum, which of the UK's four nations voted most strongly to remain in the EU?

Scotland voted 62% to 38% to stay, and within hours First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said a second independence referendum was 'highly likely'.

NASA's Juno spacecraft entered orbit around which planet in July 2016?

Jupiter, in Roman myth, hid his mischief behind a veil of clouds that only his wife Juno could see through, so NASA gave her name to the probe sent to look beneath the planet's cloud tops.

Which augmented-reality mobile game did the developer Niantic release in July 2016?

Pokémon Go added $9 billion to Nintendo's market value in five days; the shares then plunged when Nintendo pointed out that it had neither made the game nor earned much from it.

A truck attack during Bastille Day celebrations in July 2016 killed 86 people in which French city?

Nice: the 19-tonne lorry ploughed into crowds watching the holiday fireworks on the seafront Promenade des Anglais, and stopped only when police shot the driver dead.

A faction of which country's armed forces staged a failed coup on July 15–16, 2016?

Turkey's President Erdoğan, away on holiday when the tanks rolled, called a TV station by FaceTime and urged supporters onto the streets; by morning the rebel soldiers were surrendering.

Japan's Funai Electric made the world's last machines for which home-video format in July 2016?

VHS had long since beaten Sony's Betamax in the format war; Funai, the last company still building its recorders, gave up in 2016, blaming falling sales and a shortage of parts.

The 2016 Summer Olympics were the first held on which continent?

South America's first Games, in Rio de Janeiro, were also the first Summer Olympics held entirely in the host country's winter, because August falls in the southern cold season.

Which Brazilian president was impeached and removed by the Senate in August 2016?

Dilma Rousseff was removed by 61 votes to 20 for manipulating the federal budget, which ended 13 years of Workers' Party rule; her vice president, Michel Temer, served out the term.

OSIRIS-REx, launched in September 2016, was NASA's first mission to return samples from what?

An asteroid: the probe touched Bennu for only a few seconds in 2020 and scooped up so much rubble that rocks wedged its collector's flap open, letting bits of the sample drift off into space.

Two Van Gogh paintings found in 2016 had been stolen in 2002 from a museum in which city?

Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum was raided by thieves with a ladder and sledgehammers; Italian police found both paintings in a house near Naples tied to a Camorra drug gang.

Hurricane Matthew killed more than 500 people in October 2016 in which Caribbean country?

Haiti took the storm's first landfall, the strongest hurricane to strike it in over fifty years; local officials put the toll far above the government's count, and a cholera outbreak worsened in its wake.

Which team won the 2016 World Series, ending a 108-year championship drought?

The Chicago Cubs trailed three games to one, then took Game 7 by 8–7 in ten innings, after a 17-minute rain delay in which outfielder Jason Heyward gathered the team for a pep talk.

Which country abruptly demonetised its high-value banknotes in November 2016?

India's prime minister Narendra Modi declared the 500- and 1,000-rupee notes, about 86% of the cash in circulation, void from midnight, hoping to flush out untaxed 'black money'; long bank queues followed.

LaMia Flight 2933 crashed in 2016 carrying which Brazilian club to the biggest match in its history?

Chapecoense were flying to the first leg of the Copa Sudamericana final when the plane ran out of fuel near Medellín; their opponents, Atlético Nacional, asked that they be given the title, and they were.

Who became King of Thailand in December 2016 after his father's 70-year reign?

Vajiralongkorn asked for time to mourn before taking the throne, so the 96-year-old former prime minister Prem Tinsulanonda served as regent for the seven weeks in between.

Which four chemical elements were officially named in November 2016?

Nihonium, moscovium, tennessine and oganesson follow the tradition of honouring a place or a scientist: Japan, the Moscow region, Tennessee and the physicist Yuri Oganessian.

Which songwriter won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Bob Dylan said nothing in public for days after the announcement and then skipped the Stockholm ceremony, where Patti Smith sang his 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' in his place.

A trial in Guinea, reported in December 2016, produced the first proven vaccine against which disease?

Ebola: doctors vaccinated the 'ring' of contacts around each new patient, and of nearly 6,000 people given the shot, none caught the disease ten days or more later.

Which team won Super Bowl 50, beating the Carolina Panthers 24–10?

Denver Broncos won with defence: linebacker Von Miller was the game's MVP, and quarterback Peyton Manning retired a month later, the first starter to win Super Bowls with two different teams.

Which film won Best Picture at the 88th Academy Awards in February 2016?

Spotlight took the top prize with only one other Oscar, for its screenplay, on a night when Mad Max: Fury Road won six awards and The Revenant three.

Which Supreme Court justice died in February 2016, leaving a seat open through the election?

Antonin Scalia's seat sat empty for more than a year: Senate Republicans refused to hold hearings on Barack Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, and Donald Trump then filled it with Neil Gorsuch.

Which NBA star scored 60 points in his final game in April 2016?

Kobe Bryant took a career-high 50 shots to get there and outscored the Utah Jazz 23–21 by himself in the fourth quarter as the Lakers won 101–96.

Which NBA team won a record 73 regular-season games in 2015–16?

Golden State Warriors beat the 72 wins of the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls, then let slip a three-games-to-one lead in the Finals, something no team had done before.

Which musical won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

Hamilton began with a biography Lin-Manuel Miranda read on holiday; invited to the White House in 2009 to perform songs from an earlier show, he sang its future opening number instead.

Prince died in April 2016 at Paisley Park, his home and studio complex in which US state?

Minnesota: Paisley Park, in Chanhassen near Minneapolis, opened to the public as a museum that October, and for a time an urn shaped like the building held Prince's ashes at its entrance.

Which boxing legend died in Scottsdale, Arizona, in June 2016 at the age of 74?

Muhammad Ali had helped plan his own funeral years ahead: a procession through the streets of Louisville, his hometown, and a public memorial with eulogies from Bill Clinton and his old friend Billy Crystal.

Which NHL team beat the San Jose Sharks in six games to win the 2016 Stanley Cup?

Pittsburgh Penguins fired their coach in December with the season drifting; under his replacement, Mike Sullivan, they won the Cup, and a year later became the first repeat champions since 1998.

Which team won the 2016 NBA title, ending its city's 52-year wait for a major championship?

Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James, raised in nearby Akron, had left for Miami in 2010 and come back in 2014; two years later he delivered the title that ended the so-called Cleveland sports curse.

Which country topped the medal table at the 2016 Summer Olympics with 46 gold medals?

United States athletes won 46 golds and 121 medals in all; the surprise came just behind them, where Great Britain finished second in golds, ahead of China.

Which smartphone did Samsung discontinue in October 2016 after reports of it catching fire?

Galaxy Note 7 batteries kept catching fire, even in the replacement phones Samsung handed out, so it recalled every unit and stopped production for good two months after launch.

Before Donald Trump in 2016, who last won the presidency while losing the popular vote?

George W. Bush took Florida, and with it the White House, by 537 votes after the Supreme Court halted the state's recount; Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by almost 2.9 million votes nationwide.

Which actress died on December 27, 2016, one day before her mother Debbie Reynolds?

Carrie Fisher fell ill on a flight from London four days earlier; her mother suffered a stroke the day after she died, and was entombed with some of her daughter's ashes.

Which 2016 release became, at the time, the highest-grossing R-rated film ever worldwide?

Deadpool got its green light only after test footage leaked online in 2014 and fans raved; made for $58 million, it took more than $780 million worldwide.

Which two animated films each grossed over $1 billion worldwide in 2016?

Finding Dory and Zootopia each passed $1 billion; Zootopia got there after its makers reversed the story late in 2014, making the rabbit Judy the lead in place of the fox Nick.

Which Chainsmokers song, featuring Halsey, spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2016?

Closer was the first No. 1 for both the duo and Halsey and the year's longest-running chart-topper; two years earlier the Chainsmokers were known for '#Selfie', a satirical dance track.

David Bowie's final album, released two days before his death in January 2016, was titled what?

Blackstar came out on Bowie's 69th birthday; he had kept his 18-month illness with cancer private, and his producer Tony Visconti called the album a parting gift to his fans.

The British polar ship that a 2016 online poll voted to name Boaty McBoatface instead honors which famous Briton?

David Attenborough got the honor after ministers set aside the runaway poll winner, which drew 124,109 votes. The joke name went to one of the ship's remotely controlled submersibles.

LIGO scientists announced in February 2016 the first direct detection of what, produced by two merging black holes?

Gravitational waves from the merger had crossed about 1.4 billion light-years before reaching Earth in September 2015. Einstein predicted them in 1916 but doubted they could ever be detected.

Which nation, co-managed by a practicing dentist, knocked England out of Euro 2016 in the round of 16?

Iceland was playing in its first major tournament and went on to a quarter-final against host nation France. Joint manager Heimir Hallgrímsson kept working as a dentist in his home village.

Which abolitionist did the US Treasury say in April 2016 would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill?

Harriet Tubman had topped a 2015 grassroots poll of more than 600,000 people on which woman should appear on US paper money. The plan moved Jackson, a slaveholder, to the back of the bill.

Which animal did the IUCN move from endangered to vulnerable in 2016 after a survey counted 1,864 in the wild?

The giant panda's change of status was taken as a sign that decades of conservation were working. Chinese authorities waited until July 2021 to make the same change themselves.

Water in the diving pool at the 2016 Rio Olympics made headlines by turning which color after a cleaning mix-up?

Green water appeared after 160 liters of hydrogen peroxide were mistakenly added to the pool during cleaning. Officials had first blamed heat and a lack of wind in the venue.

In May 2016, Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit which Japanese city?

Hiroshima received the visit 71 years after the US atomic bombing. Obama paid tribute to the victims at the Peace Memorial Park alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Which viral craze of late 2016 was filmed by groups, often to Rae Sremmurd's song Black Beatles?

The Mannequin Challenge had crowds stand frozen in place while a camera moved among them. Its spread sent Black Beatles to number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Which app for sharing six-second looping videos did Twitter announce in October 2016 that it was shutting down?

Vine had cost Twitter a reported $30 million in 2012, just four months after the startup was founded. By mid-2016 more than half of its biggest creators had quit for rival platforms.

Which Cold War leader, the target of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, died in November 2016 aged 90?

Fidel Castro was cremated and his ashes were interred in Santiago de Cuba on 4 December. Cuba declared nine days of national mourning, with public events and activities halted.

Who became Britain's second female prime minister in July 2016, less than three weeks after the EU referendum?

Theresa May was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II on 13 July, two days after becoming Conservative leader. Margaret Thatcher was the only woman to hold the office before her.

Who became the first woman nominated for US president by a major party at a July 2016 convention in Philadelphia?

Hillary Clinton went on to become the first woman to win the national popular vote for president, while losing the Electoral College.

Which actor won his first Oscar in February 2016, after five earlier nominations, for the survival drama The Revenant?

Leonardo DiCaprio's nominations had stretched across two decades, back to a supporting nod at age 19 for What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Which American gymnast won four gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics, including the individual all-around title?

Simone Biles became the first woman in 32 years to win four gymnastics golds at one Games, and added a bronze on the balance beam.

Who was the unanimous MVP of the 2016 NBA Finals, the first in which a team overturned a 3–1 series deficit?

LeBron James averaged 29.7 points, 11.3 rebounds and 8.9 assists as the Cavaliers won three straight games to take the title from the Warriors.

Which 49ers quarterback began kneeling during the US national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality?

Colin Kaepernick first sat, then knelt, through the 2016 pre-season and regular season. Teammate Eric Reid was the first player to join him.

Which singer of Faith and Careless Whisper died at his Oxfordshire home on Christmas Day 2016?

George Michael died of heart disease at his home in Goring-on-Thames. Decades earlier he had given the profits from the Wham! single Last Christmas to charity.

Which Netflix series, set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, released its first season in July 2016?

Stranger Things was developed by the Duffer Brothers as a blend of investigative drama and supernatural horror, steeped in 1980s pop culture. Winona Ryder led the cast as Joyce Byers.

Which DeepMind program beat Lee Sedol, a master of an ancient board game, four games to one in March 2016?

AlphaGo won every game except the fourth, each by resignation, in a match played in Seoul. Korea's Go association then gave the program an honorary top rank of 9 dan.

Which company landed a rocket booster on a drone ship at sea for the first time in April 2016?

SpaceX brought its Falcon 9 booster down on a ship named Of Course I Still Love You after four earlier attempts ended in destruction. That same booster flew again in 2017.

Which climate deal, opened for signature on Earth Day 2016, entered into force that November?

The Paris Agreement was signed by 175 parties on its first day at UN headquarters in New York. It took effect once the European Union's ratification carried it past the required threshold.

Juan Manuel Santos won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for trying to end a 50-year conflict in which country?

Colombia's voters had narrowly rejected his peace deal with the FARC guerrillas in a referendum shortly before the prize was announced. A revised deal went to Congress instead.

Nuclear sanctions on which country were lifted in January 2016 after inspectors certified it had kept a 2015 deal?

Iran's sanctions were lifted by the UN, the EU and the US on 16 January, a date the deal called Implementation Day, after the IAEA certified its compliance.

Which Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun did Pope Francis declare a saint at a Vatican ceremony in September 2016?

Mother Teresa was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta on 4 September, one day short of the 19th anniversary of her death in 1997.

Lead-contaminated drinking water led President Obama to declare a January 2016 emergency in which Michigan city?

Flint's supply was switched in April 2014, during a financial crisis, from Detroit's system to the Flint River. The city went back to Detroit water in October 2015.

Protesters camped near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation from April 2016 to oppose which oil pipeline?

The Dakota Access route passes under Lake Oahe near the reservation, and the Standing Rock Sioux called it a serious threat to the region's water. The campaign spread online as #NoDAPL.

Which judge did Barack Obama nominate to the Supreme Court in March 2016, only for the Senate to refuse a hearing?

Merrick Garland's nomination lasted 293 days before expiring in January 2017, when the congressional term ended. He went on to serve as US attorney general from 2021.

Which company, then run by Jeff Weiner, did Microsoft agree to buy for $26.2 billion in June 2016?

LinkedIn kept its own brand and its chief executive under the deal. It stayed Microsoft's biggest purchase until the Activision Blizzard takeover, agreed in 2022.

Which US bank was fined $185 million in September 2016 after staff opened about two million unauthorized accounts?

Wells Fargo traced the fake accounts to aggressive internal sales goals placed on branch staff. The scandal led to the resignation of chief executive John Stumpf.

Disney opened a theme park in June 2016, majority-owned by local partner Shendi Group, in which Asian city?

Shanghai Disneyland left Disney itself with a 43 percent stake. Work on its Enchanted Storybook Castle had begun three years before the park opened.

Which Formula One driver won the 2016 world championship and announced his retirement just five days later?

Nico Rosberg said he wanted more time with his family. He and his father Keke are only the second father and son to both win the title, after Graham and Damon Hill.

Which tennis player won Wimbledon and Olympic gold in 2016 and finished the year as men's world number one?

Andy Murray's win in Rio made him the first player, male or female, to take two Olympic singles golds, having also won in London four years earlier.

Which Pacific nation won its first Olympic medal of any color, a rugby sevens gold, at the 2016 Rio Games?

Fiji's gold came in the men's tournament as rugby returned to the Olympics for the first time since 1924, this time in its seven-a-side form.

Which Japanese emperor hinted in a rare televised address in August 2016 that he wished to abdicate?

Akihito cited his advanced age and declining health, and stepped down in April 2019. No emperor had given up the throne since Kokaku in 1817.

Who was chosen in October 2016 to succeed Ban Ki-moon as Secretary-General of the United Nations?

António Guterres had run the UN refugee agency from 2005 to 2015. He became the first European in the post since Kurt Waldheim left it in 1981.

Which novelist, who published only two books 55 years apart, died in February 2016 aged 89?

Harper Lee followed To Kill a Mockingbird only in 2015 with Go Set a Watchman, an earlier draft marketed as a sequel. In between she gave almost no interviews.

A May 2016 wildfire forced upwards of 88,000 people to flee which community in Alberta's oil sands region?

Fort McMurray's fire did an estimated C$9.9 billion of damage, at the time the costliest disaster in Canadian history, and forced the largest wildfire evacuation Alberta had seen.

A tribunal in The Hague ruled in July 2016 against Beijing's sweeping historic claims over which sea?

The South China Sea case was brought by the Philippines, and the tribunal found Beijing's nine-dash line claim had no lawful effect under the UN sea convention. Beijing rejected the ruling.

Captain America: Civil War, the highest-grossing film of 2016, introduced which actor as Marvel's new Spider-Man?

Tom Holland followed it with Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2017, which made him, at the time, the youngest actor to play a title role in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film.

Which term did Oxford Dictionaries name its 2016 Word of the Year after a twentyfold jump in usage?

Post-truth may have first been used by playwright Steve Tesich in a 1992 essay in The Nation, almost a quarter of a century before Oxford's editors recorded its surge.

Syrian government forces retook all of which city in December 2016 after four years of fighting?

Aleppo, Syria's largest city, had been divided for years, with rebels holding its eastern half. Combatants nicknamed the struggle Syria's Stalingrad.

Aung San Suu Kyi, barred from the presidency, became State Counsellor of which country in April 2016?

Myanmar's constitution kept her from the presidency because her late husband and children are foreign citizens, so a new post akin to prime minister was created for her.

Which South Korean president was impeached in December 2016 over a scandal involving unofficial aide Choi Soon-sil?

Park Geun-hye was suspended after 234 of the National Assembly's 300 members voted to impeach her. Her aide had sought donations from conglomerates despite holding no official post.

The prime minister of which country resigned after losing a constitutional referendum in December 2016?

Italy's voters turned down his constitutional reform with about 59 percent against, and Renzi stepped down after less than three years in office.

Who was elected Mayor of London in May 2016, defeating the Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith?

Sadiq Khan became the city's first Muslim mayor and the first from an ethnic minority, then gave up his seat in Parliament.

Which country voted in March 2016 to keep its existing flag rather than adopt a silver fern design?

New Zealand's second referendum pitted the existing flag against a black, white and blue design by Kyle Lockwood, which had won an earlier vote among the alternatives.

Whose portrait replaced Elizabeth Fry's on the polymer £5 note that the Bank of England introduced in September 2016?

Winston Churchill appears in his 1941 Roaring Lion portrait by Yousuf Karsh, beside a view of the Houses of Parliament, on the plastic note.

Astronomers announced in August 2016 a planet in the habitable zone of which star, about 4.2 light-years away?

Proxima Centauri b was announced by the European Southern Observatory after years of measuring tiny Doppler shifts in its parent star, the closest to the Sun.

Which European Space Agency probe ended its mission in September 2016 by hard-landing on the comet it had orbited?

Rosetta had become the first spacecraft to orbit a comet in August 2014, and sent down the Philae lander for the first controlled touchdown on a comet nucleus.

Which aircraft landed in Abu Dhabi in July 2016 to complete the first round-the-world flight powered only by sunlight?

Solar Impulse 2 touched down 506 days after setting off, having covered about 42,000 km in stages flown by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg.