50 Fun Facts About 2019

Which Paris church lost its roof and spire to a fire on 15 April, while its three rose windows survived?

Notre-Dame's spire fell at 19:50, creating a draft that slammed the doors and sent a fireball through the attic, yet the altar, organs and 13th-century rose windows came through with little damage.

Which Marvel film overtook Avatar in July as the highest-grossing film ever, holding the crown until 2021?

Avengers: Endgame was only the fifth film ever to gross $2 billion, and it lost the all-time record in March 2021 when Avatar was re-released in China.

Which Game of Thrones character, by then the Three-Eyed Raven, was chosen as king in the finale 'The Iron Throne'?

Bran Stark is proclaimed 'Bran the Broken', King of the Six Kingdoms, after Sansa wins the North its independence; actor Isaac Hempstead Wright said the ending came from George R. R. Martin himself.

Which country-trap single, remixed with Billy Ray Cyrus, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a then-record 19 weeks?

Old Town Road by Lil Nas X held No. 1 for 19 consecutive weeks after Billboard quietly removed it from its Hot Country chart for not 'embracing enough elements of today's country music'.

Which golfer won the 2019 Masters at 43, his fifth green jacket and first major since the 2008 U.S. Open?

Tiger Woods won by a single stroke over three runners-up, becoming only the fifth player with a gap of more than a decade between major wins and the second-oldest Masters champion after Jack Nicklaus.

Which climate activist crossed the Atlantic on the yacht Malizia II, then became Time's youngest Person of the Year?

Greta Thunberg, 16, was the first Time Person of the Year born in the 21st century; the 60-foot Malizia II carried her from Plymouth to New York on solar panels and underwater turbines.

Who became UK prime minister on 24 July after beating Jeremy Hunt in the contest to replace Theresa May?

Boris Johnson then called a snap election and on 12 December won the Conservatives an 80-seat Commons majority.

Which club beat Tottenham Hotspur 2–0 in Madrid to win the 2019 Champions League final, its sixth European Cup?

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah converted a penalty after just 106 seconds and substitute Divock Origi sealed it in the 87th minute, handing Jürgen Klopp his first trophy at the club.

Which US winger took both the Golden Ball and Golden Boot at the Women's World Cup, then the Ballon d'Or Féminin?

Megan Rapinoe was the tournament's top scorer in France with six goals and finished the year named The Best FIFA Women's Player too.

Which streaming service launched on 12 November with The Mandalorian, whose 'Baby Yoda' became an instant meme?

Disney+ signed up more than 10 million subscribers within a day of launch; the 'Baby Yoda' character, officially 'the Child', was a puppet of the same species as Yoda.

How was the 2019 Cricket World Cup final at Lord's settled after both the match and the Super Over ended tied?

England's boundary count of 26 to New Zealand's 17 decided it, the only time a World Cup has been settled that way, and the ICC scrapped the rule soon after.

Which team beat England 32–12 in Yokohama to win the 2019 Rugby World Cup, led by captain Siya Kolisi?

South Africa's third title made Siya Kolisi the first black captain of a World Cup-winning side; wings Makazole Mapimpi and Cheslin Kolbe scored the tries.

Which team beat the Golden State Warriors in six games to win the 2019 NBA Finals, its first championship?

Toronto Raptors star Kawhi Leonard was Finals MVP for the second time, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and LeBron James as the only players to win it with two different teams.

Which film became the first R-rated movie to gross $1 billion, after winning the Golden Lion at Venice?

Joker passed $1 billion six weeks into release, a mark no R-rated film had reached; its Venice premiere drew an eight-minute standing ovation.

Which South Korean film about a poor family infiltrating a rich household won the 2019 Palme d'Or at Cannes?

Parasite was the first Korean film to take the Palme d'Or and went on to become the first non-English-language film to win the Best Picture Oscar.

Which 17-year-old became the first artist born in the 21st century to top the Billboard Hot 100, with 'Bad Guy'?

Billie Eilish had already become the first 21st-century-born act to top the Billboard 200 in April with When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, written with her brother Finneas O'Connell.

Which country won the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv with Duncan Laurence's song 'Arcade'?

The Netherlands' fifth Eurovision win was its first since Teach-In's 'Ding-a-dong' in 1975, a wait of 44 years.

The outbreak that grew into the COVID-19 pandemic began in December in which city, the capital of Hubei province?

Wuhan's cluster of unknown pneumonia cases was reported to the WHO's China office on 31 December, and the '19' in COVID-19 marks that year of first identification.

Which WikiLeaks founder was carried out of Ecuador's London embassy by police in April after seven years inside?

Julian Assange was jailed for 50 weeks for skipping bail; within weeks Sweden reopened its rape inquiry and the United States began seeking his removal to face charges.

Which comedian who played a fictional president in Servant of the People won Ukraine's real presidency in April?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy took 73 percent of the run-off vote against Petro Poroshenko, the biggest landslide in Ukrainian presidential history; his party even borrowed the show's name.

Which proposed law brought a million Hong Kong marchers out on 9 June and was formally withdrawn in September?

The extradition bill was suspended in June and formally withdrawn on 4 September, but by then the protests had widened into demands for democracy and an inquiry into the police.

Which country held a funeral in August for Okjökull, a glacier declared dead after it had completely melted away?

Iceland's mourners fixed a plaque titled 'A letter to the future' to the bare rock; Okjökull had shrunk from 15 square kilometres a century earlier to under one by 2015.

Which travel firm, a brand in use since 1841, collapsed in September, stranding around 600,000 holidaymakers?

Thomas Cook's failure set off Operation Matterhorn, the UK's biggest peacetime repatriation, to fly home 150,000 British customers.

Which airliner was grounded worldwide in March after Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, its second crash in five months?

The Boeing 737 MAX's MCAS flight-control software activated in both accidents, and the FAA had privately predicted in 2018 that MCAS could cause 15 crashes over 30 years.

Which Ethiopian prime minister won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for ending the border conflict with Eritrea?

Abiy Ahmed's 2018 peace initiative ended a 'no war, no peace' freeze that followed Ethiopia's refusal to hand the town of Badme to Eritrea; after the Tigray war began in 2020, critics called for the prize to be revoked.

Which spacecraft made the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, in the Von Kármán crater on 3 January?

Chang'e 4 carried a sealed biosphere in which cottonseed sprouted, the first plant to grow on the Moon, before the −52 °C lunar night killed the experiment.

Which SI unit was defined by a platinum-iridium cylinder for 130 years until new definitions took effect on 20 May?

The kilogram is now fixed by the Planck constant; the old prototype and its official copies had drifted apart by about 50 micrograms over a century.

The first image of a black hole, released in April by the Event Horizon Telescope, showed which galaxy's core?

Messier 87's supermassive black hole, designated M87*, was captured by radio dishes spanning the globe; the Milky Way's own Sagittarius A* was not imaged until May 2022.

Which era name began in Japan on 1 May when Naruhito took the throne after his father Akihito's abdication?

Reiwa, glossed by Japan's Foreign Ministry as 'beautiful harmony', was the first era name drawn from Japanese literature, the Man'yōshū, rather than the Chinese classics.

What did Victor Vescovo find on the floor of the Challenger Deep, 10,928 m down, alongside three new species?

Plastic waste had reached the deepest point on Earth; Vescovo's submersible Limiting Factor beat the previous depth record by 16 metres and he became the first person to dive there twice.

Which Kenyan ran the first sub-two-hour marathon in Vienna in October, a time not ratified as a world record?

Eliud Kipchoge's 1:59:40 relied on 41 rotating pacemakers and drinks handed over by bicycle, which is why the time could not count as a record.

Which capital city was renamed Nur-Sultan in March, the day after its country's president of 29 years resigned?

Astana was renamed for Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's first and only president until then, and reverted to Astana in 2022.

Which gymnast won five golds at the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart, equalling the record for a single Worlds?

Simone Biles matched the 1958 hauls of Larisa Latynina and Boris Shakhlin and has since become the most decorated gymnast in history.

Who saved two championship points to beat Roger Federer in Wimbledon's longest final, won on a 12–12 tiebreak?

Novak Djokovic won 13–12 in the fifth after 4 hours 57 minutes, the first singles match played under Wimbledon's new 12–12 tiebreak rule.

Which team lifted its first Stanley Cup in June, five months after sitting dead last in the NHL on 2 January?

The St. Louis Blues beat Boston in seven games in their 51st season, ending what was then the NHL's third-longest championship drought.

Which Polish novelist, author of Flights, was awarded the delayed 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature alongside Peter Handke?

Olga Tokarczuk's prize had been held over a year after a sexual-assault scandal engulfed the Swedish Academy; she said she was happy to win alongside the controversial Austrian Peter Handke.

Which 22-year-old became the first Latin American to win the Tour de France after a hailstorm cut short stage 19?

Egan Bernal of Team Ineos was the youngest Tour winner since 1909; the neutralised stage to Tignes moved him past Alaphilippe into the yellow jersey.

Which 25–1 underdog, a late stand-in for Jarrell Miller, stopped Anthony Joshua at Madison Square Garden in June?

Andy Ruiz Jr. became the first heavyweight champion of Mexican heritage with a seventh-round stoppage; Miller had been dropped after failing three drug tests.

Which England player's unbeaten 135 at Headingley won an Ashes Test by one wicket alongside Jack Leach?

Ben Stokes' innings, hailed as one of the best in Test history, came with England needing 73 more runs when the last man arrived; the series still ended drawn 2–2.

Which game's first World Cup, at New York's Arthur Ashe Stadium in July, saw 16-year-old 'Bugha' win $3 million?

Fortnite's finals drew an estimated 2.3 million concurrent online viewers, and Kyle 'Bugha' Giersdorf was 'swatted' while streaming from home shortly after his win.

Which British actress won the Best Actress Oscar in February for playing Queen Anne in The Favourite?

Olivia Colman also took the Golden Globe and BAFTA for the role, then went straight on to play a second queen, Elizabeth II, in The Crown.

Which Phoebe Waller-Bridge comedy, with Andrew Scott as the 'Hot Priest', won 2019's Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy?

Fleabag began as a sketch Waller-Bridge wrote for a 10-minute slot at a stand-up storytelling night; she also won Emmys for lead actress and writing.

Which HBO miniseries starring Jared Harris as scientist Valery Legasov won the Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series?

Chernobyl's success prompted Russia's state-run NTV to announce its own 'patriotic' version, in which the CIA plays a key role in the disaster.

Which British rapper's debut album Psychodrama, structured as a therapy session, won the 2019 Mercury Prize?

Dave's concept album traces the prison convictions of his elder brothers; it went on to take Album of the Year at the 2020 Brit Awards.

Ariana Grande's eight-week No. 1 '7 Rings' interpolates which song from The Sound of Music?

'My Favorite Things' earned Rodgers and Hammerstein writing credits on the hit, whose verses open 'Breakfast at Tiffany's and bottles of bubbles'.

Which Scottish singer's 'Someone You Loved' spent seven consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart?

Lewis Capaldi's ballad later topped the Billboard Hot 100 too, and its video cast his distant relative Peter Capaldi as a bereaved husband listening to his wife's donated heart.

Which grime artist became the first British rapper to headline Glastonbury, wearing a stab vest designed by Banksy?

Stormzy topped the bill alongside The Killers and The Cure, months after 'Vossi Bop' gave him his first UK No. 1 single; the vest referenced London's rise in knife crime.

Whose 1994 festive hit finally reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December, 25 years after its release?

Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' became her 19th Hot 100 No. 1 and has returned to the top every holiday season since.

Which member sat out the Spice Girls' 2019 stadium reunion, which opened at Dublin's Croke Park as a four-piece?

Victoria Beckham cited other commitments, so the tour played only Britain and Ireland, where 13 sold-out dates drew almost 700,000 people and $78 million.

Which country singer's Golden Hour won Album of the Year at February's Grammys, tying Childish Gambino on four wins?

Kacey Musgraves shared the night's top haul with Childish Gambino, whose 'This Is America' took both Record and Song of the Year; Dua Lipa was Best New Artist.