50 Fun Facts About 21st Century

In which year did the 21st century officially begin?

The 21st century began on 1 January 2001: with no year zero, each century runs from year 1 to year 100, so the 1999 'millennium' parties were a year early.

Roughly how many people were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks?

Nearly 3,000 people died: 2,977 victims plus the 19 al-Qaeda hijackers who seized four airliners and struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Dennis Tito made headlines in 2001 by becoming the world's first what?

Dennis Tito became the first space tourist that April, paying a reported $20 million to ride a Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station for about a week.

Which website, launched on January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, became the go-to reference?

Wikipedia went live that January and has been run since 2003 by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, funded mainly by reader donations.

Euro banknotes and coins first entered circulation in which year?

Euro cash arrived on 1 January 2002 in twelve countries; the currency had existed only as an accounting unit since 1999. Seven banknote denominations were issued, from €5 to €500.

Which supersonic airliner made its last commercial flight on 24 October 2003?

Concorde cruised at Mach 2.02, over twice the speed of ordinary jets. Only Air France and British Airways flew it, seven each; the July 2000 crash outside Paris hastened its 2003 retirement.

In which year did the Human Genome Project, declared complete in 2003, begin?

The Human Genome Project launched in October 1990 with a 15-year plan and finished two years early, with about 92% of the genome sequenced; the remaining gaps were closed in the 2020s.

The 26 December 2004 earthquake and tsunami was centred off the coast of which country?

Indonesia: the magnitude 9.1–9.3 quake struck off Aceh in northern Sumatra, and the tsunami it raised killed an estimated 227,898 people across 14 countries.

Which social network launched from a Harvard dorm room on February 4, 2004?

Facebook launched on 4 February 2004 as 'TheFacebook', built by Mark Zuckerberg and classmates at Harvard; it opened to the general public in September 2006.

Hurricane Katrina's storm surge broke the levees of which US city on August 29, 2005?

New Orleans: about 80% of the city flooded after its levees failed. Katrina caused roughly $125 billion in damage, and its death toll was revised to 1,392 in 2023.

Which body was demoted to dwarf-planet status when the IAU redefined 'planet' in 2006?

Pluto failed the IAU's new test of having cleared its orbital neighbourhood, so it became a dwarf planet in August 2006; New Horizons flew past it on 14 July 2015.

Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone at Macworld on January 9 of which year?

Jobs unveiled the iPhone on 9 January 2007, pitching it as a widescreen iPod, a revolutionary phone and a breakthrough internet communicator in one; it went on sale that June.

At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Michael Phelps won how many gold medals, a record for a single Games?

Phelps won eight golds at the 2008 Games, beating Mark Spitz's 1972 haul of seven; he retired with 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold, the most of any athlete.

Who was elected in November 2008 as America's first African American president?

Barack Obama beat John McCain by 365 electoral votes to 173 on 4 November 2008, with Joe Biden as his running mate and Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket.

What name did bitcoin's pseudonymous creator use when mining the 'genesis block' on 3 January 2009?

Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block on 3 January 2009, having posted the bitcoin white paper on 31 October 2008; the creator's real identity has never been confirmed.

In which city did Usain Bolt set his 9.58-second 100 m world record at the 2009 World Championships?

Bolt ran 9.58 seconds in Berlin on 16 August 2009 and, four days later, set the 200 m world record of 19.19 at the same championships.

Which 2009 James Cameron film became the highest-grossing movie of all time?

Avatar, set on the moon Pandora among the blue-skinned Na'vi, was the first film to gross more than $2 billion and finished near $2.9 billion after re-releases.

In which city does the Burj Khalifa, completed in 2010, stand?

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai opened in January 2010 and rises 829.8 m over 163 floors, with 2,909 stairs from the ground to the 160th floor.

In which country is Eyjafjallajökull, whose 2010 eruption shut most of Europe's airspace for six days?

Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull erupted in April 2010, and about 20 countries closed their skies from 15 to 20 April, stranding some 10 million travellers in the worst air-travel disruption since the Second World War.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil spill happened in which body of water?

Gulf of Mexico: eleven workers died in the explosion on the BP-operated rig, and about 4.9 million barrels leaked over 87 days before the well was capped on 15 July 2010.

The Arab Spring uprisings began in December 2010 in which country?

Tunisia: the self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010 sparked protests that toppled Ben Ali, then spread to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.

Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011 in a compound in which Pakistani city?

Abbottabad, home to Pakistan's military academy, was where SEAL Team Six stormed bin Laden's compound in Operation Neptune Spear; the raid took about 40 minutes and his body was buried at sea.

Which Japanese nuclear plant suffered a Level 7 accident in March 2011?

Fukushima Daiichi lost grid power and nearly all backup generators when the March 2011 Tōhoku quake and tsunami struck; three reactors melted down, and Level 7 on the INES scale has otherwise been reached only by Chernobyl.

Which country became the world's newest sovereign state on 9 July 2011?

South Sudan split from Sudan after a January 2011 independence referendum passed with 98.8% support; its capital is Juba.

NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover landed inside which Martian crater on August 6, 2012?

Gale crater: a rocket-powered 'sky crane' hovered about 20 metres up and lowered Curiosity on 7.5-metre nylon tethers; the rover then spent years climbing Mount Sharp at the crater's centre.

On 4 July 2012, CERN announced a new particle believed to be which long-sought boson?

Peter Higgs and François Englert shared the 2013 Nobel Prize for predicting it. The 'God particle' nickname comes from a 1993 book and is disliked by physicists, Higgs included.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, elected pope on 13 March 2013, was the first pope from which religious order?

Bergoglio came from the Jesuits, the first pope of that order; as Francis he was also the first from Latin America and the first born outside Europe since the 8th century. He died on 21 April 2025.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished on 8 March 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to which city?

Beijing was its destination; the Boeing 777 carried 239 people. The first confirmed debris, a wing flaperon, washed up on Réunion in July 2015, but the main wreckage had not been found a decade on.

Who became the youngest Nobel laureate ever when she shared the 2014 Peace Prize at age 17?

Malala Yousafzai, shot by a Taliban gunman on her school bus in Pakistan's Swat Valley in October 2012, shared the 2014 Peace Prize with Indian children's rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi.

What did LIGO detect for the first time on 14 September 2015, confirming Einstein's prediction?

Gravitational waves from two black holes merging about 1.3 billion light-years away produced the signal GW150914; Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the detection.

What did SpaceX's Falcon 9 do on 21 December 2015 that no orbital-class rocket had done before?

Falcon 9 landed its main stage upright at Landing Zone 1 after launching Orbcomm satellites, the first orbital-class booster recovery. The first drone-ship landing followed in April 2016 and the first re-flight in March 2017.

Leicester City won the 2015–16 Premier League after starting the season at what odds with bookmakers?

Bookmakers priced Leicester at 5,000–1 in August 2015; Claudio Ranieri's side clinched the title on 2 May 2016, with Jamie Vardy scoring in a record 11 straight Premier League games along the way.

In the UK's June 2016 referendum, what percentage voted to leave the European Union?

Leave won 51.9% to 48.1% on 23 June 2016, on a 72.2% turnout; David Cameron resigned as prime minister, and Britain formally left on 31 January 2020.

The Chicago Cubs' 2016 World Series win ended a championship drought of how many years?

The drought ran 108 years, from their 1908 title to 2016; Game 7 against Cleveland went to extra innings after a 17-minute rain delay, and the Cubs won 8–7.

The first black hole image, released in April 2019, showed the giant in which galaxy?

Messier 87, a giant elliptical galaxy about 55 million light-years away, hosts the black hole imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope, which combined radio dishes across the globe into one Earth-sized array.

Which Paris landmark lost its spire and most of its roof to a fire on 15 April 2019?

Notre-Dame Cathedral's spire collapsed at about 19:50; after a five-year restoration the cathedral reopened on 7 December 2024.

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on which date?

The WHO declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, six weeks after naming the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January; that emergency status ended on 5 May 2023.

For six days in March 2021 the 400-metre container ship Ever Given blocked which waterway?

The Suez Canal: the Ever Given ran aground on 23 March 2021 and was pulled free on 29 March; roughly 12% of world trade passes through the canal.

The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on Christmas Day 2021 aboard which rocket?

An Ariane 5 lifted Webb from Kourou in French Guiana on 25 December 2021; the telescope orbits the Sun–Earth L2 point 1.5 million km away, and its 6.5 m gold-coated mirror has 18 hexagonal segments.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since 1945, began on which date?

Russian forces crossed into Ukraine on 24 February 2022, following the 2014 annexation of Crimea; the war produced Europe's largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral on 8 September 2022 after a reign of how long?

Her reign of 70 years and 214 days, from 6 February 1952, was the longest of any British monarch and of any queen regnant; she celebrated her Platinum Jubilee that June and was succeeded by Charles III.

Which chatbot, released by OpenAI on November 30, 2022, reached 100 million users within two months?

ChatGPT gained a million users in five days and was briefly the fastest-growing consumer app in history, until Meta's Threads passed 100 million sign-ups in five days in July 2023.

According to the UN, world population passed which milestone on 15 November 2022?

The UN designated 15 November 2022 as the day world population passed 8 billion; it had stood at about 6.1 billion when the century began and reached 7 billion in 2011.

Robert Francis Prevost, elected on 8 May 2025 as Pope Leo XIV, is the first pope born in which country?

The United States: Chicago-born Robert Prevost, who also holds Peruvian citizenship, is the first pope from the Order of Saint Augustine; he succeeded Francis in May 2025.

Which ESA lander made the first successful landing on a comet, in November 2014?

Philae, carried by ESA's Rosetta probe, touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014; it bounced into shadow and its batteries ran flat within about three days.

How did NASA's Cassini mission end on 15 September 2017 after 13 years in orbit?

The deliberate plunge protected potentially habitable moons like Enceladus from contamination.

To which city did Edward Snowden fly in May 2013 before leaking NSA surveillance documents?

Hong Kong: Snowden flew there on 20 May 2013 and met journalists at the Mira Hotel; after the US revoked his passport he was stranded at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and stayed in Russia.

How many leaked documents made up the Panama Papers, published from April 2016?

The 11.5 million files, 2.6 terabytes in all, came from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and detailed more than 214,000 offshore entities.

Which country made the first soft landing on the Moon's far side in January 2019?

China's Chang'e 4 touched down in the Von Kármán crater on 3 January 2019; the relay satellite Queqiao had been parked beyond the Moon first so the lander could talk to Earth.

The Titan submersible that imploded in June 2023 was diving to view which shipwreck?

The Titanic: debris from the OceanGate craft was found about 500 metres from the liner's bow on 22 June 2023, four days after contact was lost; all five aboard died.