59 Fun Facts About Early 2000s

Which social network, launched in August 2003, was known for customisable profiles and musicians' pages?

MySpace launched on 1 August 2003 and was the world's largest social network from 2005 to 2008, famous for its customisable profiles and band pages.

Which 2001 animated film features a grumpy ogre whose swamp fills with fairy tale creatures?

DreamWorks' 'Shrek' was released in May 2001 and tells the story of an ogre who embarks on a quest to reclaim his swamp from banished fairy tale characters.

Who had a hit song in 2002 with 'Complicated'?

Canadian singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne released 'Complicated' as her debut single in March 2002, which became a global pop-rock hit.

What major global sporting event did Sydney, Australia, host in the year 2000?

Sydney, Australia, proudly hosted the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, also known as the 2000 Summer Olympics, from September 15 to October 1.

Which company dominated the pre-smartphone mobile market with durable devices like the 3310?

The 3310 was announced on 1 September 2000 as the successor to the 3210 and became a byword for indestructibility.

Which social network, founded in 2004, was at first open only to Harvard students?

Facebook launched in February 2004 as thefacebook.com, open only to Harvard students, before gradually expanding to other universities across North America.

Which currency's notes and coins entered circulation on 1 January 2002, replacing a dozen national currencies?

Euro notes and coins arrived on 1 January 2002, and by March the old national currencies had been withdrawn from daily use.

Which film won all eleven of its nominations at the 2004 Oscars, tying the record?

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won all eleven of its 2004 nominations, matching the eleven-award totals of Ben-Hur and Titanic and becoming the first fantasy Best Picture winner.

Which company entered the console market with the original Xbox in November 2001?

Microsoft launched the original Xbox on 15 November 2001 in North America, entering a market led by Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube.

Which portable media player, unveiled on 23 October 2001, promised '1,000 songs in your pocket'?

Apple's iPod, unveiled by Steve Jobs on 23 October 2001, shipped with a 5 GB hard drive and was pitched as putting 1,000 songs in your pocket.

Which singing competition premiered on Fox on 11 June 2002 and ran there for fifteen seasons?

American Idol premiered on Fox on 11 June 2002, adapted from Britain's Pop Idol, and ran fifteen seasons there before ABC revived it in 2018.

Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Larry Sanger and which entrepreneur?

Initially English-only, it now spans over 300 languages and has been hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation since 2003.

In which year did Napster shut down after a wave of lawsuits?

Napster's file-sharing service shut down in July 2001 under a court injunction in the record labels' copyright suit; the company filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and was liquidated.

Which early social network, founded by Jonathan Abrams in 2002, predated MySpace and Facebook?

Friendster, founded by Jonathan Abrams in 2002, went live in March 2003 and signed up three million users within months; it later relaunched as a social gaming site popular in Asia.

YouTube's three founders had all previously worked at which company?

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim were all early PayPal employees before registering YouTube on 14 February 2005; Google bought the site for $1.65 billion in 2006.

In which year did Google hold its initial public offering?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin had founded the company in 1998, and Gmail launched as an April Fools' Day beta that same year.

How many Nokia 3310 handsets were sold worldwide, cementing its 'indestructible' legend?

Its four built-in games included the hugely popular Snake II.

Which ultra-thin Motorola clamshell phone, model V3, became a must-have after its 2004 launch?

The Razr name arrived with the V3 in 2004 and was revived in 2019 for foldable smartphones; later models added 3G.

The first BlackBerry device, launched in 1999, was what kind of gadget?

The 1999 BlackBerry 850 was a two-way pager with a thumb keyboard for email; Research in Motion's first BlackBerry phone, the 5810, followed in 2002.

Roughly how many PlayStation 2 consoles did Sony sell worldwide?

Sony sold about 160,000,000 PlayStation 2 consoles, nearly triple the combined sales of its sixth-generation rivals; the built-in DVD drive was a pivotal selling point.

The 2001 GameCube was the first Nintendo home console to use what instead of cartridges?

The GameCube, released in Japan in September 2001, was Nintendo's first home console to use optical discs (8 cm miniDVD-style discs), yet sold only 21.74 million units.

Concorde was retired in 2003, three years after which airline's Flight 4590 crashed near Paris?

Air France Flight 4590 crashed on take-off from Paris on 25 July 2000, killing all 109 aboard and four on the ground; Air France and British Airways retired Concorde in 2003.

The Segway, launched in 2001, was developed from which earlier self-balancing invention?

Dean Kamen's DEKA derived the Segway from the iBOT, a self-balancing stair-climbing wheelchair it had developed in the 1990s; John Doerr predicted the Segway would be bigger than the Internet.

The Human Genome Project was declared complete on 14 April 2003, covering about what share of the genome?

The sequence declared finished in April 2003 covered about 92% of the genome, mostly euchromatin; the remaining gaps were not closed until the Telomere-to-Telomere consortium's 2022 assembly.

The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed in 2004 with planned missions of how many Martian days?

Both rovers were designed for 90-sol primary missions; Spirit lasted until 2010 and Opportunity until June 2018, and asteroids 37452 Spirit and 39382 Opportunity honour them.

SpaceShipOne won which multimillion-dollar award in 2004 for the first crewed private spaceflight?

SpaceShipOne claimed the $10 million Ansari X Prize on 4 October 2004; built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites with Paul Allen's money, it never flew again.

Which company's December 2001 collapse, then the largest US bankruptcy, brought down auditor Arthur Andersen?

Enron's shares fell from over $90 to under $1 as executives Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow hid billions in debt.

After its March 2000 peak, how far had the Nasdaq Composite fallen by October 2002?

The Nasdaq Composite fell 78%, from a 5,048 close on 10 March 2000 to 1,114 on 9 October 2002; casualties included Pets.com, Webvan, WorldCom and Global Crossing.

The Osbournes grew out of the family's appearance on which other MTV show?

After the family's 2001 episode of MTV Cribs drew big ratings, MTV commissioned The Osbournes, which premiered in March 2002 and became the network's most-watched series to that point.

The survivors in Lost, which premiered in 2004, were passengers on which fictional airline's Flight 815?

Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crashed on the island in Lost's 2004 pilot, filmed on Oahu at a reported cost of $10–14 million; the show won the 2005 Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.

Which director was chosen over Spielberg and Rob Reiner for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?

Chris Columbus, director of Home Alone, was hired after Steven Spielberg declined; Philosopher's Stone became 2001's highest-grossing film and the second-highest-grossing ever at the time.

How many Oscar nominations did The Fellowship of the Ring receive at the 74th Academy Awards?

The Fellowship of the Ring earned thirteen nominations at the 74th Academy Awards and won four: cinematography, makeup, original score and visual effects.

Which 2003 Pixar film became the best-selling DVD of all time, with over 40,000,000 copies sold by 2006?

Finding Nemo, released in May 2003, topped 40 million DVD copies by 2006 and was the first Pixar film to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Where did Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl hold its world premiere?

The film premiered at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim on 28 June 2003, home of the ride that inspired it; writers added the curse to tie story to attraction, and it grossed $654 million.

Dan Brown's 2003 bestseller The Da Vinci Code opens with a murder in which museum?

Curator Jacques Saunière is murdered in the Louvre's Grand Gallery in the opening pages; the book sold 80 million copies by 2009 and was Brown's second Robert Langdon novel.

The Iraq War began on 20 March 2003 with a bombing campaign known by what phrase?

The opening air campaign was branded 'shock and awe', after a 1996 US doctrine of rapid dominance; the US was joined by the UK, Australia and Poland, and Saddam Hussein was captured that December.

The December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami came from an earthquake off which island?

A magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the west coast of northern Sumatra on 26 December 2004 sent waves up to 30 metres high across the Indian Ocean, killing roughly 228,000 people in 14 countries.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana in August 2005 at what strength?

Katrina struck southeast Louisiana on 29 August 2005 as a Category 3 hurricane, having peaked at Category 5 the day before; levee failures flooded about 80% of New Orleans.

The 2002–2004 SARS outbreak began in which Chinese province?

SARS emerged in Guangdong province in November 2002 before spreading via Hong Kong; WHO physician Carlo Urbani identified the syndrome in Hanoi and died of it in Bangkok in March 2003.

Columbia broke up on re-entry in 2003 after what struck its left wing during launch?

A piece of insulating foam broke off the external tank about 82 seconds after launch and punched a hole in the left wing's reinforced carbon-carbon leading edge; all seven crew died on 1 February 2003.

After the 2004 Super Bowl 'wardrobe malfunction', the FCC fined CBS a record how much?

The FCC's $550,000 fine, its largest ever against a broadcaster at the time, was thrown out by the Third Circuit appeals court; Timberlake apologised at the Grammys the following week.

The Razor scooter, launched in 2000, sold how many units in its first six months?

The Razor's maker reported more than 5,000,000 scooters sold in the six months after its 2000 launch; the foldable aluminium design became that summer's defining craze.

The Crazy Frog's 2005 worldwide hit was a cover of 'Axel F', the theme from which film?

'Axel F' was Harold Faltermeyer's synth theme for the 1984 Eddie Murphy film Beverly Hills Cop; Swedish animator Erik Wernquist's 'Annoying Thing' frog used Daniel Malmedahl's engine impression.

Skype, released in 2003, was built by Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis and four developers from which country?

Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, Jaan Tallinn and Toivo Annus wrote the software in Tallinn; eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005 and Microsoft paid $8.5 billion in 2011.

Gmail launched on April 1, 2004 offering how much storage, a huge amount at the time?

Gmail offered 1 gigabyte of free storage, hundreds of times Hotmail's 2 MB, so many assumed the April 1 announcement was a joke; Paul Buchheit had started the project in 2001.

Firefox was created in 2002 under which codename before its 1.0 release in November 2004?

The browser debuted as Phoenix 0.1 in September 2002, was renamed Firebird in 2003 after a trademark dispute, and became Firefox in February 2004 ahead of its November 1.0 release.

Windows XP was developed under a codename taken from which ski resort?

Windows XP's codename Whistler came from the Whistler ski resort in British Columbia, near Microsoft's Redmond base; extended support ended in April 2014, more than twelve years after its October 2001 release.

Grand Theft Auto III, the best-selling game of 2001, is set in which fictional metropolis?

Liberty City, loosely modelled on New York, spans three islands (Portland, Staunton Island and Shoreside Vale) and made GTA III a landmark of open-world design.

NSYNC's No Strings Attached set a US record in 2000 by selling how many copies in its first week?

Over a million sold on day one; the group went on indefinite hiatus in 2002.

OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below won Album of the Year at the Grammys in which year?

Its number ones were 'Hey Ya!' by André 3000 and 'The Way You Move' by Big Boi, and it went Diamond.

Which rapper discovered 50 Cent's 2002 mixtape and signed him to his own label?

Eminem heard 50 Cent's 2002 mixtape Guess Who's Back?, signed him to Shady Records with Dr. Dre's Aftermath, and executive-produced Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003), home of 'In da Club'.

Which White Stripes single from the 2003 album Elephant became a global sports anthem?

Seven Nation Army became a sports anthem and the band's signature song, and Elephant won Jack and Meg White their first Grammys.

Green Day's 2004 rock opera American Idiot later became what?

American Idiot was adapted into a stage musical that opened on Broadway in April 2010 and won two Tony Awards; 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' had won the 2006 Grammy for Record of the Year.

Who won the first season of Survivor in 2000, and was later jailed for not declaring the prize money?

Richard Hatch beat Kelly Wiglesworth 4–3 in the jury vote before 51.7 million viewers in August 2000; he was jailed in 2006 for failing to pay tax on the $1 million prize.

Roughly how many US viewers watched the Friends finale 'The Last One' on May 6, 2004?

52.5 million Americans watched 'The Last One', the most watched entertainment telecast in six years; Monica and Chandler unexpectedly went home with twins.

How many tracks did the iTunes Store sell in its first five days after launching on April 28, 2003?

Some 275,000 were sold in the first 18 hours; by August 2004 the store had a catalogue of over a million songs and 70 per cent of legal downloads.

Nintendo first marketed the 2004 DS handheld as what, alongside the GBA and GameCube?

Satoru Iwata pitched the DS as a 'third pillar' beside the GBA and GameCube rather than a Game Boy successor, but GBA backward compatibility and 154 million sales made it exactly that.

Which country stunned hosts Portugal 1–0 to win the Euro 2004 final?

Greece, rank outsiders, beat hosts Portugal 2–1 in the opening match and 1–0 in the Lisbon final on 4 July 2004 with an Angelos Charisteas header, having knocked out holders France in the quarter-finals.

Which space station, the first modular one ever built, was deorbited in March 2001?

Mir, assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996 as the first modular space station, was deorbited over the South Pacific on 23 March 2001 after a programme costing an estimated $4.2 billion.