50 Fun Facts About 2009

Which river did US Airways Flight 1549 ditch in after geese disabled both engines over New York?

All 155 people aboard survived the Hudson River ditching and were rescued by nearby boats, a glide soon dubbed the 'Miracle on the Hudson'. The plane had struck a flock of Canada geese shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia.

Which Charlie's Angels star died hours before Michael Jackson on 25 June, her death overshadowed by his?

Farrah Fawcett, who played private investigator Jill Munroe in Charlie's Angels, died of cancer at 62 in Santa Monica that morning; Jackson died a few hours later and the news cycle moved on.

Stephen Colbert won NASA's poll to name a space station module, but what did NASA name after him instead?

A treadmill became COLBERT, the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, while the module itself was named Tranquility, only the eighth most popular entry in the poll.

Which country suspended its own dollar in April, months after printing a 100 trillion dollar banknote?

Zimbabwe's shoppers switched to the US dollar, the neighbouring rand and other foreign currencies once hyperinflation had made the local notes worthless.

Which company announced on 31 August that it would buy Marvel Entertainment for about $4 billion?

Disney paid Marvel shareholders $30 plus roughly 0.745 of a Disney share for each Marvel share, and the deal closed on the last day of the year.

Which band's 'Killing in the Name' became UK Christmas number one after a Facebook campaign to stop The X Factor?

Rage Against the Machine's 1992 single sold more than 500,000 copies in the week and became the first download-only single to take the Christmas top spot, beating X Factor winner Joe McElderry.

Jenson Button won the Formula One title with which team, in its only season before Mercedes bought it?

Brawn GP, rescued from Honda's withdrawal by Ross Brawn, won eight of the season's seventeen races and both championships in its single year of competition.

Who took over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno on 1 June, only to lose it again after seven months?

Conan O'Brien's 146-episode run is the shortest in the show's sixty-year history, ending on 22 January 2010 when NBC handed the slot back to Leno.

Which Microsoft operating system, released in October, replaced the widely criticised Vista?

Windows 7 sold more than 100 million copies in six months, making it Microsoft's fastest-selling operating system after Vista's three unloved years.

Which city won the vote to host the 2016 Olympics in October, after Chicago was knocked out in the first round?

Rio de Janeiro won the final round 66 votes to 32 over the Spanish capital at the IOC session in Copenhagen, becoming the first South American city awarded the Games.

Which Pixar film about a widower who lifts his house with balloons was the first animated film to open Cannes?

Up opened the 62nd Cannes Film Festival on 13 May and went on to become only the second animated film ever nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

Which club paid Manchester United a world-record £80 million for Cristiano Ronaldo in the summer?

Real Madrid's £80 million was the highest transfer fee ever paid at the time, part of a spending spree that also brought Kaká to the Bernabéu that summer.

Which Argentine forward won his first Ballon d'Or on 1 December by a then-record margin of 240 points?

Lionel Messi polled 473 points to Cristiano Ronaldo's 233, the first of a record eight Ballons d'Or he would collect.

Alexander Rybak's fiddle-led 'Fairytale' won Eurovision in Moscow with a record 387 points for which country?

Norway's 387 points out of a possible 492 was the highest total in the contest's history at the time, winning both the jury vote and the televote.

Which one-man project from Owatonna, Minnesota, topped the Hot 100 with 'Fireflies', recorded in a parents' basement?

Owl City's Adam Young recorded most of 'Fireflies' in his parents' unfinished basement; the song reached number one in its tenth week, shifting 200,000 downloads that week.

Amazon remotely wiped which author's novels from customers' Kindles in July, a move Jeff Bezos called 'stupid'?

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm vanished from devices overnight after a rights dispute, an irony about a surveillance novel that Amazon's refunds did little to soften.

Which actor beat CNN in April to become the first Twitter account with one million followers?

Ashton Kutcher crossed the million mark on 16 April in a publicised 'million followers contest' with the news network, when Twitter was barely three years old.

Which one-word button did Facebook switch on in February, letting users approve a post without commenting?

The Like button was first enabled on 9 February and within a year had become the shorthand for approval across the web, spreading to outside sites as a plugin.

Minecraft, whose first public alpha appeared online on 17 May, was created by Markus 'Notch' Persson in which country?

Sweden's Mojang Studios grew out of Persson's one-man alpha, and the block-building game went on to become the best-selling video game of all time with over 400 million copies sold.

Which game took $310 million in the US and UK on its first day, the biggest entertainment launch ever at the time?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 outsold any film or album opening in history, with its first-day take beating the opening weekends of the year's biggest blockbusters.

Angry Birds, released for the iPhone on 11 December, was built by the studio Rovio in which country?

Finland's Rovio Entertainment developed Angry Birds and handed publishing to Chillingo, and the slingshot puzzle became the template for a decade of mobile hits.

Which Twilight Saga film set the record for the biggest midnight opening, taking $26.3 million on 20 November?

New Moon's $26.3 million from 3,514 theatres was the largest midnight gross in US and Canadian box-office history at the time, as fans queued for Bella's choice between Edward and Jacob.

Which original-series actor reprised Spock in J. J. Abrams's Star Trek reboot, alongside Zachary Quinto?

Leonard Nimoy played 'Spock Prime', the older Spock from the original timeline, in a film that recast the entire 1960s crew with new actors.

In which 1920s city is The Princess and the Frog set, where waitress Tiana dreams of opening her own restaurant?

New Orleans gave the film its jazz, its bayou voodoo and its beignets, and Tiana became the first African American princess in the studio's animated canon.

Jersey Shore, which introduced Snooki and The Situation on 3 December, premiered on which network?

MTV ran Jersey Shore for six seasons until December 2012, with eight housemates including Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi and Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino.

Which NBC hospital drama, launched in 1994 with George Clooney, ended on 2 April after 15 seasons and 331 episodes?

ER's finale closed a run that began in September 1994, though Clooney himself had left the series in 1999 to pursue a film career.

Who was revealed in January as the eleventh Doctor Who, becoming the youngest actor ever cast in the role?

Matt Smith was three years younger than Peter Davison had been when cast, taking over from David Tennant with a first full series in 2010.

Who quit Oasis on 28 August after a backstage fight in Paris, saying he could not work with Liam 'a day longer'?

Noel Gallagher posted his resignation on the band's website two hours after Oasis pulled out of the Rock en Seine festival, ending the group after 18 years.

Whose remastered albums and a Rock Band video game were released together on 9 September, or 09/09/09?

The Beatles: Rock Band arrived on PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 the same day as the band's remastered CDs, a coordinated launch from Apple Corps and Rock Band developer Harmonix.

Which carmaker filed the fourth-largest bankruptcy in US history on 1 June, emerging as a new company on 10 July?

General Motors' Chapter 11 filing trailed only Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual and WorldCom in size, and a government-backed 'new GM' bought its best assets on 10 July.

Whose Robert Langdon thriller The Lost Symbol sold a million copies on its first day, a record for an adult novel?

Dan Brown's follow-up to The Da Vinci Code sent Langdon to Washington's Masonic landmarks and shifted a million hardcovers and e-books across the US, UK and Canada on 15 September.

Which Pacific nation switched to driving on the left on 7 September, aligning with Australia and New Zealand?

Samoa joined most other Commonwealth countries in keeping left, matching the two neighbours that are home to large numbers of Samoans and their second-hand cars.

Which street-dance troupe beat Susan Boyle in the final of Britain's Got Talent, watched by 18 million people?

Diversity took the title on 30 May with Boyle second and a saxophonist third, weeks after her audition clip had become a global YouTube sensation.

Whose double handball set up William Gallas's goal that put France past Ireland into the World Cup in November?

Thierry Henry controlled the ball twice with his hand before crossing in extra time of the play-off, and FIFA rejected the Football Association of Ireland's demand for a replay.

Whom did Roger Federer beat 16–14 in the fifth set of the Wimbledon final to claim a record 15th major title?

Andy Roddick lost a 77-game final, the longest men's major final ever played by games, as Federer passed Pete Sampras's all-time mark of 14 for his sixth Wimbledon crown.

Which club beat Manchester United 2–0 in Rome to complete the first treble by a Spanish side?

Barcelona's goals came from Samuel Eto'o after ten minutes and a header twenty minutes from time, sealing a treble in Pep Guardiola's first season as manager.

Who beat 59-year-old Tom Watson in a four-hole playoff at Turnberry, denying golf its oldest major champion?

Stewart Cink's only major came after Watson, five times an Open champion, bogeyed the 72nd hole when a par would have made him the oldest major winner in history.

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the world's first openly gay head of government, became prime minister of which country?

Iceland turned to Jóhanna, also its first female prime minister, to lead a minority cabinet after the previous coalition collapsed under the weight of the 2008 banking crash.

Yukio Hatoyama's landslide in August swept which group from power in Japan for only the second time since 1955?

The Liberal Democratic Party had governed for all but a few years since its founding, then collapsed to 119 seats as the Democratic Party of Japan swept 308 of the 480.

Hillary Clinton handed Sergei Lavrov a red 'reset' button in Geneva, but its Russian label actually read what?

Overload, or 'peregruzka', was printed instead of 'perezagruzka', and the switch itself was the kind used as an emergency stop on industrial machinery.

A £1,645 claim for a 'floating duck island' became the emblem of which scandal the Daily Telegraph exposed?

The MPs' expenses revelations, printed in instalments from 8 May, cost Speaker Michael Martin his job and ended Sir Peter Viggers's career over the duck house he called a 'pond feature'.

Which NASA mission crashed a spent rocket stage into a crater at the Moon's south pole, finding water in the plume?

LCROSS steered its Centaur upper stage into the crater Cabeus on 9 October, and on 13 November NASA confirmed water in both the vapour plume and the ejecta curtain.

Which British singer co-wrote Miley Cyrus's 'Party in the U.S.A.' but passed on it as too cheerful for her own album?

Jessie J wrote it with Dr. Luke and Claude Kelly in her first writing session, and the hand-me-down debuted at number two on the Hot 100 for Cyrus in August.

Which Led Zeppelin frontman won the Album of the Year Grammy for Raising Sand, his duets with Alison Krauss?

Robert Plant and Krauss were the night's biggest winners with five awards on 8 February, beating Coldplay, Radiohead, Lil Wayne and Ne-Yo for the top prize.

Which Belgian mother won the US Open unranked, beating both Williams sisters in just her third event back?

Kim Clijsters was the first unseeded woman to win the US Open and the first mother to take a Grand Slam singles title since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1980.

Which South Korean overturned Tiger Woods's 54-hole lead at Hazeltine, the first Asian-born man to win a golf major?

Y. E. Yang finished three strokes clear at Hazeltine, the only time Woods ever failed to win a major he led after 54 holes.

Which Romanian-born German novelist won the Nobel in Literature for depicting 'the landscape of the dispossessed'?

Herta Müller, who grew up in Romania's German-speaking Banat and emigrated in 1987, was praised by the Swedish Academy for 'the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose'.

Whose 'Down', featuring Lil Wayne, made him the first solo artist of South Asian origin to top the Hot 100?

Jay Sean's single unseated 'I Gotta Feeling' after its 14-week reign in October, making him the first British act at number one since Coldplay's 'Viva la Vida'.

Which found-footage horror film, shot for $15,000, went wide in October after a million online 'demands'?

Paranormal Activity took $194 million worldwide from a $15,000 shoot and is often cited as the most profitable film ever made on return on investment.

Who won Best Actor at Cannes for playing the SS 'Jew Hunter' Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds?

Christoph Waltz, a little-known Austrian TV actor before Quentin Tarantino cast him, followed the Cannes prize with a BAFTA and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.