50 Fun Facts About 2013

A meteor exploded over which Russian city on February 15, 2013, injuring more than a thousand people?

Chelyabinsk: the blast's shock wave blew in windows across the city, so most of the injured were cut by flying glass, not struck by falling rock.

Which pope resigned on February 28, 2013?

Benedict XVI, the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years, announced it in Latin to a meeting of cardinals, and an Italian reporter who followed the Latin broke the news.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina took which papal name in March 2013?

Francis: as the vote went his way, a Brazilian cardinal hugged him and whispered 'Don't forget the poor', and Francis of Assisi came straight to his mind.

In February 2013, which country swore in its first female president, the daughter of a former military ruler?

South Korea: Park Geun-hye was the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the general who took power in a 1961 coup, and her own term ended early when a court upheld her impeachment in 2017.

Which former British prime minister died on April 8, 2013?

Margaret Thatcher: opponents marked her death by buying 'Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead', sending the 1939 Wizard of Oz song to number two in that week's UK singles chart.

In which country did the Rana Plaza garment-factory collapse kill more than 1,100 people in April 2013?

Bangladesh: within three weeks of the Rana Plaza collapse, global clothing brands and trade unions signed a legally binding accord to inspect and repair the country's garment factories.

Willem-Alexander took the throne of which country on April 30, 2013?

Netherlands: he was the first Dutch king since 1890, so the national Queen's Day holiday became King's Day and moved from April 30 to April 27, his birthday.

Emmelie de Forest won the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest for which country?

Denmark: her win with 'Only Teardrops' took the 2014 contest to Copenhagen, where the hosts staged it in a converted shipyard hall.

A tornado swelled to a record 2.6 miles wide in which US state on May 31, 2013?

Oklahoma: the El Reno tornado grew and swerved so fast that it overran veteran researcher Tim Samaras, his son Paul and colleague Carl Young as they chased it.

Which country granted Edward Snowden temporary asylum after his June 2013 NSA disclosures?

Russia: he landed in Moscow meaning only to change planes for Latin America, then spent 39 days in the airport's transit zone before the asylum papers came through.

Which country became the 28th member of the European Union on July 1, 2013?

Croatia: its entry was nearly derailed by a neighbour, as Slovenia blocked the membership talks for months in a quarrel over the sea border in the tiny Bay of Piran.

Which Egyptian president, elected a year earlier after Hosni Mubarak's fall, was removed in a military coup on July 3, 2013?

Mohamed Morsi: the army moved after mass protests on his first anniversary in office, and the general who announced his removal, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, became president the next year.

What was the runaway train carrying when it derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013?

Crude oil: the parked, unattended train lost its air brakes after its last running engine was shut down, then rolled seven miles downhill into the town centre, where the fire killed 47 people.

Philippe was sworn in as monarch of which country on July 21, 2013?

His father Albert II abdicated on Belgium's national day. Spain's Juan Carlos would follow suit a year later.

Weeks after Labor dumped Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott's Coalition beat which returning prime minister in Australia's September 2013 election?

Kevin Rudd had been back in the job for under three months, having toppled Julia Gillard, the former deputy who had ousted him in 2010.

In 2013 the IOC chose which city to host its second Summer Olympics, 56 years after its first?

Tokyo beat Istanbul 60–36 in the final vote, but the pandemic pushed its 2020 Games back a year and they went ahead almost entirely without spectators.

Which video game earned more than half a billion dollars on its first day, September 17, 2013?

Grand Theft Auto V: with an estimated $265 million budget it was reported to be the most expensive game yet made, and it took in about three times that in its first 24 hours.

Which version of Windows did Microsoft release on October 17, 2013?

Windows 8.1 put back the Start button that Windows 8 had stripped from the taskbar a year earlier, though clicking it opened the tiled Start screen, not the old menu.

Which country launched its Mars Orbiter Mission in November 2013 and reached the planet on its first attempt?

India: the probe, nicknamed Mangalyaan, got to Mars on a budget of about $74 million, which the prime minister boasted was less than Hollywood spent making the film Gravity.

Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda, devastated which country in November 2013?

Philippines: the worst of the killing was done by the sea rather than the wind, as a storm surge several metres high swept through the city of Tacloban like a tsunami.

The Euromaidan protests began in November 2013 in which country?

Ukraine: crowds filled Kyiv's Independence Square after President Viktor Yanukovych backed out of signing a pact with the EU, and three months later he fled the capital.

Which country made the first soft Moon landing since 1976 with its Jade Rabbit rover in December 2013?

China: the Chang'e 3 mission's rover lost the ability to drive after about six weeks, yet kept sending data for more than two years.

Which Canadian short-story writer won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Alice Munro had announced her retirement earlier that year, and the Swedish Academy, unable to reach her before the announcement, left the news on her answering machine.

François Englert and Peter Higgs shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in which field?

Physics: the prize came a year after CERN found the boson the pair predicted in 1964, and Higgs, who owned no mobile phone, learned he had won from a former neighbour in the street.

2013's Nobel Peace laureate had just begun dismantling which country's chemical weapons?

Syria: the OPCW, the world's chemical weapons watchdog, had overseen the first destruction of its arsenal only five days before the prize was announced, under a deal struck to head off American air strikes.

The United Nations designated 2013 the International Year of which food?

Quinoa: the UN said the year honoured the Andean peoples whose ancestral farming had preserved the grain, and Bolivia, a leading producer, chaired the committee that ran it.

Edith Windsor's Supreme Court victory in June 2013 struck down a key section of which federal law?

Defense of Marriage Act: Windsor sued after being billed $363,053 in estate tax on her late wife's estate, a bill no widow of a husband would have received.

In February 2013, a hoax alert on hijacked Emergency Alert Systems at several US TV stations warned of what?

A zombie apocalypse: viewers in Montana and Michigan were told that the bodies of the dead were rising from their graves and attacking the living, and were warned not to approach them.

Whose December 2013 memorial featured a fake sign-language interpreter?

Nelson Mandela had died on December 5, aged 95; at the stadium memorial the interpreter signed gibberish for hours, and later blamed a schizophrenic episode.

Which royal baby was born third in line to the throne on July 22, 2013?

Prince George met the cameras on the same hospital steps where his father William had been shown off 31 years earlier, while crowds queued at Buckingham Palace to photograph the birth notice on its easel.

Which team won Super Bowl XLVII in February 2013?

Baltimore Ravens: coach John Harbaugh beat his younger brother Jim's 49ers 34–31, sealing it when his punter ran around his own end zone and took a deliberate safety to burn the final seconds.

What stopped Super Bowl XLVII for 34 minutes in New Orleans?

A power outage: much of the Superdome went dark moments after Jacoby Jones's record 108-yard kickoff return, and the trailing team scored 17 straight points once play resumed.

Who headlined the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show in New Orleans in February 2013?

Beyoncé brought out Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams for a Destiny's Child reunion, thirteen days after she sang the national anthem at Barack Obama's second inauguration.

Which AMC drama ended its five-season run with the finale 'Felina' on September 29, 2013?

Breaking Bad: the title 'Felina' is an anagram of 'finale' and a nod to Feleena, the woman in the Marty Robbins ballad 'El Paso', which plays in Walt's stolen car.

Which Disney film, released in November 2013, became the year's highest-grossing movie?

Frozen: Elsa was written as the villain until the songwriters delivered 'Let It Go', which made her so sympathetic that the film-makers recast her as a frightened heroine.

Lorde, whose debut single 'Royals' spent nine weeks at number one in 2013, comes from which country?

New Zealand: she wrote the lyrics at home in about half an hour, aged 15, taking the title from an old photo of a baseball player signing balls in a Kansas City Royals shirt.

Which 2013 hit did a jury find had copied Marvin Gaye's 'Got to Give It Up'?

Blurred Lines topped the Hot 100 for 12 straight weeks, the longest run of 2013, but the case left Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams owing Gaye's family millions of dollars and half the song's future royalties.

Which service released all 13 episodes of House of Cards at once on February 1, 2013?

Netflix outbid HBO, Showtime and AMC for the Kevin Spacey drama and ordered 26 episodes up front.

Which console reached North American shops a week before the Xbox One in November 2013, priced $100 lower?

PlayStation 4 sold a million units at its North American launch, and within seven months Microsoft began selling the Xbox One without its bundled Kinect camera to match the price.

Which dance-video craze, set to a track by producer Baauer, flooded YouTube in February 2013?

Harlem Shake: thousands of versions went up every day, and the craze sent Baauer's nine-month-old track straight in at number one on the Hot 100.

Which film won Best Picture at the February 2013 Oscars although its director was left off the Best Director shortlist?

Argo: Michelle Obama announced the winner live from the White House, and Ben Affleck, passed over as director, collected the statuette as one of the film's producers.

Who directed the 2013 space thriller Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney?

Alfonso Cuarón wrote it with his son Jonás and spent four and a half years on it, filming his actors inside a purpose-built box of LED lights, and became the first Latin American to win Best Director.

Which Fast & Furious star died in a car crash on November 30, 2013?

Paul Walker was a passenger in a speeding Porsche Carrera GT; Furious 7, left half-shot, was finished with his brothers Caleb and Cody standing in for him.

Which cable channel premiered the cult disaster movie Sharknado on July 11, 2013?

Syfy drew just 1.37 million viewers for the premiere, but Twitter chatter lifted the third airing to 2.1 million, the channel's most-watched repeat of an original film.

Which team won the 2013 World Series a year after finishing last in its division?

Boston Red Sox: after 93 defeats in 2012, the players grew bushy beards all season as a team ritual and rode them to the title, with David Ortiz named Series MVP.

Which team did the Miami Heat beat in seven games to win the 2013 NBA Finals?

San Antonio Spurs led Game 6 by five with 28 seconds left, and officials had begun roping off the court for the trophy presentation, when Ray Allen's corner three forced overtime.

Andy Murray's 2013 Wimbledon win made him the first British men's champion since whom?

Fred Perry won three straight Wimbledons to 1936, then turned professional and was cold-shouldered by tennis officialdom for decades before a statue of him went up at the club in 1984.

Who won the 2013 Masters to become the first Australian to wear the green jacket?

Adam Scott beat Ángel Cabrera on the second playoff hole, nine months after bogeying the last four holes to hand the 2012 Open Championship to Ernie Els.

Bayern Munich beat which fellow German club in the 2013 Champions League final at Wembley?

Borussia Dortmund lost 2–1 to a late Arjen Robben goal, weeks after learning that their home-grown star Mario Götze had agreed to join Bayern that summer.

Which Velvet Underground co-founder died on October 27, 2013?

Lou Reed had seemed to be on the mend after a liver transplant that May, but he died five months later at his home on Long Island, aged 71.