97 Fun Facts About 2020

Which film won Best Picture at the Oscars in February 2020?

Parasite was the first non-English-language Best Picture winner, and when Bong Joon-ho quoted Martin Scorsese in a speech, the crowd gave Scorsese an ovation.

Joaquin Phoenix won the 2020 Best Actor Oscar for which film?

Joker won Phoenix the Oscar, and the day after his speech about dairy cows he helped rescue a cow and her newborn calf from a Los Angeles slaughterhouse.

Which Netflix true-crime series about Joe Exotic arrived on March 20, 2020?

Tiger King drew 34.3 million US viewers in its first ten days, and Trump was even asked about pardoning Joe Exotic, though he left him off his January 2021 pardons.

Which Nintendo Switch game was released in March 2020?

Animal Crossing: New Horizons went political too: Joe Biden's 2020 campaign released official yard signs for players to decorate their islands.

Which 2018 game became a hit in 2020 after Twitch streamers picked it up?

Among Us got so popular that in September 2020 its developer, Innersloth, cancelled a planned sequel to put all its focus into the original.

Which Taylor Swift album was surprise-released on July 24, 2020?

It went on to win Album of the Year at the Grammys, making Swift the first woman to take that award three times.

Swift recorded her July 2020 album remotely with Jack Antonoff and which other producer?

Aaron Dessner, of the National, sent Swift instrumental tracks, and within hours she sent back a voice memo of a fully written song.

Which show swept the top comedy prizes at the 2020 Emmys?

Schitt's Creek drew modest ratings early on, but streaming on Netflix from 2017 built the audience behind its record final-season sweep.

Who played chess prodigy Beth Harmon in The Queen's Gambit?

Anya Taylor-Joy's show set off a chess boom: Goliath Games said its chess-set sales rose more than 1,000% after the series came out.

Which short-video streaming app launched in April 2020 and shut down that December?

Quibi raised about $1.75 billion from investors, yet after it shut down, Roku bought its whole library of shows for under $100 million.

Chadwick Boseman died in August 2020 after a private battle with which illness?

Colon cancer was diagnosed in 2016, and Boseman filmed Da 5 Bloods and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom between surgeries and chemotherapy.

Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash near which California city?

Calabasas: the NTSB found the pilot kept flying into low cloud, became spatially disoriented and lost control before hitting a hillside.

Alex Trebek died in November 2020 after 20 months with which disease?

Pancreatic cancer did not stop Trebek hosting: he taped his final Jeopardy! episodes in October 2020, days before he died.

Which ESPN docuseries followed Jordan's final Bulls season?

The Last Dance was moved up to April 2020 because live sports had stopped, and it drew on footage from an NBA film crew that followed the 1997–98 Bulls.

Which BTS single, their first sung entirely in English, gave the group their first US number one in 2020?

Dynamite was released to bring energy to fans during the pandemic, and it made BTS the first all-South Korean act to top the Hot 100.

Who wrote and directed Tenet, the 2020 blockbuster that tried to reopen cinemas?

Christopher Nolan held out for a cinema release, and Tenet grossed more than $300 million worldwide, yet it still lost money.

Which Netflix series, based on Julia Quinn's novels, debuted on Christmas Day 2020?

Bridgerton was the first series from Shonda Rhimes's big Netflix deal, and less than a month after its debut Netflix renewed it for a second season.

In Cyberpunk 2077, Keanu Reeves plays which character?

Johnny Silverhand's reveal at E3 2019 made Reeves a meme after he told everyone in the crowd that they were breathtaking.

Where did the NBA build its 2020 COVID-19 bubble to restart play?

Walt Disney World housed the teams, and once play resumed, no player inside the bubble tested positive for COVID-19.

Which team did the Los Angeles Lakers beat in the 2020 NBA Finals?

Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler ran a coffee business from his bubble hotel room, charging $20 a cup, on the way to the Finals.

The entire 2020 World Series was played at which ballpark?

Globe Life Field saw the Dodgers win, but Justin Turner, pulled from the clincher after a positive COVID-19 test, came back out to celebrate on the field.

Who did the Kansas City Chiefs beat 31-20 in Super Bowl LIV in February 2020?

San Francisco 49ers led by 10 in the fourth quarter, but Patrick Mahomes led three late touchdown drives to give the Chiefs their first title in 50 years.

Which two artists co-headlined the Super Bowl LIV halftime show?

Shakira and Jennifer Lopez were joined by Lopez's 11-year-old daughter, Emme, who sang "Let's Get Loud" with her mother.

Eddie Van Halen died in October 2020 of what cause?

A stroke was the immediate cause on his death certificate; years earlier he had blamed his tongue cancer on holding metal guitar picks in his mouth.

Which unofficial 1983 Bond film starred Sean Connery, who died in 2020?

Never Say Never Again got its title from Connery's wife, Micheline, a nod to his vow never to play Bond again.

Lewis Hamilton's 2020 Formula One title equalled whose record of seven championships?

Michael Schumacher's seven titles were matched, but a positive COVID-19 test soon kept Hamilton out of the Sakhir Grand Prix, where George Russell took his seat.

Pixar's Soul follows Joe Gardner, a teacher chasing a big break as what kind of musician?

Pianist Joe Gardner's hands were animated from videos of Jon Batiste playing, and Batiste also wrote the film's jazz.

Wonder Woman 1984 opened in cinemas and on which streaming service on the same day in 2020?

HBO Max streamed it at no extra cost, and to keep cinemas on board, Warner Bros. agreed to pull it from HBO Max after a month.

Who filled Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court seat in October 2020?

Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed about a week before the 2020 election by the Senate Republicans who had refused Merrick Garland a hearing in the 2016 election year.

Cardi B's August 2020 hit "WAP" featured which rapper?

Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B later performed WAP together on stage at the 2021 Grammys.

Which song gave Harry Styles his first US number one in 2020?

Watermelon Sugar's beach-party video, shot in January 2020, opens 'dedicated to touching', a line its directors added so it wouldn't seem tone-deaf during the pandemic.

Dolly Parton's $1 million gift to Vanderbilt helped fund which COVID-19 vaccine?

Moderna's shot was the one Parton got at Vanderbilt in March 2021, and she marked it by singing a vaccine rewrite of her hit "Jolene".

Where did Harry and Meghan post their January 2020 announcement that they were stepping back?

Instagram carried the couple's statement, and within two weeks the palace said they would stop using their HRH titles and repay £2.4 million for Frogmore Cottage's refurbishment.

What made the IOC's March 2020 ruling on the Tokyo Olympics unique?

First Games ever postponed: earlier Games had only ever been cancelled, and the call came days after Canada said it would not send athletes.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm premiered in October 2020 on which service?

Prime Video premiered it on October 23, 2020, a slot Amazon chose so the film would reach its widest audience before Election Day.

Gillian Anderson joined The Crown's fourth season in 2020 as which figure?

Margaret Thatcher's era was on screen when UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden said Netflix should make clear that The Crown is fiction.

Ted Lasso premiered in August 2020 on which streaming service?

Apple TV+ built the series on a coach Jason Sudeikis first played in 2013 NBC Sports promos, where Lasso took over Tottenham.

"Blinding Lights" comes from which 2020 album?

After Hours took its title from Martin Scorsese's 1985 film, and its videos tell the story of one very bad night.

Which star boycotted the Grammys after drawing zero nominations in 2020?

The Weeknd kept the boycott going after the Academy scrapped its secret committees in 2021, ending it with a surprise performance at the 2025 Grammys.

A US drone strike killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 at which airport?

Baghdad saw Soleimani's killing, and days later Iran fired missiles at US bases in Iraq and mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian airliner.

The August 2020 Beirut port explosion was caused by a stockpile of what?

Ammonium nitrate had sat at the port without safety measures for six years, and within a week of the blast Lebanon's government resigned.

Which country was first to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, on December 2, 2020?

United Kingdom regulators moved first by using Regulation 174, an emergency power that allows rapid temporary approvals in a pandemic.

Which WHO chief announced on March 11, 2020 that COVID-19 could be characterized as a pandemic?

Tedros Adhanom said the WHO was deeply concerned both by alarming levels of spread and by alarming levels of inaction.

Which song contest was cancelled for the first time in March 2020?

Eurovision Song Contest organisers replaced it with Europe Shine a Light, a non-competitive show featuring the cancelled entries.

Which Gulf state agreed to normalise relations with Israel on August 13, 2020?

The UAE deal was only the third Israel-Arab peace agreement, after Egypt and Jordan, and Israel put plans to annex parts of the West Bank on hold.

Antarctica's first COVID-19 cases, found in December 2020, were at which country's base?

Chile's army base Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme logged the cases, among soldiers and contractors doing maintenance work, and the infected were evacuated.

Time magazine closed 2020 by putting what over the year on its cover?

A red X had marked Time covers for the deaths of Hitler and Osama bin Laden, and this time it struck out a whole year.

Which children's song overtook 'Despacito' in November 2020 to become YouTube's most-viewed video?

Baby Shark, in the version by South Korean company Pinkfong, had 7.04 billion views when it took the record. It later became the first YouTube video to pass 10 billion.

What landed on Mike Pence's head mid-debate in October 2020 and became an instant internet meme?

A fly may have been drawn to Pence's white hair, since flies tend to land on white objects. The Biden campaign quickly snapped up the domain flywillvote.com.

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season used up all 21 storm names and turned to which alphabet?

Greek letters had been needed only once before, in 2005. The 2020 season ran through nine of them, from Alpha to Iota, and it was the final year the backup system was used.

Which commodity's US benchmark price fell below zero for the first time ever on April 20, 2020?

Crude oil for May delivery sank to about minus $37 a barrel. With demand collapsing and storage tanks nearly full, traders were paying buyers to take it off their hands.

Which rapper ran for US president in 2020 as the candidate of his own 'Birthday Party'?

Kanye West said he picked the name because 'when we win, it's everybody's birthday'. He made the ballot in 12 states and conceded the morning after Election Day.

In November 2020, a crew counting bighorn sheep spotted a metal monolith in which US state's desert?

Utah officials kept the location secret, but the public tracked the pillar down within days using mapping software. Four men from nearby Moab then covertly hauled it away.

A 2020 TikTok of a juice-sipping skateboarder sent which Fleetwood Mac song back up the charts?

Dreams played as Nathan Apodaca rolled down an Idaho highway with a bottle of Ocean Spray. Back in 1977 it had been the band's only US number one.

Elon Musk and which musician welcomed a son in May 2020, first announcing his name as X Æ A-12?

Grimes and Musk had to rethink the name because California only accepts letters of the English alphabet. The boy became X Æ A-Xii, swapping the digits for Roman numerals.

Denmark ordered 17 million of which fur-farmed species culled in late 2020 over a virus mutation?

Mink on Danish farms carried a mutated coronavirus that officials feared could weaken the coming vaccines. Denmark was the world's largest producer of the pelts, and the order turned out to have no legal basis.

A pyrotechnic device at what kind of celebration sparked California's El Dorado Fire in 2020?

A gender reveal party in El Dorado Ranch Park started a wildfire that burned for 71 days across more than 22,000 acres. The hosts were charged over a firefighter's death.

Which famous tennis tournament was cancelled in 2020 for the first time since World War II?

Wimbledon had last been called off in 1945. The All England Club held insurance covering infectious diseases and reportedly claimed more than £100 million for the lost tournament.

Which remake of a 1998 animated film skipped US cinemas in 2020 for a $29.99 streaming fee?

Mulan was sold under a new label, Premier Access, on top of the monthly subscription. Three months later it was free to every subscriber.

Which video-calling app, founded by ex-Cisco engineer Eric Yuan, became a household name in 2020?

Zoom was the fifth most downloaded mobile app of 2020 as work, school and family gatherings moved online. The company had turned its first profit only the year before.

Which senator did Joe Biden pick as his running mate in August 2020, three months before they won?

Kamala Harris had run against Biden for the nomination a year earlier. She became the first woman, first African American and first Asian American to serve as vice president.

George Floyd's death under a police officer's knee in May 2020 happened in which US city?

Minneapolis police had been called over a suspected counterfeit $20 bill. Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes and was later convicted of murder.

Which Argentine football legend's death in November 2020 led Napoli to rename its stadium for him?

Diego Maradona's death at 60 brought three days of national mourning in Argentina. Napoli's ground became the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona just nine days later.

After 20 seasons with the New England Patriots, Tom Brady signed with which NFL team in March 2020?

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had not won a playoff game since 2002. Brady ended that drought in his first season there and went on to win Super Bowl LV.

Which club ended a 30-year wait for an English league title by winning the 2019–20 Premier League?

Liverpool clinched it with seven games to spare, the earliest finish on record, yet also the latest by date: a three-month shutdown pushed the decisive night to 25 June.

The Mandalorian revealed in late 2020 that the character fans call Baby Yoda is really named what?

Grogu told Ahsoka Tano his name through the Force, along with the news that he was raised at the Jedi Temple. Until then even the official subtitles called him 'the Child'.

Olivia de Havilland, who died in 2020 aged 104, got her first Oscar nomination for which 1939 film?

Gone with the Wind cast her as gentle Melanie, a part her own studio boss at first refused to lend her out for. At her death in Paris she was the oldest living Oscar winner.

Which senator became the first ever to vote to convict a president of the same party, in early 2020?

Mitt Romney voted guilty on abuse of power at Donald Trump's first impeachment trial. The other 52 Republican senators all voted to acquit, and the charge fell well short of a two-thirds majority.

Which city, the capital of Hubei province, was sealed off from the outside world in January 2020?

Wuhan stayed shut until 8 April. Travel curbs eventually reached all 15 other cities in the province, covering about 57 million people.

Which two planets appeared closer together in December 2020 than at any time since 1623?

Jupiter and Saturn sat just a tenth of a degree apart on 21 December. It was the easiest close pairing to see since 1226, because the earlier ones were lost in the Sun's glare.

Which rover left Earth for Mars in July 2020 carrying a small helicopter named Ingenuity?

Perseverance touched down in Jezero Crater in February 2021. Ingenuity then made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet and outlasted its five-flight plan by dozens of trips.

Lady Gaga teamed up with which singer on 'Rain on Me', a US number-one hit in 2020?

Ariana Grande and Gaga made the first all-female collaboration to enter the Billboard Hot 100 at number one. The duet went on to win a Grammy for best pop duo performance.

Which rapper got his own McDonald's meal in 2020, the chain's first celebrity meal since 1992?

Travis Scott's take on the Quarter Pounder sold so fast that some branches ran out of ingredients. The previous star meal was the McJordan burger, sold around Chicago.

Which hit game was pulled from the iPhone's App Store in 2020 for adding its own payment system?

Fortnite maker Epic Games sued the same day and released 'Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite', a parody of a famous 1984 computer advert. Epic objected to a 30% cut of every in-app purchase.

A 2020 hack of which social network made Bill Gates's and Elon Musk's accounts push a bitcoin scam?

Twitter employees were tricked into giving up access to internal tools, and 130 high-profile accounts were compromised. A 17-year-old from Florida was one of those charged.

Which national leader spent three nights in intensive care with COVID-19 in April 2020?

Boris Johnson later said doctors had made preparations in case he died. He spent a further fortnight recovering at Chequers before returning to Downing Street.

Which state did Joe Biden win in 2020 as the first Democrat to carry it since Bill Clinton in 1992?

Georgia went to Biden by 11,779 votes, a margin of 0.23 points and the narrowest of any state by percentage. Fast-growing Atlanta suburbs had turned a Republican stronghold into a swing state.

What did the US government call the effort it launched in May 2020 to fast-track COVID-19 vaccines?

Operation Warp Speed borrowed Star Trek's term for faster-than-light travel and set out to deliver 300 million doses. BioNTech had already named its own vaccine effort Project Lightspeed.

Which anti-malaria drug did Donald Trump tout against COVID-19 in 2020 and say he was taking?

Hydroxychloroquine demand soared after the endorsement, causing shortages for patients who relied on it. US regulators withdrew its emergency authorisation in June 2020, judging it unlikely to work.

Which German club beat Paris Saint-Germain 1–0 in Lisbon to win the 2020 Champions League final?

Bayern Munich's winner came from Kingsley Coman, a former PSG player. The club won every match it played in the competition that season, a first for any European tournament.

Which tennis player wore seven masks naming Black victims of violence at the 2020 US Open?

Naomi Osaka brought a different mask for each round and won all seven matches, so every name was seen. She took the final against Victoria Azarenka after losing the first set.

Which Istanbul landmark, a museum since 1935, lost that status under a Turkish court ruling in July 2020?

Hagia Sophia was completed as a church in 537 and became a mosque in 1453. A Turkish court annulled the 1935 decree that made it a museum, and Friday prayers were held there two weeks later.

The huge Arecibo radio telescope, featured in GoldenEye, collapsed in December 2020 on which island?

Puerto Rico's dish, built into a natural sinkhole, was the world's largest single-aperture telescope for 53 years. Its suspended platform crashed down after support cables failed.

Renée Zellweger won the Best Actress Oscar in February 2020 for playing which Hollywood legend?

Judy Garland is shown in the final year of her life, after moving her stage career to England, in the film Judy. Zellweger also collected the BAFTA and SAG awards for the role.

Who beat James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter in 2020 to be crowned Jeopardy!'s Greatest of All Time?

Ken Jennings took the $1 million prize and overtook Rutter as the highest-earning American game show contestant. It was the final major tournament Alex Trebek hosted.

Which drama about the warring Roy media dynasty won Outstanding Drama Series at the 2020 Emmys?

Succession's winners accepted their awards remotely because of the pandemic. Some statuettes were delivered by presenters in hazmat suits styled to look like formalwear.

Which Dua Lipa album, home to 'Don't Start Now' and 'Levitating', came out a week early in March 2020?

Future Nostalgia was rushed out after the whole record leaked online. Lipa admitted she was uneasy about releasing a disco album in the first weeks of the pandemic.

A 44-day war over Nagorno-Karabakh in autumn 2020 pitted Armenia against which country?

Azerbaijan's heavy use of drones was seen as crucial to its victory. Three earlier truces collapsed before a ceasefire finally ended the fighting on 10 November.

Which whipped coffee, named after a Korean honeycomb toffee, went viral on TikTok in March 2020?

Dalgona coffee actually came from a cafe in Macau. A South Korean actor who tried it there for a TV show said it tasted like the toffee, and the name stuck.

Which country became NATO's 30th member in March 2020 after settling a long dispute over its name?

North Macedonia had been kept out since 2008 by a neighbour's veto over the name 'Macedonia'. Adding 'North' under a 2018 agreement cleared the way to membership.

Which United Nations agency, based in Rome and founded in 1961, won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize?

The World Food Programme was honoured for fighting hunger and for working to stop food being used as a weapon of war. It is the world's largest humanitarian organisation.

Which English city's protesters rolled slave trader Edward Colston's statue into the harbour in 2020?

Bristol council fished the bronze out four days later and it went on museum display, still covered in graffiti. A jury cleared four people of criminal damage over the toppling.

Which Japanese anime topped the 2020 worldwide box office, a first for a non-Hollywood production?

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train took over $500 million worldwide. At home it needed just 73 days to pass Spirited Away, which had been Japan's biggest film for 19 years.

Which comet, named after the space mission that found it, was visible to the naked eye in July 2020?

NEOWISE was spotted that March by an infrared telescope and was later dubbed the Great Comet of 2020. Its pass by the Sun stretched its orbit, so it is not due back for about 6,800 years.

Which cruise ship was quarantined off Japan in February 2020 as 712 people aboard caught COVID-19?

Diamond Princess was held at Yokohama for two weeks. At one point more than half of all confirmed cases outside China were people from the ship.

President Trump signed an August 2020 order telling which company to sell off its hit app TikTok?

ByteDance was given 90 days to sell or spin off TikTok's American business, with Microsoft and Oracle circling. Courts blocked a separate ban on the app that autumn, and that ban was dropped in 2021.

Which animated sequel's April 2020 home-rental debut led AMC to threaten a Universal boycott?

Trolls World Tour reached living rooms the same day as the few cinemas still open. AMC vowed to stop showing Universal films, then backed down once the two agreed a new contract.