50 Fun Facts About 2020 Year in Review

Which film became the first non-English-language movie to win Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars?

Bong Joon-ho's thriller took four awards that night, including Best Director. It is also one of only a handful of films to win both the Palme d'Or and Best Picture.

Which Chinese city was placed under quarantine on 23 January 2020, with all transport halted?

The lockdown of an 11-million-person city was unprecedented in scale. The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern a week later.

On which date in 2020 did the World Health Organization declare COVID-19 a pandemic?

The WHO had named the disease COVID-19 exactly one month earlier, on February 11. Italy had become the first country under nationwide quarantine two days before the declaration.

Which country was the first to impose a nationwide quarantine in response to COVID-19?

The order came on March 9, 2020, the same day a Russo-Saudi oil price war sent the Dow down more than 2,000 points.

Which team won Super Bowl LIV in February 2020, beating the San Francisco 49ers 31–20?

Patrick Mahomes led a fourth-quarter comeback from 10 points down. It was the franchise's first title in 50 years.

Who co-headlined the Super Bowl LIV halftime show with Shakira?

The game at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens drew about 103 million US viewers, with an uptick during the halftime performance.

Which basketball legend died with his daughter Gianna in a helicopter crash in January 2020?

Nine people died when the Sikorsky S-76 went down in heavy fog near Calabasas, California. The other three options also died in 2020.

Where did the NBA finish its 2019–20 season inside a bio-secure bubble?

Las Vegas and Houston were considered before the league settled on Bay Lake, Florida. Players checked in with the same MagicBands theme-park guests use as hotel keys.

Which team won the 2020 NBA Finals, beating the Miami Heat 4–2?

It was the franchise's 17th championship. LeBron James won Finals MVP, the only player to earn the award with three different teams.

At which neutral ballpark was the entire 2020 World Series played?

Capacity in Arlington, Texas was limited to 25 percent, about 11,500 fans. It was the first ballpark to host a World Series in its inaugural season since the original Yankee Stadium.

The Dodgers' 2020 World Series title was their first since which year?

The 32-year wait ended with a six-game win over the Tampa Bay Rays. Both 1965 and 1981 were also Dodgers championship seasons.

Which Nintendo Switch game released on March 20, 2020 became a lockdown phenomenon?

It had been announced at a Nintendo Direct back in September 2018 and delayed to get it right. It became the fastest game ever to sell six million copies in Japan.

Which studio developed Among Us, the social deduction game that exploded in 2020?

Co-founder Marcus Bromander based the idea on the party game Mafia. Mediatonic made 2020's other surprise hit, Fall Guys.

Among Us went viral in 2020, but in which year was it originally released?

It launched on iOS and Android under the app ID 'spacemafia' and averaged 30 to 50 concurrent players. Twitch streamers turned it into a pandemic staple two years later.

Which album did Taylor Swift surprise-release on July 24, 2020?

Written remotely with Aaron Dessner of The National, it caught the music business off guard. Its sister album Evermore followed in December.

Swift's 2020 album made her the first woman to win the Album of the Year Grammy how many times?

That tied her with Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon. Fearless and 1989 were the earlier winners.

The Last Dance, 2020's hit docuseries, focused on which Chicago Bulls season?

It was Michael Jordan's final season with the team. ESPN moved the series up from June to April because fans had no live sport to watch.

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

He filmed Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame while undergoing treatment, a fact unknown to the public until his death.

Which fictional chess prodigy did Anya Taylor-Joy play in The Queen's Gambit?

Within four weeks of release the show was Netflix's most-watched scripted miniseries and its top program in 63 countries. Chess set sales spiked worldwide.

Which show swept all seven comedy categories at the 2020 Primetime Emmys?

Dan and Eugene Levy became the first father-son duo to win Emmys in the same year. The virtual ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel from an empty Staples Center.

Which long-time Jeopardy! host died in November 2020 at age 80?

He had hosted for 36 years and kept taping through 20 months of pancreatic cancer treatment. Regis Philbin also died in 2020, in July.

The so-called murder hornet made 2020 headlines after nests were found in which US state?

The first North American sightings came in 2019 around Vancouver and neighbouring Whatcom County. Its real name is the Asian giant hornet; the nickname was a media invention.

On which date were the Tokyo Olympics postponed to 2021, the first postponement in Games history?

Canada and Australia had announced the day before that they would not send athletes in 2020. Previous Games had been cancelled outright but never rescheduled.

Which 2020 hit spent 90 weeks on the Hot 100 and was later named its best-performing song ever?

The Weeknd's synth-pop single never spent more than four weeks at number one, but it refused to leave the chart. Its TikTok dance challenge helped.

On which date in 2020 did the filmed Broadway production of Hamilton arrive on Disney+?

It had been slated for cinemas in October 2021. The Disney+ app was downloaded 266,084 times that weekend, a 72 percent jump.

Which rock guitarist died of a stroke on October 6, 2020, at age 65?

His son Wolfgang, the band's bassist, and ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli were at his side. All four musicians listed died in 2020.

Which Christopher Nolan film was the big-budget test of reopened cinemas in 2020?

Nolan spent more than five years on the screenplay. It was his final film distributed by Warner Bros. before he moved to Universal.

Sean Connery died on 31 October 2020 at his home in which country?

The original James Bond was 90 and lived in the Lyford Cay community of Nassau. He had also spent years in Marbella, Spain.

Tiger King followed Joe Exotic's feud with which big-cat rescue owner?

The series landed on Netflix on March 20, 2020, the same day as Animal Crossing, right as lockdowns began. Her Big Cat Rescue is in Tampa, Florida.

Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first person outside trials to receive which COVID-19 vaccine?

She got her jab in Coventry on 8 Dec 2020, a week before her 91st birthday. Brian Pinker, 82, was first in line for the Oxford shot the following January.

Which country was first in the world to approve a fully tested COVID-19 vaccine, on 2 Dec 2020?

Mass vaccination there began six days later. The US and Saudi Arabia approved the same vaccine on 10 Dec, and Russia had already started injecting Sputnik V.

SpaceX's Demo-2 flight in May 2020 carried Bob Behnken and which other NASA astronaut?

Their capsule, named Endeavour, was the first crewed orbital launch from US soil since the Shuttle retired in 2011, and the first ever by a commercial provider.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx briefly touched down on which asteroid in October 2020 to grab a sample?

The sample capsule landed in the Utah desert in September 2023. Ryugu was the target of Japan's Hayabusa2, which returned its own sample in December 2020.

Which organization won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize?

The UN agency was honoured for fighting hunger as the pandemic disrupted food supplies. It is the largest humanitarian organization in the world.

Who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

They were recognised for the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing method, and it was the first science Nobel shared by two women alone.

Which American poet won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Tokarczuk and Handke were the 2018 and 2019 laureates, announced together in 2019; Gurnah followed in 2021.

The UK's Brexit transition period expired on the last day of which month in 2020?

Britain had formally left the EU on 31 January, beginning an 11-month transition. A trade deal was agreed on Christmas Eve, a week before the deadline.

Who won the 2020 United States presidential election?

Networks called the race on November 7 after delayed mail-in counts. Trump refused to concede, leading to the Capitol attack the following January.

Kamala Harris was elected in 2020 as which numbered Vice President of the United States?

She became the first woman, first Black American and first South Asian American to hold the office. Mike Pence was the 48th.

Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party won a landslide second term in October 2020 in which country?

It was the country's first single-party parliamentary majority since it adopted MMP proportional voting in 1996.

Which city's port was devastated by an ammonium nitrate explosion on August 4, 2020?

At least 218 people died and an estimated 300,000 were left homeless. The blast was felt in Cyprus, about 240 km away.

Eurovision 2020 was cancelled, the first cancellation in how many years of the contest's history?

Rotterdam kept the hosting rights and staged the 2021 edition instead. Netflix filled the gap with a Will Ferrell comedy about the contest.

Which Istanbul landmark was ordered reverted from a museum to a mosque in July 2020?

A court annulled the 1934 decree that had made it a museum. Built as a cathedral in 537, it had been a mosque from 1453 until Atatürk's secularisation.

Lewis Hamilton's seventh Formula One title in 2020 equalled whose record?

He clinched it at the Turkish Grand Prix in November. Schumacher's seventh had come in 2004, also with a win-heavy season for Ferrari.

Which games console was released worldwide on November 19, 2020?

Microsoft's Xbox Series X and S had launched nine days earlier. Scalpers and chip shortages kept both consoles scarce for more than a year.

Nepal and China jointly announced a new official height for Mount Everest in 2020. What was it?

The figure is 86 centimetres higher than the 8,848 m India measured in 1955. A 2015 earthquake had raised doubts about whether the mountain had shifted.

Which DeepMind AI was credited with solving the protein-folding problem in November 2020?

Predicting a protein's 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence had been a 50-year grand challenge in biology. Its creators shared the 2024 Nobel in Chemistry.

The great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on 21 Dec 2020 was the closest since which year?

The two planets appeared just 0.1 degrees apart, close enough to share a telescope view. The 1623 pairing sat too near the Sun to be seen; 1226 was the last easily visible one.

Which leader, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, resigned in August 2020 citing ill health?

Yoshihide Suga, his chief cabinet secretary, took over in September. Abe was assassinated while campaigning in July 2022.

In August 2020 Jeff Bezos became the first person with a net worth above what figure?

Amazon stock surged as lockdowns pushed shopping online. Bezos stepped down as CEO the following year to focus on Blue Origin.