50 Fun Facts About 21st Century

In which year did the 21st century officially begin?

Because there was no year zero, each century runs from year 1 to year 100. The famous millennium parties on New Year's Eve 1999 were technically a year early; the century ends on 31 December 2100.

Roughly how many people were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks?

Nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers seized four airliners: two hit the World Trade Center, one the Pentagon, and one came down in a field at Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Dennis Tito made headlines in 2001 by becoming the world's first what?

The American businessman paid to fly to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz, opening the era of commercial spaceflight.

Which website, launched on January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, became the go-to reference?

It has been run since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit funded mainly by reader donations.

Euro banknotes and coins first entered circulation in which year?

The euro had existed as an accounting currency since 1999. There are seven banknote denominations, from €5 to €500.

Which supersonic airliner made its last commercial flight on 24 October 2003?

It cruised at Mach 2.02, more than twice the speed of ordinary jets. Only Air France and British Airways ever flew it, seven each, and a 2000 crash outside Paris hastened its retirement.

The Human Genome Project was declared complete on 14 April 2003. In which year had it started?

It finished two years ahead of schedule with about 92% of the genome sequenced. The remaining gaps were not fully closed until the 2020s.

The 26 December 2004 earthquake and tsunami, the deadliest natural disaster of the century so far, was centred off the coast of which country?

The magnitude 9.2–9.3 quake struck off Aceh in northern Sumatra and killed an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries.

Which social network was launched on February 4, 2004 under the name 'TheFacebook'?

YouTube followed a year later, founded on February 14, 2005 by Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

Hurricane Katrina's storm surge broke the levees of which US city on August 29, 2005?

About 80% of the city flooded. With $125 billion in damage it remains America's costliest tropical cyclone; the death toll was revised to 1,392 in 2023.

Which body was demoted to dwarf-planet status when the IAU redefined 'planet' in 2006?

It failed the new test of having cleared its orbital neighbourhood. NASA's New Horizons probe still flew past it on July 14, 2015, the first spacecraft to do so.

Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone at Macworld on January 9 of which year?

He pitched it as three products in one: a widescreen iPod, a revolutionary phone and a breakthrough internet communicator. It went on sale that June.

At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Michael Phelps won how many gold medals, a record for a single Games?

He beat Mark Spitz's 1972 haul of seven. Phelps retired with 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold, the most of any athlete.

Who was elected in November 2008 as America's first African American president?

He beat John McCain by 365 electoral votes to 173, with Joe Biden as his running mate and Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket.

What name did bitcoin's pseudonymous creator use when mining the 'genesis block' on 3 January 2009?

The white paper had been posted on 31 October 2008. The first known purchase came in May 2010, when Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoins for two Papa John's pizzas.

In which city did Usain Bolt set his 9.58-second 100 m world record at the 2009 World Championships?

He also ran 19.19 for the 200 m at the same meet. Bolt won eight Olympic golds across the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Games.

Which 2009 James Cameron film overtook Titanic to become the highest-grossing movie of all time?

Set on the moon Pandora among the blue-skinned Na'vi, it was the first film to gross more than $2 billion and finished near $2.9 billion.

In which city does the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest structure, stand?

It rises 829.8 m over 163 floors, with 2,909 stairs from the ground to the 160th floor.

In which country is Eyjafjallajökull, whose 2010 eruption shut most of Europe's airspace for six days?

About 20 countries closed their skies from 15 to 20 April, stranding some 10 million travellers in the worst air-travel disruption since the Second World War.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest marine oil spill ever, happened in which body of water?

Eleven workers died in the explosion on the BP-operated rig, and about 4.9 million barrels leaked over 87 days before the well was capped on 15 July.

The Arab Spring uprisings began in December 2010 in which country?

They were sparked by the self-immolation of fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi. Protests spread to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, toppling Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi.

Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011 in a compound in which Pakistani city?

Operation Neptune Spear took 40 minutes. His body was flown 850 miles to the Arabian Sea and buried there.

Which Japanese nuclear plant suffered a Level 7 accident in March 2011?

The Tōhoku quake and wave knocked out the plant's grid connection and nearly all its backup power. Level 7 is the top of the international scale, matched only by Chernobyl.

Which country became the world's newest sovereign state on 9 July 2011?

Its January 2011 independence referendum passed with 98.8% support. The capital is Juba.

NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover landed inside which Martian crater on August 6, 2012?

A rocket-powered 'sky crane' lowered it on a 20-metre tether. It has been exploring the crater and Mount Sharp ever since.

On 4 July 2012, CERN announced a new particle believed to be which long-sought boson?

Peter Higgs and François Englert shared the 2013 Nobel Prize for predicting it. The 'God particle' nickname comes from a 1993 book and is disliked by physicists, Higgs included.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, elected pope on 13 March 2013, was the first pope from which religious order?

As Pope Francis he was also the first Latin American pope and the first born outside Europe since the 8th century. He died on 21 April 2025.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished on 8 March 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to which city?

The Boeing 777 carried 239 people. The first confirmed debris, a wing flaperon, washed up on Réunion in July 2015, and the cause remains undetermined.

Who became the youngest Nobel laureate ever when she shared the 2014 Peace Prize at age 17?

She had been shot by a Taliban gunman on a school bus in Pakistan's Swat Valley in October 2012. She shared the prize with Indian children's rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi.

What did LIGO detect for the first time on 14 September 2015, confirming Einstein's prediction?

The signal came from two black holes merging about 1.4 billion light-years away. Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for it.

What did SpaceX's Falcon 9 do on 21 December 2015 that no orbital-class rocket had done before?

The stage came down at Landing Zone 1 after launching Orbcomm satellites. The first drone-ship landing followed in April 2016 and the first re-flight of a used booster in March 2017.

Leicester City won the 2015–16 Premier League after starting the season at what odds with bookmakers?

Claudio Ranieri's side clinched the title on 2 May 2016 in what is called one of the greatest sporting stories ever. Jamie Vardy scored in a record 11 straight games along the way.

In the UK's June 2016 referendum, what percentage voted to leave the European Union?

Turnout was 72.2%. David Cameron resigned as prime minister, and Britain formally left on 31 January 2020.

The Chicago Cubs' 2016 World Series win ended a championship drought of how many years?

Their previous title was in 1908. Game 7 against Cleveland went to extra innings after a 17-minute rain delay, and the Cubs won 8–7.

The first black hole image, released in April 2019, showed the giant in which galaxy?

The Event Horizon Telescope combined radio dishes across the globe. It unveiled the Milky Way's own black hole, Sagittarius A*, in May 2022.

Which Paris landmark lost its spire and most of its roof to a fire on 15 April 2019?

The spire collapsed at 19:50. After a five-year restoration the cathedral reopened on 7 December 2024.

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on which date?

The outbreak had begun in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and the WHO had declared a public health emergency on 30 January. The emergency was ended in May 2023.

For six days in March 2021 the 400-metre container ship Ever Given blocked which waterway?

It ran aground on 23 March and was pulled free on 29 March. Roughly 12% of world trade normally passes through the canal.

The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on Christmas Day 2021 aboard which rocket?

It lifted off from Kourou in French Guiana and now sits near the Sun–Earth L2 point 1.5 million km away. Its 6.5 m gold-coated mirror has 18 hexagonal segments; the first image was released on 11 July 2022.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since 1945, began on which date?

It followed the 2014 annexation of Crimea. The war produced Europe's largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral on 8 September 2022 after a reign of how long?

It was the longest reign of any British monarch and of any queen regnant in history. She had celebrated her Platinum Jubilee that June and was succeeded by Charles III.

Which chatbot, released by OpenAI on November 30, 2022, reached 100 million users within two months?

It gained a million users in five days and was briefly the fastest-growing consumer app in history, until Meta's Threads.

According to the UN, world population reached 8 billion in November of which year?

It stood at about 6.1 billion when the century began. By 2025 nearly three-quarters of humanity had internet access, largely through smartphones.

Robert Francis Prevost, elected on 8 May 2025 as Pope Leo XIV, is the first pope born in which country?

The Chicago native also holds Peruvian citizenship and is the first pope from the Order of Saint Augustine. He succeeded Francis, who died in April 2025.

Which ESA lander made the first successful landing on a comet, in November 2014?

Delivered by the Rosetta probe to comet 67P, its batteries died two days later after it bounced into shadow.

How did NASA's Cassini mission end on 15 September 2017 after 13 years in orbit?

The deliberate plunge protected potentially habitable moons like Enceladus from contamination.

To which city did Edward Snowden fly in May 2013 before leaking NSA surveillance documents?

After the US revoked his passport he was stranded at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and stayed in Russia.

How many leaked documents made up the Panama Papers, published from April 2016?

The 2.6 terabytes came from the law firm Mossack Fonseca and detailed more than 214,000 offshore entities.

Which country's Chang'e 4 made the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, in January 2019?

A relay satellite, Queqiao, had been placed beyond the Moon first so the lander could talk to Earth.

The Titan submersible that imploded in June 2023 was diving to view which shipwreck?

Debris was found about 500 metres from the liner's bow, four days after contact with the OceanGate craft was lost.