Interesting & Incredible Events That Happened in 2019
- Jan 6 – Record $3.1 million (333.6 million yen) price for giant bluefin tuna at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market bought by sushi restaurant owner Kiyoshi Kimura
- Jan 7 – Amazon overtakes Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable listed company for the first time, worth $797 billion
- Jan 15 – Chinese scientists confirm they have germinated a cotton seed on the moon onboard the Chang’e 4 lander
- Feb 2 – More than 40 mummies from 323-30 BC found at a burial site at Tuna el-Gebel archaeological site south of Cairo, Egypt
- Mar 5 – Bugatti announces the most expensive new car ever made – the La Voiture Noire costing €16.7 million (almost $19 million), only one will be made
- Mar 6 – LeBron James scores his 32,293rd point in the 2nd quarter of a Lakers’ 115-99 loss to Denver in LA to pass Michael Jordan into 4th place on the NBA all-time point scoring list
- Mar 12 – Dozens charged in US college admission scandal by US federal prosecutors, including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman
- Mar 14 – California officially free of drought for the first time in more than 7 years (Dec 2011)
- Mar 16 – Beached dead whale found to have 88 pounds of plastic inside it, including 40 pounds of plastic bags, in Mabini, Philippines
- Mar 19 – “Superbloom” of poppies in Walker Canyon, southern California visible from space, after high rainfall
- Mar 22 – “Mind-blowing” discovery announced of 518 million-year-old fossil site in near Danshui River, Hubei province, China, with thousands of unknown fossils well preserved
- Mar 26 – Stolen Pablo Picasso painting “Buste de Femme” (Dora Maar) (1938) recovered after 20 years by Dutch art detective
- Mar 30 – Swedish gamer and YouTuber PewDiePie overtaken by Indian channel T-Series as YouTube channel with most subscribers (both on 92 million)
- Apr 4 – Kathie Lee Gifford leaves NBC’sToday show after 11 years
- Apr 8 – Record 17ft (5.2M) invasive Burmese python pregnant with 73 eggs captured in Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve
- Apr 10 – First home delivery service by drone begins in Canberra, Australia by Wing, part of Google’s Alphabet company
- Apr 13 – Australian super-horse Winx ends extraordinary career with a 3rd Queen Elizabeth Stakes win in Sydney; 33 consecutive race wins, a world record 25 Group One victories and $26.4 million prize money
- Apr 15 – 123rd Boston Marathon: Lawrence Cherono of Kenya wins in 2:07:58, just 0.1s ahead of Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa; Worknesh Degefa of Ethiopia is women’s champion in 2:23.31
- Apr 15 – Paris cathedral Notre Dame catches fire, toppling its spire and destroying its roof
- Apr 28 – TV series “Game of Thrones: The Long Night” episode debuts with the longest battle ever screened (nearly 80 mins), surpassing “Lord of the Rings” Battle of Helm’s Deep (44 mins)
- May 2 – The cast of “The Big Bang Theory” is the first TV actors to be immortalized in cement outside Hollywood’s Chinese theater in Los Angeles
- May 9 – New Australian $50 banknote misspelling of responsibility as “responsibilty” discovered on 46 million notes
- May – 13 American diver Victor Vescovo makes the deepest dive ever to the bottom of the Mariana Trench at 10,927m (35,849ft), and finds a plastic bag
- May 16 – South African Saray Khumalo is the first black African woman to climb Mt Evervest
- May 23 Prototype of a new high-speed train that will float above the track, capable of traveling 600km an hour (370 mph), unveiled by Chinese Railway Rolling Stock Corporation in Qingdao
- Jun 25 – San Francisco is the first major US city to ban e-cigarettes
- Jun 30 – President Donald Trump becomes first sitting US president to set foot in North Korea in the Korean Demilitarized Zone meeting Kim Jong Un
- Jul 4 – Largest earthquake in California in 20 years 6.4 magnitude near Ridgecrest
- Jul 10 – Earliest evidence of modern humans outside Africa found with 210,000-year-old skull from Apidima Cave, southern Greece published in “Nature”
- Jul 10 – Taylor Swift named the world’s highest-paid entertainer by Forbes earning $185 million in 2018
- Jul 11 – Last models of Volkswagen’s Beetle car are produced in Pueblo, Mexico, ending production worldwide after 80 years
- Jul 17 – Streaming service Netflix reaches 150 million subscribers worldwide, but with slower growth than forecast
- Jul 17 – Mexican drug cartel head Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years in New York
- Jul 22 – NFL Dallas Cowboys named most valuable sports team in the world worth $5 billion, MLB New York Yankees 2nd at $4.6 billion, Real Madrid 3rd with $4.2 billion according to Forbes
- Jul 24 – Facebook agrees to pay $5 billion fine, largest ever for violating consumer privacy, to the US Federal Trade Commission
- Aug 15 – Disney Studios is the first studio to have five films earn over $1 billion each in one year with “Toy Story 4”, “Avengers: Endgame”, “Captain Marvel”, “Aladdin” and “The Lion King”
- Aug 20 – Computer systems in 22 small Texas towns hacked and held to ransom in coordinated attack prompts FBI investigation
- Sep 1 – Co-founder and CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey has his Twitter account hacked
- Sep 11 – Water detected for the first time on a planet outside our solar system, on exoplanet K2-18b 110 light-years away
- Sep 20 – Batman Day – 80th anniversary of the first Batman comic
- Sep 28 – Elon Musk unveils SpaceX spacecraft Starship, designed to travel to Mars and the solar system and land back on earth
- Oct 10 – 3,500 women are the first to be allowed to attend a football match in Iran for a World Cup qualifier in Tehran, since the Islamic revolution
- Oct 23 -Google research lab claims it has achieved Quantum Supremacy, performing a calculation in 3 mins that would take a supercomputer 10,000 years
- Nov 3 – Olivia Newton-John’s black leather outfit from the film “Grease” sells for $405,700 at auction in Beverly Hills, California
- Nov 21 – Elon Musk launches Tesla’s electric Cybertruck with shatterproof windows that when demonstrated on stage shatter
- Dec 1 – A newly developed apple that can last a year – the Cosmic Crisp goes on sale in Washington State, US
- Dec 8 – Polar explorers Mike Horn and Børge Ousland complete 1,800 km (1,120 miles) journey on drifting ice in darkness in the Arctic