2014 in history
Here are some light-hearted facts about 2014, designed to serve as a prep sheet for a radio feature on 2014.
I created this page because when I needed some notes to create a few talking points about 2014 in Ireland I couldn't find any suitable sources, so I thought I'd share what I did find. It applies to 2014 in Britain too.
You can also look at years other than 2014:
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2014
Ellen DeGeneres's star-studded selfie became the most shared post on Twitter.
The charts were changed to include streaming.
A photo of Ed Miliband eating a bacon sandwich went viral because of his unfortunate expression, even though none of us look great when eating in front of a camera taking short exposures.
The famous Orange Wednesdays promotion came to an end.
England crashed out of the Brazil World Cup at the group stage, their worst performance for 60 years.
The UK stopped requiring drivers to display a paper tax disc on their windscreen.
Dixons merged with Carphone Warehouse.
The London New Year fireworks became a ticketed event.
It was the year of the ice bucket challenge.
Glasgow hosted the Commonwealth Games.
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West took a trip to Portlaoise, as part of their honeymoon.
Beyoncé and Jay Z visited Dublin Zoo while on tour there.
There were widespread protests against water charges in Ireland.
Rules were relaxed for immigrants arriving from the new EU member states Romania and Bulgaria. The British media had been full of scare-stories about how hoardes of Bulgarians would be coming over, so were somewhat disappointed when the first flight they found was carrying only a few holiday-makers.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced that they were "conscious uncoupling".
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing mid-journey, prompting widespread shock and confusion and a mystery that still hasn't been fully solved.
The last high-speed ferry from Holyhead arrived at Dun Laoghaire. 142,000 people used the service this year, compared with nearly 2 million passengers 15 years earlier.
2014 Launches
The BBC began pushing what it called a "webisode"; their word for online-only TV shows.
Lovefilm rebranded to Amazon Prime Instant Video.
The U2 album 'Songs of Innocence' caused a stir by being automatically added to everybody's iTunes account.
2014 in Film
Guardians of the Galaxy was the biggest film of the year.
Other big films include The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Lego Movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Big Hero 6, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Godzilla, 22 Jump Street, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Interstellar.
Sony were hacked, with unreleased films and scripts released online. The hackers demanded that Sony dropped its film 'The Interview'.
2014 in TV
Only Fools and Horses came back for a charity special featuring David Beckham.
The Good Morning Britain name was brought back to replace the beleaguered Daybreak.
The Top Gear cast and crew were chased out of Argentina, in a strange argument about a number plate.
One Direction appeared on Sesame Street.
The first series of Ireland's Fittest Family was broadcast.
While these facts about 2014 have been checked against third-party sources (and have been used on air before!), they are provided in good faith to inspire your research and no guarantee is made about their accuracy or their uniqueness. You can use the facts however you wish: most people just take a couple of points they remember and talk around then.
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