Friday Factoids – the last of 2005

December 30, 2005 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

It’s New Year’s Eve eve, so here are 2005-related factoids:

January: Adriana Iliescu is the world’s oldest woman to give birth, at age 66. She gave birth to Eliza Maria on 16 January 2005, at the Giule?ti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest, Romania.
February: The National Hockey League cancels its 2004-2005 season becoming the first North American professional league to cancel a season due to a labour dispute.
March: Millionaire Steve Fossett breaks a world record by completing the first non-stop, non-refueled, solo flight around the world in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer.
April: First 13th root calculation of a 200-digit number, computed by the Frenchman Alexis Lemaire.
May: A live hand grenade lands about 100 feet (30 m) from United States President George W. Bush while he is giving a speech to a crowd in Tbilisi, Georgia, but malfunctions and does not detonate.
June: Spain joins Belgium and the Netherlands in permitting same-sex marriage. [Canada does the same in July.]
July: Four explosions rock the transport network in London, three on the London Underground and one on a bus. Over 50 deaths were reported, and over 200 injured.
August: A 4.1 kg meteorite crashes into the Dotito area of Zambezi Escarpment in Zimbabwe, leaving a 15 cm crater.
September: U.S. army reservist Lynndie England is convicted by a military jury on six of seven counts in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
October: RAF Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith charged with refusing to serve in the Iraq war. His solicitor, Justin Hugheston-Roberts, told the Sunday Times “He is not arguing that he is a conscientious objector. He is arguing that the war is manifestly unlawful.”
November: Andrew Stimpson, a 25-year old British man is reported as the first person proven to have been ‘cured’ of HIV.
December: December 31st will include the first leap second since 1998.