The 2000s
Five real newspaper headlines about the 2000s, printed between 2000 and 2009, with their dates removed. Read each one and guess the year it was published. No multiple choice and no trivia questions, just the headline as it was printed.
There are 10 rounds of five in this topic, and a new one appears whenever the archive has enough for it.
Headline one
The Guardian
2000
Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France in 2000, his second consecutive victory following his 1999 win. Armstrong had made a remarkable return to professional cycling after surviving testicular cancer. His dominance of the race would continue until 2005, though his titles were later stripped following a doping investigation.
Headline two
The New York Times
2002
Pete Sampras defeated Andre Agassi in the 2002 US Open final to claim his 14th Grand Slam title, a new all-time record. It proved to be Sampras's final professional match, making it one of the most celebrated farewell performances in tennis history. He retired the following year without ever officially announcing his retirement.
Headline three
The Times-Picayune
2005
Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast on 29 August 2005, and the failure of New Orleans' levee system left 80 percent of the city underwater. Over 1,800 people died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history, and the slow federal response drew fierce international criticism. The storm caused approximately $125 billion in damage and displaced more than a million people across the Gulf region.
Headline four
San Francisco Chronicle
2007
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone at the Macworld Conference in San Francisco, declaring it 'an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator' all in one device. The phone went on sale on June 29, 2007, with customers queuing around the block at Apple Stores. The launch is widely considered to have transformed the mobile phone industry and modern life itself.
Headline five
Rolling Stone
2009
Lady Gaga released Bad Romance in October 2009 as part of a re-release of her debut album The Fame, titled The Fame Monster. The music video's elaborate costumes, theatricality, and avant-garde imagery became instantly iconic. The song reached number one in numerous countries and cemented Gaga's reputation as the defining pop artist of her era.
Answer the five above to see your score.
Scoring works as it does in the daily game. Each headline is worth up to 100 points, and you lose two points for every year you are out. Being a decade wrong still earns you 80. A perfect round is 500.
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