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Rewind to 18–24 September 2005

🌪️ Rita raises hell
Just three weeks after Katrina, Hurricane Rita stormed in as a Category 5 beast before slamming Texas and Louisiana as a Category 3. The real nightmare? The evacuation. Millions jammed Houston’s highways for up to 24 hours, gas ran out, buses caught fire, and tragically more than 100 people died — most not from the storm itself, but from the chaos of trying to escape it.

🦢 Blood, sweat and Swans
After 72 long years, the Sydney Swans finally snapped their premiership drought, edging West Coast by four points in a nail-biter at the MCG. Leo Barry’s match-saving mark became instant folklore — “That’s Leo Barry, you star!” echoing through AFL history. Sydney wasn’t just a rugby town anymore — the Swans were legends.

💍 Dutch love triangle goes legal
Victor de Bruijn and not one, but two women marched into a notary’s office in the Netherlands and signed a cohabitation contract. Legally, it wasn’t marriage, but visually it was rings, vows and “happily ever after x3.” Long before TikTok throuples and polycule memes, this was the first headline-grabbing poly contract in Europe.

📺 Mega Mondays
2005 gave us one of TV’s greatest premiere weeks ever: How I Met Your Mother kicked off a nine-year shaggy-dog story, My Name Is Earl served karma with a mullet, Criminal Minds began profiling your nightmares, and Ghost Whispererproved the dead — and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s necklines — could both stop traffic. Appointment viewing was real, and missing an episode meant cafeteria spoilers by lunchtime.

🎤 Rock Star INXS crowns JD
On CBS, Canadian crooner JD Fortune beat out rivals to front INXS, belting “Pretty Vegas” and convincing the band he had Hutchence’s swagger. The fairytale didn’t last — drugs, drama and a supposed “dumping at a Hong Kong airport” followed — but for one glittery 2005 moment, INXS were back in the headlines.

💿 Bow Wow + Ciara = Young Love
“Like You” cracked the Top 10 with Bow Wow rapping about love and Ciara crooning the hook like she already knew she was the future of R&B. Real-life couple, balcony flirting in the video, heavy lip gloss — it was mid-2000s romance goals.

💘 Reese goes ghosty
In rom-com land, Just Like Heaven paired Reese Witherspoon with Mark Ruffalo in a supernatural love story that was part Ghost, part Sleepless in Seattle. With Jon Heder as comic relief, it was pure mid-2000s comfort movie fluff — and honestly, we ate it up.

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