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Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba that occurred in the early 1960s during the Cold War. The crisis ranks as one of the major confrontations of the Cold War, and is often regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to a nuclear war. -
Kennedy Assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. Kennedy was fatally shot while traveling with his wife Jacqueline, Texas governor John Connally, and the latter's wife Nellie, in a Presidential motorcade. -
Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. -
Beginning of the Vietnam War for USA
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations.[ -
First Spacewalk
Alexey Leonov was one of the twenty Soviet Air Force pilots selected to be part of the first cosmonaut group in 1960. He performed the first ever spacewalk, by being outside the spacecraft for 12 minutes and nine seconds on 18 March 1965, connected to the craft by a 5.35 meter tether. -
Six-Day Arab/Israeli war
The Six-Day War was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt (known at the time as the United Arab Republic), Jordan, and Syria. After a period of high tension between Israel and its neighbors, the war began on June 5 with Israel launching surprise air strikes against Arab forces. The outcome was a swift and decisive Israeli victory. Israel took effective control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. -
First Heart Transplant
On December 3, 1967, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky receives the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
Washkansky, a South African grocer dying from chronic heart disease, received the transplant from Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old woman who was fatally injured in a car accident. Surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who trained at the University of Cape Town and in the United States, performed the revolutionary medical operation. -
Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassinated
Martin Luther King, Jr., a prominent American leader of the African-American civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. On June 10, 1968, James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested in London at Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States, and charged with the crime. On March 10, 1969, Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison. -
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight which landed the first humans, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr, on Earth's Moon on July 20, 1969. The United States mission is considered the major accomplishment in the history of space exploration.
Launched from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 in Merritt Island, Florida on July 16, Apollo 11 was the fifth manned mission, and the third lunar mission, of NASA's Apollo program. -
Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County. -
Invention of the Microprocessor
The Intel 4004 is generally regarded as the first microprocessor, and cost $60. The first known advertisement for the 4004 is dated November 15, 1971 and appeared in Electronic News. The project that produced the 4004 originated in 1969, when Busicom, a Japanese calculator manufacturer, asked Intel to build a chipset for high-performance desktop calculators. Busicom's original design called for a programmable chip set consisting of seven different chips. Three of the chips were to ma -
Indo-Pakistani War
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was a military conflict between India and Pakistan. Indian, Bangladeshi and international sources consider the beginning of the war to be Operation Chengiz Khan, Pakistan's December 3, 1971 pre-emptive strike on 11 Indian airbases. Lasting just 13 days it is considered one of the shortest wars in history.
During the course of the war, Indian and Pakistani forces clashed on the eastern and western fronts. The war effectively came to an end after the -
Invention of the Internet
The Internet and Transmission Control Protocols were initially developed in 1973 by American computer scientist Vinton Cerf as part of a project sponsored by the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and directed by American engineer Robert Kahn. -
Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War, was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. The war began when the coalition launched a joint surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism. Egyptian and Syrian forces crossed ceasefire lines to enter the Israeli-held Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights respectively, which had been captured and occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were involved. -
Nixon Resignation
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. Effects of the scandal eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, on August 9, 1974. -
First Computer
The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell only a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold thousands in the first month. The Altair also appealed to individuals and businesses who just wanted a computer and purchased the assembled version. -
Invention of the VHS
Video tape in a large cassette format introduced by both JVC and Panasonic around 1976. This has been the most popular format for home use and video store rentals, however, it will be replaced by mini dv tapes and dvds. VHS stands for Video Home System. -
USA Bicentennial
The United States Bicentennial was a series of celebrations and observances during the mid-1970s that paid tribute to the historical events leading up to the creation of the United States as an independent republic. The Bicentennial culminated on Sunday, July 4, 1976, with the 200th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. -
Russian Invention of Satellite TV
Ekran (Russian: "Экран", "Screen") was a Soviet-Russian type of geostationary satellite, developed for a national system of Direct-To-Home television. The first satellite of Ekran series was launched in 1976. Each satellite in the Ekran series was designed to provide one TV and 2 radio program channels to cable TV systems throughout the USSR and to individual home receivers in northern Siberia. Ekran's downlink is in the UHF range. -
Ebola Outbreak
Ebolavirus first emerged in 1976 in outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Zaire and Sudan. The strain of Ebola that broke out in Zaire has one of the highest case fatality rates of any human pathogenic virus, roughly 90%, with case-fatality rates at 88% in 1976, 59% in 1994, 81% in 1995, 73% in 1996, 80% in 2001–2002, and 90% in 2003. The strain that broke out later in Sudan has a case fatality rate of around 50%. -
Three-Mile-Island Nuclear Accident
The Three Mile Island accident was a core meltdown in Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating near Harrisburg, PA which occurred on March 28, 1979. It resulted in the release of approximately 2.5 million curies of radioactive gases. -
First "Test Tube Baby"
In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process by which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the body: in vitro. IVF is a major treatment in infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed. The first successful birth of a "test tube baby", Louise Brown, occurred in 1978. Robert G. Edwards, the physiologist who developed the treatment, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010. -
Jonestown Mass Suicide
Jonestown became internationally notorious when, on November 18, 1978, 918 people died in the settlement as well as in a nearby airstrip and in Georgetown, Guyana's capital. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations. A total of 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed "revolutionary suicide" by Jones and some members on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions. -
Mt. St. Helens Eruption
On March 20, 1980, Mount St. Helens experienced a magnitude 4.2 earthquake and, on March 27, steam venting started. By the end of April, the north side of the mountain had started to bulge. On May 18, with little warning, a second earthquake, of magnitude 5.1, triggered a massive collapse of the north face of the mountain. It was the largest known debris avalanche in recorded history. -
Space Shuttle Columbia Launches
Columbia was successfully launched on April 12, 1981, the 20th anniversary of the first human spaceflight (Vostok 1), and returned on April 14, 1981, after orbiting the Earth 36 times, landing on the dry lakebed runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Columbia then undertook three further research missions to test its technical characteristics and performance. Its first operational mission, with a four-man crew, was STS-5, which launched on November 11, 1982. -
First Female Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is an American jurist who was the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States. She served as an Associate Justice from 1981 until her retirement from the Court in 2006. O'Connor was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. she was regarded as having the swing opinion in many cases. -
Pioneer 10 leaves Solar System
Launched on 2 March 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the Asteroid belt, and the first spacecraft to make direct observations and obtain close-up images of Jupiter. Famed as the most remote object ever made by man through most of its mission, Pioneer 10 is now over 8 billion miles away. -
First Macintosh
The Macintosh 128K machine, released as the "Apple Macintosh", was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a 9 in (23 cm) monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling price of US$2,495. -
Space Shuttle Accident
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida at 11:38 am EST (16:38 UTC). Disintegration of the entire vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The O-ring failure caused a breach, which led to a leak of ignited fuel, -
Halley's Comet
Halley's approach was first detected by astronomers David Jewitt and G. Edward Danielson on 16 October 1982 using the 5.1 m Hale telescope at Mount Palomar and a CCD camera. The first person to visually observe the comet on its 1986 return was amateur astronomer Stephen James O'Meara on 24 January 1985. O'Meara used a home-built 24-inch telescope on top of Mauna Kea to detect the magnitude 19.6 comet. -
Mir Space Station
Mir (Russian: Мир, IPA: [ˈmʲir]; lit. Peace or World) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, at first by the Soviet Union and then by Russia. Assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996, Mir was the first modular space station and had a greater mass than that of any previous spacecraft, holding the record for the largest artificial satellite orbiting the Earth until its deorbit on 21 March 2001. -
Chernobyl Nuclear Meltdown
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (officially Ukrainian SSR), which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe. It is considered the worst nuclear power plant in history. -
Loma Prieta Earthquake
The Loma Prieta earthquake, also known as the Quake of '89 and the World Series Earthquake, was a major earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area of California on October 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m. local time. Caused by a slip along the San Andreas Fault, the quake lasted 10–15 seconds and measured 6.9 on the open-ended Richter Scale. The quake killed 63 people throughout northern California, and injured 3,757. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The date on which the Wall fell is considered to have been 9 November 1989 but the Wall in its entirety was not torn down immediately. Starting that evening and in the days and weeks that followed, people came to the wall with sledgehammers or otherwise hammers and chisels to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts of it in the process and creating several unofficial border crossings. -
US invasion of Panama
The United States Invasion of Panama, code-named Operation Just Cause, was the invasion of Panama by the United States in December 1989. It occurred during the administration of U.S. President George H. W. Bush, and ten years after the Torrijos–Carter Treaties were ratified to transfer control of the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama by the year 2000. During the invasion, de facto Panamanian leader, general, and dictator Manuel Noriega was deposed. -
Hubble Telescope Launched
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter (7.9 ft) aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared. The telescope is named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble.
Hubble's orbit outside the distortion of Earth's atmosphere allows it to take extremely sharp images with almost no background light. -
Gulf War
The Invasion of Kuwait, also known as the Iraq-Kuwait War, was a major conflict between the Republic of Iraq and the State of Kuwait, which resulted in the seven-month long Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, which subsequently led to direct military intervention by United States-led forces in the Gulf War. In 1990, Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi petroleum through slant drilling. -
Los Angeles Riots
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots were sparked on April 29, 1992, when a jury acquitted three white and one Hispanic Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit. Thousands of people in the Los Angeles area rioted over the six days following the verdict.
Widespread looting, assault, arson and murder occurred, and property damages topped $1 billion. In all, 53 people died during the riots and thousands were injured. -
World Trade Center Bombing
The World Trade Center bombing occurred on February 26, 1993, when a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 lb device was intended to knock the North Tower into the South Tower , bringing both towers down and killing thousands of people. It failed to do so, but did kill six people and injured more than a thousand. -
Oklahoma City Terrorist Bombing
The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6, and injured more than 680 people. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, and destroyed 86 cars. -
NATO Bombs Bosnia
The 1995 NATO bombing in Bosnia and Herzegovina (code-named by NATO Operation Deliberate Force) was a sustained air campaign conducted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to undermine the military capability of the Army of the Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske, VRS) which threatened and attacked UN-designated "safe areas" in Bosnia during the Bosnian War. The operation was carried out between 30 August and 20 September 1995, involving 400 aircrafts and 5,000 personnel. -
First probe on Mars' surface
Mars Pathfinder was an American spacecraft that landed a base station with a roving probe on Mars in 1997. It consisted of a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and a lightweight (23 pounds) wheeled robotic rover named Sojourner.
Launched on December 4, 1996 by NASA aboard a Delta II booster a month after the Mars Global Surveyor was launched, it landed on July 4, 1997 on Mars' Ares Vallis, in a region called Chryse Planitia. -
Operation Desert Fox
The December 1998 bombing of Iraq (code-named Operation Desert Fox) was a major four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets from December 16–19, 1998 by the United States and United Kingdom. The contemporaneous justification for the strikes was Iraq's failure to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions as well as their interference with United Nations Special Commission inspectors. -
Clinton Impeached
Bill Clinton, President of the United States, was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on December 19, 1998, but acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999. Two other impeachment articles, a second perjury charge and a charge of abuse of power, failed in the House. The charges arose from the Lewinsky scandal and the Paula Jones lawsuit. The trial proceedings were largely partisan, with every guilty verdict coming from Republican Senators. -
Release of the PlayStation
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan. Its primary competitors were Sega's Dreamcast, Microsoft's Xbox, and Nintendo's GameCube.
The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console of all time, having reached over 150 million units sold as of January 31, 2011. -
Wikipedia goes live
Wikipedia is a free, collaborative, multilingual Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site, and it has about 100,000 regularly active contributors. As of January 2012, there are editions of Wikipedia in 283 languages. It has become the largest and most popular general reference. -
Earthquake in India kills 20,000
The 2001 Gujarat earthquake occurred on January 26, 2001, at 8:46 AM local time and lasted for over two minutes. The epicentre was about 9 km south-southwest of the village of Chobari in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District of Gujarat, India. The earthquake reached a magnitude of between 7.6 and 7.7 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum felt intensity of X (Intense) on the Mercalli intensity scale. The quake killed around 20,000 people. -
Probe lands on Asteroid
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene M. Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The mission succeeded in closing in with the asteroid and orbited several times around it, finally terminating by touching down on the asteroid on 12 February 2001. -
9/11 Attacks, 3,000 dead
The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks upon the United States in New York City and the Washington, D.C. areas on September 11, 2001. On that Tuesday morning, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets. The hijackers intentionally crashed two planes into the World Trade Center, and one into the Pentagon. Another plane was brought down by the hijackers when the passengers began to revolt against them. -
US attacks Afghanistan
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom. The primary driver of the invasion was the September 11 attacks on the United States, with the stated goal of dismantling the al-Qaeda terrorist organization and ending its use of Afghanistan as a base. The United States also said that it would remove the Taliban from power. This hasn't happened yet. -
XBOX is Released
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market, and competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast, and Nintendo's GameCube. The integrated Xbox Live service launched in November 2002 allowed players to play games online. -
Iran Earthquake; 20,000 dead
The 2002 Bou'in-Zahra earthquake occurred on June 22, 2002 in a region of northwestern Iran which is crossed by several major fault lines. The earthquake's epicenter was near the city of Bou'in-Zahra in Qazvin Province, an area known for destructive earthquakes. Measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale and 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale, the earthquake killed at least 20,061 people and injured 15,000 more. Over 20 aftershocks occured. -
Terrorist bombs in Bali
The 2002 Bali bombings occurred on 12 October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The attack was claimed as the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia according to the current police general, killing 202 people. A further 240 people were injured.
The attack involved the detonation of two bombs in busy nightclubs, as well as another in front of the US Embassy. -
Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster
The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when shortly before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission, STS-107, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in the death of all seven crew members. Debris from Columbia fell to Earth in Texas along a path stretching from Trophy Club to Tyler, as well as into parts of Louisiana. -
Traces of Water found on Mars
NASA scientists say that the roving robot Opportunity has found evidence that water once soaked the planet Mars.
Liquid water is the one absolute requirement for life on Earth. Although the discovery does not mean the evidence of life on Mars has been found, it suggests that life could have evolved there at one point just as it did on Earth. -
Terrorist Attack on Spanish Train
The Madrid train bombings were nearly simultaneous, coordinated bombings against the commuter train system of Madrid, Spain on the morning of 11 March 2004 -- three days before Spain's general elections. The explosions killed 191 people and wounded 1,800. The official investigation by the Spanish Judiciary determined the attacks were directed by an al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell although no direct al-Qaeda participation has been established. -
SpaceShipOne Achieves Flight
SpaceShipOne was a suborbital air-launched spaceplane that completed the first manned private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. Its mothership was named "White Knight". Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aviation company. Allen provided the funding of approximately US$25 million. -
Indian Ocean Tsunami
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake on Sunday, December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
The earthquake was caused by subduction and triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing over 320,000 people in fourteen countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters (98 ft) high. -
London 7/7 Terrorist Attack
The 7 July 2005 London bombings (often referred to as 7/7) were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in London, United Kingdom, which targeted civilians using the public transport system during the morning rush hour.
On the morning of Thursday, 7 July 2005, four Islamic home-grown terrorists detonated four bombs, three in quick succession aboard London Underground trains across the city and, later, a fourth on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. Fifty-two people were killed. -
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest and most destructive Atlantic hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall. At least 1,836 people died in the actual hurricane and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since 1928; total property damage was estimated at $80 billion. -
Israeli-Lebanese War
The 2006 Lebanon Wa was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israeli military. The conflict started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, though it formally ended on 8 September 2006 when Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon. -
Release of the Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As of January 2012, the Wii leads the generation over the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in worldwide sales and in December 2009 broke the record for best-selling console in a single month in the United States.
A distinguishing feature of the console is its wireless controller, the Wii Remote, which can be used as a handheld pointing device and detects movement in three dimensions. -
Beginning of the Global Recession
The late-2000s recession was a severe global economic problem that began in December 2007 and took a particularly sharp downward turn in September 2008. The Great Recession has affected the entire world economy, with higher detriment in some countries than others. It is a major global recession characterized by various systemic imbalances and was sparked by the outbreak of the late-2000s financial crisis. -
Obama Election
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365 electoral votes, and McCain 173. The popular vote was 69,456,897 to 59,934,814, respectively. -
Haiti earthquake; 300,000+ die
The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake, with an epicenter near the town of Léogâne, approximately 25 km west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. The earthquake occurred on Tuesday, 12 January 2010.
By 24 January, at least 52 aftershocks had been recorded. An estimated three million people were affected by the quake; the Haitian government reported that an estimated 316,000 people died. -
9.0 Earthquake in Japan triggers Nuclear Meltdown
It was a magnitude 9.0 undersea megathrust earthquake off the coast of Japan that occurred on Friday, 11 March 2011. The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that reached heights of up to 40.5 metres. The tsunami caused a number of nuclear accidents, primarily the ongoing level 7 meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant complex, and the associated evacuation zones affecting hundreds of thousands of residents.
