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Oklahoma City Bombing
The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The bombing claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6 and injured more than 680 people. Timothy McVeigh was the bomber. -
1996 Blizzard
The 1996 blizzard was a nor'easter blizzard that hit the East Coast on January 6, 1996 and brought nearly four feet of snow. -
California Bans Affirmative Action
Proposition 209: This proposition mandates that "the state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." -
Dolly the Sheep
Dolly the Sheep was cloned from mammary gland cells of another sheep. She was the first example of cloning, and consequently the most famous. -
Princess Diana dies
Princess Diana was killed in a violent car crash on August 31, 1997 in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, France. -
Pokemon Yellow Released
Pokemon is a video game based on the anime television series. It was released for Game Boy color in 1997 and quickly became popular. -
Lewinsky Affair
The Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging in 1998, from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998. -
Animal Kingdom
Disney's Animal Kingdom is the fourth of four theme parks built at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, opened on Earth Day, April 22, 1998. It is the 4th most-visited amusement park in the United States. -
Harry Potter Released
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of a wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. -
Hurricane George
Georges was the second deadliest and second strongest hurricane within the Atlantic basin during the 1998 season. Its 17 day journey resulted in seven landfalls, extending from the northeastern Caribbean to the coast of Mississippi, and 602 fatalities -- mainly in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. -
International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS is a modular structure whose first component was launched in 1998. Now the largest artificial body in orbit, it can often be seen at the appropriate time with the naked eye from Earth. -
Titanic
The movie Titanic was released on December 19, 1998, and quickly gained the title of "Most Successful Movie." -
Columbine Shootings
The Columbine High School massacre was a school shooting which occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. In addition to shootings, the complex and highly planned attack involved a fire bomb to divert firefighters, propane tanks converted to bombs placed in the cafeteria, 99 explosive devices, and bombs rigged in cars. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered a total of 12 students and then committed suicide. -
Y2K
The Y2K scare was the fear that all the computers would crash while switching the dates from the 1900's era to the 2000's era. In reality, the fear was unfounded and the computers made the switch with ease. -
George W. Bush
George W. Bush became the 43rd president after a race with Al Gore. He went on to serve two terms in office and saw the beginnings of the war on terror. -
Gay Marriage
The Netherlands became the first country to legalize gay marriage. -
World Trade Centers
Al-Queda terrorists hijacked two planes -- American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175-- and flew them into the World Trade Centers on 9/11. American Airlines Flight 97 was flown into the Pentagon and United Airlines flight 93 was supposed to hit the White House, but it crashed in an open field after the passengers bravely fought the hijackers. In all, nearly 3000 people were killed. -
US Invades Afghanistan
The United States invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to dismantle Al-Queda, the terrorist group that coordinated the 9/11 attacks. -
iPod Released
The iPod is a line of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first line was released on November 10, 2001. -
Euros
The Euro made it out of the computers and on to printed paper in January 2002. It is one of the most widely circulated bills. -
Columbia Space Shuttle Exploded
The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when shortly before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission, 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. -
US Invades Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq lasted from 19 March 2003 to 1 May 2003, and signaled the start of the conflict that later came to be known as the Iraq War, which was dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom by the United States. The invasion consisted of 21 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland, invaded Iraq and deposed the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein. -
Human Genome Project Completed
The Human Genome Project (HGP) is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint. -
Myspace is Launched
MySpace was launched in 2003. It quickly became popular, and from 2005 to 2008 was the most popular social network site in the world. -
Iraq Prisoner Abuse Scandal
During the War in Iraq, human rights violations, committed from late 2003 to early 2004, in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, reports of rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison (currently known as the Baghdad Central Prison) came to public attention beginning in early 2004 with Department of Defense announcements. These acts were committed by military police personnel of the United States Army and other agencies. -
Hubble Ultra Deep Field
The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF), was constructed from a total of eleven days of observations. The HUDF image was at the time the most sensitive astronomical image ever made at visible wavelengths, until the Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) was released in 2012. -
Facebook Released
Facebook is an online social networking service, whose name stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. It was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes -
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2004 Athens Olympics
The 2004 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, were a premier international multi-sport event held in Athens, Greece, from 13 to 29 August 2004 with the motto Welcome Home. 10,625 athletes competed, some 600 more than expected, accompanied by 5,501 team officials from 201 countries. -
Indian Ocean Earthquake
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred on Sunday, 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The quake itself is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake.The resulting tsunami was given various names, including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, South Asian tsunami, Indonesian tsunami, and the Boxing Day tsunami. -
Hurrican Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest and most destructive Atlantic hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was 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 1,833 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane. -
Housing/Credit Market Crash
The housing market reached its peak in 2006 and soon began a slow decline in late 2006 and early 2007. -
Execution of Saddam Hussein
The execution of Saddam Hussein took place on Saturday 30 December 2006. Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging, after being found guilty and convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shi'ite in the town of Dujail in 1982, in retaliation for an assassination attempt against him. -
iPhone is Released
The iPhone is a line of smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It runs Apple's iOS mobile operating system, known as the "iPhone OS" until June 2010, with the release of iOS 4.The first generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007;the most recent iPhone, the sixth-generation iPhone 5, on September 21, 2012. -
Kindle is Released
The Amazon Kindle is a series of e-book readers produced by Amazon.com. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media via wireless networking.The hardware platform, developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126, began as a single device and now comprises a range of devices – most using an E Ink electronic paper display capable of rendering 16 tones to simulate reading on paper. -
Bejing Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from August 8 to 24, 2008.A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) competed in 28 sports and 302 events. -
Barack Obama Elected
Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States, and the first African American to hold the office. -
Swine Flu Scare
The 2009 flu pandemic or swine flu was an influenza pandemic, and the second of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus (the first of them was the 1918 flu pandemic), albeit in a new version. First described in April 2009, the virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1 which resulted when a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine and human flu viruses further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus, leading to the term "swine flu" to be used for this pandemic. -
Michael Jackson Died
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American singer-songwriter, entertainer, dancer, arranger, music producer, choreographer, actor, businessman, musician, and philanthropist. -
Genetic Codes for Lung and Skin Cancer Unlocked
The entire genetic codes of two common types of cancer have been cracked, according to scientists, who say the breakthrough could unlock a new era in the treatment of deadly diseases. -
Haiti Earthquake
The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake, with an epicenter near the town of Léogâne (Ouest Department), approximately 25 km (16 miles) west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. The earthquake occurred on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. -
iPad is Released
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., which runs Apple's iOS operating system. The first iPad was released on April 3, 2010; the most recent iPad models, the fourth-generation iPad and iPad Mini, were released on November 2, 2012. -
BP Gulf Oil Spill
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the BP oil disaster, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the Macondo blowout) was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, estimated to be between 8% and 31% larger in volume than the earlier Ixtoc I oil spill. Following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which claimed 11 lives. -
Libya Bombing
On 19 March 2011, a multi-state coalition began a military intervention in Libya to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which was taken in response to events during the Libyan civil war, and military operations began, with US and British naval forces firing over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles, the French Air Force, British Royal Air Force, and Canadian Royal Canadian Air Force undertaking sorties across Libya and a naval blockade by Coalition forces. -
Wedding of Will and Kate
The wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton took place on 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey in London. The groom, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, is the eldest son of Charles, Prince of Wales, and is second in the line of succession to the British Throne and the thrones of fifteen other Commonwealth realms. The bride, Catherine "Kate" Middleton is the eldest of three children of Michael and Carole Middleton of Bucklebury, Berkshire. -
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda, the militant Islamist organization that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States, along with numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. -
Blagojevich Convicted/Sentenced
On June 27, 2011, after a retrial, Blagojevich was found guilty of 17 charges of corruption (including wire fraud, attempted extortion, and conspiracy to solicit bribes), not guilty on one charge and the jury deadlocked after 10 days of deliberation on the two remaining charges. On December 7, 2011, Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison. -
London Olympics
London hosted the Olympic Games in 1908, 1948 and 2012. The 2012 Summer Olympics made London the first city to have hosted the modern Games of three Olympiads. London is the only city in the United Kingdom to have ever hosted the Olympics; the United States is the only country to have hosted Summer Olympics on more occasions than the UK. -
Curiosity Lands
Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 10:02 EST aboard the MSL spacecraft and successfully landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17 UTC.[4][6] The Bradbury Landing site was less than 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from the center of the rover's touchdown target after a 563,000,000 km (350,000,000 mi) journey. -
Sandy Hook Shootings
On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20, fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members in a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. Before driving to the school, Lanza had shot and killed his mother Nancy at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. -
2012 Mayan Calendar Scare
The 2012 phenomenon was a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events would occur around 21 December 2012. This date was regarded as the end-date of a 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, and as such, Mayan festivities to commemorate the date took place on 21 December 2012 in the countries that were part of the Mayan empire (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), with main events at Chichén Itzá in Mexico.
