Reflections

After hearing We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel this evening, I decided to take stock of historically significant events in my own lifetime.  Just so we're clear, I'm including conception just to round out 1975, not to make a pro-life argument, you godless soulless baby-killer you (J.K.):

1975.  
• Saigon falls
• Apollo-Soyuz
• Where's Jimmy Hoffa?
• The Thrilla in Manilla: Ali beats Frazier
• SNL debuts
• Zionism = Racism?
• Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald
1976.  
• Concorde maiden flight
• Patty Hearst found guilty
• The D.C. Metro opens
• Son of Sam
• Viking 1 & 2
• Livin' it up at the Hotel California
1977.  
• President Jimmy Carter
• Tenerife becomes infamous after two 747s collide on the runway, killing 583 people
• Introducing the Apple II
• Elvis Presley dies
• TCP/IP
1978.  
• Roman Polanksi becomes a fugitive from justice
• Serial killer Ted Bundy captured in Florida
• The Unabomber begins his mailing bombs in a campaign of terror spanning almost twenty years.
• Garfield debuts.
• The 33-day papacy
• Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple commit mass murder-suicide.  Death toll: 918 people, including Congressman Leo J. Ryan.
• The Lufthansa Heist
1979.  
• The Shah of Iran is exiled and the Islamic Republic of Iran is founded.
• Voyager I flies by Jupiter and reveals it has rings
• The Compact Disc debuts.
• Unit 2 experiences a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island.
• President Jimmy Carter is attacked by a swamp rabbit.
• Skylab returns to Earth
• Saddam Hussein assumes the presidency in Iraq.
• Iran hostage crisis begins
• The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
1980.  
• The U.S. boycotts the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow
• Mount St. Helens erupts
• Approx 125,000 Cubans travel to the U.S. during the Mariel boatlift
• Voyager I passes by Saturn
• Reagan defeats Carter
• John Lennon murdered.
1981.  
• The first DeLorean DMC-12 rolls off the assembly line
• John Hinckley, Jr. attempts to assasinate Ronald Reagan.  Reagan later remarks to surgeons, "I hope you're all Republicans."
• The Space Shuttle program begins with the launch of Columbia.  I remember seeing the launch from my backyard at age 4.
• Assasination attempt on Pope John Paul II
• The first recognized cases of AIDS are observed after the deaths of 5 homosexual men from a rare form of pneumonia
• Ronald Reagan nominates the first female justice to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), Sandra Day O'Connor.
• MTV debuts
• Reagan fires the air-traffic controllers after they go on strike, in violation of federal law.
• Anwar Sadat is assassinated after brokering peace between Egypt and Israel.
1982.  
• Falklands War
• Lawn Chair Larry flies 16,000 feet above Long Beach, CA in a lawn chair buoyed by weather balloons.
• The Chicago Tylenol murders
1983.  
•  Mount Kilauea begins erupting 
• Final episode of M*A*S*H
• Pioneer 10 leaves the Sol system
• The Australians win the America's Cup
• U.S. invasion of Grenada
• The Soviet Union shoots down Korea Air Lines flight 007, mistaking it for an enemy aircraft after the airliners strays into Soviet airspace.
1984.  
• The Macintosh is introduced
• Vanessa Williams surrenders her crown as Miss America after nude photos of her appear in Penthouse.
• The Soviets boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, CA.
• Union Carbide Bhopal Disaster
• Bernhard Goetz teaches four would-be young robbers a lesson
1985. 
      
• New Coke is a disaster
• Route 66 is decommissioned
• Back to the Future debuts
• French commandos sink the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior
• The R.M.S. Titanic is discovered after over 73 years of resting on the sea floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
• Mexico City is hit by an 8.1 Richter scale earthquake.  It is made more devastating by the fact that most buildings are built on loose soil instead of bedrock.
• Palestinian terrorists hijack the Achille Lauro and kill Leon Klinghoffer.
1986.  
• Voyager 2 encounters Uranus
• Space Shuttle Challenger explodes 72 seconds after launch.  I observed this in the schoolyard behind my 4th-grade classroom.
• Hailey's Comet swings by.  It'll be back in 2061.  If I'm still alive, I'll be 86.
• The Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster kills at least 4056 people and forces the abandonment of the town of Pripyat.
• Captain Midnight hijacks the HBO satellite feed for four-and-a-half minutes.
• Greg LeMond becomes the first American to win the Tour de France.
• Rutan Voyager circumvent the earth by air without refueling.
1987.  
• Reagan challenges Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!"  Twenty-three years after I first heard it, I still get a chill down my spine when I think of the statement's historical significance.
• Robert Bork is the first and to date only nominee to be nominated to and later rejected for the Supreme Court.  The Democrats' behavior will come be known as "Borking".
• The Fairness Doctrine is rescinded, releasing the death-grip that liberals had previously held on the marketplace of ideas.
• Black Monday.
• The Perl programming language is created by Larry Wall.
1988. 
      
• Dan Rather tries to slander Vice President George H.W. Bush on CBS Evening News.  Bush handles himself well, considering the prick Rather was questioning Bush's word.
• Aloha Airlines flight 243 turns into a rag-top mid-flight.
• The Red Army starts withdrawing from Afghanistan.
• Iran Air flight 655 is shot down by the USS Vincennes.
• The Iran-Iraq War ends.
• The "terminal man" begins his residency at De Gaulle Airport in Paris.
• George H.W. Bush defeats Michael Dukasis in the presidential election.
• The B-2 stealth bomber is revealed.
• Pan Am flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland by the Libyans.
1989. 
      
• Gulf of Sidra incident:  Two Libyan MiG-23s are shot down by 2 US Navy F-14s.
• Emperor Hirohito of Japan dies.
• George H.W. Bush becomes the 41st president of the United States.
• Serial killer Ted Bundy is executed by the State of Florida.
• Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini places a $3 million bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie for his authoring The Satanic Verses.  Remember, it's  Religion of Peace!
• Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil.
• Lincoln Savings & Loans is seized by the U.S. government.
• Turret Two explodes on the U.S.S. Iowa, killing 47 crewmen.
• Ayatollah Khomeini dies in Iran.
• The Sega Genesis is released in North America.  It is called the Mega Drive in Europe and Asia.
• Voyager II passes Neptune and its moon Triton.
• Loma Prieta earthquake strikes the San Francisco Bay Area, magnitude 7.1 on the Ricter Scale.  I remember the image of the pancaked double-decker Bay Bridge.
• The Germans begin tearing the Berlin Wall down.
1990. 
      
• D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for possession of cocaine by the FBI.
• Nelson Mandela released from prison in South Africa after 27 years.
• The Hubble Space Telescope is placed in orbit.
• Microsoft releases Windows 3.0.  I have a copy somewhere on 5.25" disks.
• Iraq invades Kuwait
• West & East Germany formally reunify into a single Germany.
1991. 
      
• Operation Desert Storm begins with air strikes against Iraq.  Iraq retaliates with Scud missiles launched against targets in Israel.  After a month of fighting, Iraq withdraws from Kuwait, setting fire to oil fields as it retreats.
• Four LAPD officers are caught on videotape beating Rodney King after he leads officers on a freeway chase that reaches speeds of 117 mph and later violently resists arrest.  The beating occurs after LAPD officers fail to subdue King with a taser.
• William Kennedy Smith is accused of raping a woman on the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach, FL.
• The Warsaw Pact is dissolved.
• Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is arrested in Milwaukee, WI.
• The World Wide Web is born.
• Linus Torvalds posts messages about the new operating system kernel he's developing.  This would come to be known as Linux.
• A brief coup by Communist hard-liners is attempted in the USSR.  It fails in 72 hours.
• Leningrad is renamed St. Petersburg.
• Former aide Anita Hill alleges sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas without proof during hearings to confirm him to the SCOTUS.  He is confirmed 52-48.
• L.A. Lakers point guard Magic Johnson announces he is HIV-positive.
• Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union.  The next day, it is formally dissolved by the Supreme Soviet.
1992. 
      
• The European Union is founded.
• New York Mafia boss John Gotti is convicted of the murder of mob boss Paul Castellano and of racketeering.
• Microsoft releases Windows 3.1.
• The four officers accused of excessive force in the Rodney King beating are acquitted.  Blacks riot in L.A., even though a black man prosecuted the case.
• The Mall of America is constructed in Bloomington, MN.
• The FBI fucks up at Ruby Ridge, ID.
•  Sinead O'Connor rips up a photo of Pope John Paul II on SNL and tosses the pieces at the camera.  The next week, Joe Pesci holds up the taped-together photo.
1993. 
      
• Czechoslovakia is separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  To date, I've only been to Czechoslovakia and never to the two countries formed from it.
• William Jefferson Clinton is sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States.
• Federal agents raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, TX.  Four agents and five cult members die as a 51-day standoff begins.  When it's over, 76 cult members, including leader David Koresh, are killed by a fire.
• Peace-loving Muslims try to bring down the WTC with a van packed with explosives in the sub basement of the North Tower.
• Intel ships the first Pentiums.
•  Tennis pro Monica Seles is stabbed in the back with a 9-inch blade by an obsessed Steffi Graf fan.
• Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned:  Lorena Bobbitt slices John Bobbitt's schlong off while he sleeps.
• Bill Clinton institutes the Don't Ask-Don't Tell policy on gays in the military.
• Oops:  NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer three days before it was to enter Martian orbit.  Nobody knows where it is!
• A Canadian "software specialist" makes the first mention of the Y2K problem.
• The European Union is formally established.
• Doom debuts.
• Nancy Kerrigan gets clubbed.
• Aldrich Ames is charged with spying on the U.S. for the Soviet Union.
• The Rwandan genocide.
• Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman are found murdered at O.J. Simpson's Brentwood home.
• Jupiter is bombarded with 21 large fragments from the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
• Kansai International Airport is completed on an artifical island in Osaka Bay.
• Oops again:  NASA loses contact with the Magellan spacecraft as it descends into the thick clouds of Venus.  It is assumed to have burned up on entry.
• The GOP wins mid-term elections and become the majority party in both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.
• The first passengers travel through the Chunnel.
• Whitewater scandal.
1995. 
      
• The Russians freak out when a rocket is launched from Norway, even though they were given prior notification, and almost trigger World War III.
• Denver International Airport opens.  Consider yourself lucky if your bag and you are ever reunited...
• Tejano superstar Selena is killed by the president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldívar
• The Contract with America passes
• Timothy McVeigh kills 168 at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City with a Ryder truck filled with ammonia nitrate.
• Superman actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down in a horse-riding accident.
• Windows 95 is released.
• eBay is founded.
• The Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) is introduced.
• Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a radical Jewish student.  I remember the flags at my college being flown at half-staff.
• The federal government shuts down for a few days, and hardly anyone notices.
• The federally-mandated speed limit of 55 mph is repealed.  In Arizona, I remember portions of I-17 and I-10 immediately bumping up to 75 mph.
1996. 
      
• A blizzard socks much of the northeastern U.S. with snow.  Philadelphia, where my parents lived at the time, gets 30" of snow.  I had luckily flown back to where I was going to school the day before.
• Chess computer Deep Blue defeats chess champ Garry Kasparov.
• Got him!  Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski is arrested in Montana.
• ValuJet flight 592 crashes in Florida Everglades after some nitwit thought that they could store oxygen canisters in a cargo hold with no safeguards.
• Nineteen U.S. servicemen are killed in the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia by adherents to the Religion of Peace.
• Dolly the Sheep becomes the first mammal to be successfully cloned.
• The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta are bombed.
• Little-known Osama bin Laden declares jihad on the U.S. for "occupying" the Muslim holy land.
1997.  
• North Hollywood shoot-out:  Bank robbers armed to the teeth and wearing body armor terrorize North Hollywood for 44 minutes before the LAPD finally stop them.  The incident buffs up the LAPD's recently-tarnished incident.
• Comet Hale-Bopp reaches perigee.  Heaven's Gate cultists commit mass suicide, believing the comet to be followed by a spacecraft that will take their souls to the next plane of existence.  Morons.
• UPS-yours:  Union UPS drivers walk off the job.
• Princess Diana of Wales is killed in an automobile accident in Paris.
1998. d
• Hugo Chavez is elected president of Venezuela, proving that America doesn't have a monopoly on morons.
• Smoking is banned in all California bars and restaurants.  So goes California off the cliff, so goes the country.
• Bill Clinton denies on television that he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.  Later he admits it.
• The first XML specification is released.
• Auckland, New Zealand suffers from a 66-day blackout
• Osama bin Laden declares a fatwa against Jews and Crusaders.  The Religion of Peace strikes again!
• The U.S. D.O.J. files an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.
• Google is founded.
• Congress passes the dreaded DMCA.
• American Airlines introduces E-ticketing.
• Former wrestler and Reform Party candidate Jesse Ventura is elected governor of Minnesota
• Bill Clinton is impeached.
1999. d.
• Hugo Chavez becomes President of Venezuela
• Pluto becomes the planet furthest from the Sun, until some astronomer douche-bags say it's not really a planet.
• Avalanches in the Alps kill 41
• Melissa worm strikes the Internet
• Dow Jones hits the 10,000 mark for first time ever
• Two whiny bastards who can't take a little teasing commit the Columbine massacre.  At least they killed themselves and saved the taxpayers money in convicting them.
• Windows 98 Second Edition is released
• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace hits theaters.  I went to see this with my friend Andy.
• Napster debuts.
• JFK Jr.crashes his Piper Seneca off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, proving that celebrity does not outweigh being in a hurry, having a lack of focus, and learning to rely on your instruments when flying over water at night.
• NASA loses the Mars Climate Orbiter
• EgyptAir flight 900 is deliberately crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on departure from NYC bound for Cairo, by the co-pilot after the pilot leaves the cockpit.
• Desmond Llewelyn, who played "Q" for most of the James Bond franchise, dies.
2000. d.
• On 1 Jan, after billions of dollars were spent worldwide, nothing happened.  Al Gore would soon find another lucrative opportunity to play on people's fears.
• SCOTUS rules the government can't regulate tobacco as an addictive drug.  Take that, Bill Clinton!
• US v. Microsoft:  Microsoft is found to have violated anti-trust law by leveraging its OS monopoly to create a monopoly in the browser "market".
• Janet Reno sends in federal agents to retrieve Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives and give him to his father in Cuba, giving Castro a ton of propaganda capital.
• The ILOVEYOU worm spreads across the Internet, once again illustrating a huge problem with the way Microsoft products regard security.
• The first Internet short film, 405 The Movie is released.  I remember watching this with my co-workers at my first job out of college.
• Russian submarine Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea, killing all 118 aboard.
• The USS Cole is bombed in Yemen by some terrorist dirtbags in a zodiac laden with explosives.  Seventeen Navy crewmen are killed.
• George W. Bush defeats Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential election.  The outcome is unknown for almost a month because some Florida people don't know how to vote properly.
• The third and final reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power plant is shutdown and the power plant is permanently closed.
2001. d.
• The 3rd millenium officially begins
• Wikipedia is launched.
• The USS Greeneville accidentally strikes and sinks the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime-Maru after performing an emergency surface simulation.
• FBI agent Robert Hanssen is captured after spying for Russia for 15 years.
• Russian space station Mir de-orbits and plunges into the Pacific Ocean near Fiji.
• A Chinese F-8 tries to crowd a U.S. EP-3E surveillance aircraft and bumps into it, forcing an emergency landing Hainan, China.  The crew is detained for 10 days.  The aircraft is ultimately returned to the U.S. in pieces, after Chinese intelligence had a chance to examine it.
• Soyuz TM-32 lifts off with the first space tourist, American Dennis Tito.
• Nepalese Royal Massacre.
• Timothy McVeigh is executed for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, OK.
• Dmiti Sklyarov is arrested by the FBI for violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) for simply telling a Las Vegas convention how to defeat certain copyright protections.
• POTUS George W. Bush announces his limited support of federal funding only for existing lines of embryonic stem cells.  The media will mischaracterize this and many other policy decisions as "anti-science", despite being "nuanced thinkers".
• 9/11
• 2001 Anthrax Attacks
• US-led coalition of nations begins military operations in Afghanistan in an effort to drive out the terrorist-supporting Taliban and capture of kill prominent members of al Qaeda.
• The USA Patriot act is signed into law, again mischaracterized by the media.
• American airlines flight 587 crashes in Queens minutes after takeoff from JFK airport in NYC, killing all 260 aboard.
• Enron files Chapter 11.
• Shoe bomber Richard Reid is subdued by passengers before he can light his feet on a flight from Paris to Miami.
2002. d.
• No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation signed into law.  It's a crazy idea, thinking schools and teachers should be accountable for the federal funds they use!
• Kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl is murdered by jihadists in Pakistan.
• Euro-using countries cease using their pre-EU currencies.  In Germany, however, a large black-market develops for Deutsche Marks.
• Jimmy Carter becomes 1st POTUS, in or out of office to visit Cuba since Castro's 1959 revolution.
• Congress approves the resolution to authorize President Bush to use military force in Iraq.
  Senator Paul Wellstone, his wife, his daughter, and 5 others are killed in a plane crash in Eveleth, MN.  I later speak to moonbats whom believe his plane was shot down for opposing the war in Iraq.  I am more polite to these people than they deserve.
• The Department of Homeland Security is established.
• Abu Nidal, terrorist dirtbag who killed American wheelchair-bound passenger Leon Klinghofer after the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, dies
2003. d.
• NASA receives the last signal from Pioneer 10, some 7.5 billion miles from Earth.
• Space shuttle Columbia disintegrates upon re-entry after a piece of insulation foam from the external fuel tank had struck the heat tiles on one wing during the initial climb in orbit.
• First documented case of SARS in Hanoi, Vietnam.
• Iraq War begins.
• The Human Genome project is completed with 99% of the human genome mapped by DNA researchers.
• Lawrence v. Texas:  SCOTUS declares sodomy laws unconstitutional.
• Uday & Qusay Hussein, Saddam's thug sons, are killed by coalition forces in Iraq.
• The Great Blackout of 2003:  Power is out across northeastern US and south-central Canada.
• California Gray Davis recalled.  Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeds him.
• Saddam Hussein is captured in Tikrit by the US 4th Infantry Division.  To quote Paul Bremer:  "We got him!"
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan dies.  A famous quote:  "You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts."
2004. 
      
• Facebook is founded.
• Madrid train bombings.  They prompt the political socialists to sweep to power in Spain.
• UN Oil-For-Food scandal makes news.  No wonder Kofi Annan and the United Nations were opposed to the Iraq War:  It was disrupting business, like Kofi's son's!
• Abuse at Abu Gharaib makes news on 60 Minutes II.
• National WWII Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.  Tawny and I would visit it 3 years later.
• Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States, dies after a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease.  I am sickened by the sycophantic members of the MSM who compare current President Barack Hussein Obama with Reagan.
• Marlo Brando dies.
• American cyclist Lance Armstrong wins an unprecendented 6th Tour de France.
• The National Guard Memo story appears on 60 Minutes II.  It is almost immediately questioned when bloggers notice how documents allegedly type-written in 1972 look just like documents produced using Microsoft Word!
• Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh is stabbed to death by a member of the much-touted Religion of Peace.
• Terrorist Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat dies.  Burn in Hell, you bastard.
• US forces rout insurgents from Fallujah.
• The first black Secretary of State, former Gen. Colin Powell, resigns and is succeeded by the first black female Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleeza Rice.
• NASA's unmanned hypersonic Scramjet achieves a velocity of Mach 9.6, or about 7,000 mph.
• A Richter 9.3 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra generates a massive tsunami that strikes at least 8 nations and claim approximately 180,000 lives, with another 40,000 reported missing.  It happens the day after Christmas, which is still Christmas Day in the US.
2005. 
      
• The meaningless Kyoto protocol goes into effect, without the official support of the US and Australia, and without the unofficial support of just about every nation that did sign it.
• Pope John Paul II dies.  He is succeeded by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who takes the name Pope Benedict XVI.
• Syria withdraws its troops from Lebanon after 29 years.
• Leftist bomb-thrower MP George Galloway appears before Congress to answer allegations he made money from the UN Oil-For-Food Programme.
• Hurrican Katrina claims about 1800 lives.  It will be fodder for race-baiters, despite about half of the deceased being white, not black, in a city that is 90% black (New Orleans).  Despite examples of leadership failures and downright incompetence by Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, the media is content to heap the blame on POTUS George W. Bush and his direction of the federal response (Couldn't have anything to do with him having an "R" next to his name and Blanco and Nagin having "D" next to theirs, could it?)
• Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten provokes the rage of members of the Religion of Peace by publishing cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed.
2006. 
      
• The first case of Avian Flu is found in a Swan in the UK.
• Israeli troops invade Lebanon after Hezbollah kidnaps 2 IDF soldiers.  Moral:  Don't fuck with the Israelis.
• North Korea claims its first-ever nuclear weapons test.
• Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by hanging by his own people and executed on 30 December.
2007. 
      
• South Korean Ban Ki-Moon succeeds Kofi Annan as General Secretary of the United Nations.
• Anna Nicole Smith dies.
• The IPCC releases its Global Warming report.
• The Iranians commit an act of war by seizing British Royal Navy sailors from international waters.
• Nicolas Sarkozy defeats Jacques Chirac for the French presidency.
• Col. Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, dies.
• Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated at an election rally in Pakistan.
2008. 
      
• Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to make a successful ascent and descent of Mount Everest, dies.
• William F. Buckley, widely regard as one of the founders of modern conservatism, dies.
• Fidel Castro resigns as President of Cuba, amidst rumors of failing health.  His brother Raul Castro is unanimously elected by the National Assembly to succeed him.
• Surgeons at London's Moorsfield Eye Hospital perform the first implantation of bionic eyes into two blind patients.
• Charlton Heston, one of the greatest actors (The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, Ben-Hur, as well as a bit part in Wayne's World 2 playing a tear-evoking gas station attendant), dies.
• George Carlin, a comic I didn't necessarily agree with, but a funny man nonetheless, dies.
• Don S. Davis, best known as General George S. Hammond from the Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis franchise, dies from a heart attack.  He is honored by the Stargate franchise.
• Another great actor dies:  Paul Newman.  I like him best in The Sting and Fat Man and Little Boy.
• 2008 Summer Olympics take place in Beijing, China.  A colleague of mine at my workplace attends with her fiance.
• Michael Phelps wins 8 gold medals for swimming at the Olympics, breaking Mark Spitz' record.
• Proton beam is circulated for the first time at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
• Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  Thus begins the era of "Too Big to Fail" (or "Too Stupid To Survive", as my father and I say)
• Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines merge, forming the world's largest commercial carrier.
• The QE2 makes her final voyage.
• Michael Crichton, a great author with what I consider prophetic warnings about our increasingly technological society and the arrogance that accompanies it, dies.
• Senators Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph Biden win the general election for POTUS, defeating Senator John McCain and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.  We have the news media to thank, swaying the independents with their near-worship of Obama and willingness to cast doubts on Republican leadership at every turn (Never mind Palin is the only one of the four with executive-branch experience, and never mind Obama had spent almost all of his first and only term as Illinois' junior senator campaigning for President.  No, move along, nothing to see here.  
• Vote for the black guy because it's time we had a black president and you're racist if you point out the man doesn't have a record to run on).
• Human remains found in 1991 are positively identified thru DNA analysis as belonging deposed autocrat Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
2009. 
      
• Barack Hussein Obama is inaugurated as the 44th POTUS.  He is the first black president, as well as the first president to rely on a teleprompter about as much as a baby relies on a pacifier.
• He also makes me wish that if the U.S. must have a Democratic president, why couldn't the DNC nominate Hillary Clinton?  Better the devil you know...
• Russia turns off all gas supplies to Europe through the Ukraine at the endorsement of Vladmir Putin.  The man is a thug.
• In a testament to Canada's "free" health care system, actress Natasha Richardson dies after being denied proper health care by medics.
• Swine flu is deemed a global pandemic.
• Actor, singer, dancer, and child molester Michael Jackson dies.
• The president of Honduras tries to hold a referendum to stay in power.  The Supreme Court of Honduras upholds the national constitution and arrests and exiles him.  Naturally, the UN, OAS, and other countries (including the U.S.)  Later, the OAS suspends Honduras' membership in that organization (apparently for following their constitution and resisting what was effectively a coup).
• Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy, also known as Chappaquiddick Ted Kennedy, dies.  He is regarded as a "liberal lion" and the Democrats push to pass ObamaCare in his memory.  In the special election in Massachusetts following Kennedy's death, members of the media routinely refer to the seat as "Kennedy's seat", GOP candidate Scott Brown points out "it's not Ted Kennedy's seat, it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat."
• After one of the worst pitches in Olympics history by Barack and Michelle Obama, the 2016 Olympics go not to Chicago, but to Rio de Janeiro.
2010. 
      
• A volcanic eruption in Iceland disrupts air traffic across northern and central Europe.  Several John Deere employees make their way to Italy and are picked up by the company jet.
• The Deep Water Horizon drilling platform, after receiving a waiver from the Obama administration for not having proper blowout preventers in place, explodes due to a failure of aforementioned blowout preventers.  The resulting spill into the Gulf of Mexico is the largest in history, and bureacracy paralyzes decisive action from being taken until after the oil starts washing up on the Gulf Coast.  Obama has been tested, as Joe Biden predicted.  Guess what?  He failed.
• Greece becomes among the first European nations to fail economically, proving former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's admonition that you eventually run out of other people's money.
• Wikileaks releases tens of thousands of classified United States government documents after it receives them from Pfc. Bradley M. Manning, who violates his oath and betrays the national security of the U.S.  Try him, hopefullly convict him, and execute him.  Traitors deserve nothing less.
• Senator Robert Byrd, the longest-serving U.S. senator in history, dies.  Omitted from his obituary is his membership as a Grand Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan.
• Thirty-nine miners are trapped 700 m underground in Chile for 69 days before being rescued.
  Leslie Nielsen dead?  Surely you can't be serious!  I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley!

 Wow, 35 years.