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Y2K Fiasco
In 1999, everyone waited for the new millennium but had doubts about the memory processor of the computers. They thought that the computers would fail when the new year happened and humanity would be put back into a time where we had no electricity. The reality is that when 2000 hit there were barely any problems and better computers were created. -
Bush/Gore Race
The 2000 presidential election pitted Republican George W. Bush against Democrat Al Gore. The initial election showed that Gore had won the popular vote, but neither candidate had the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. The election relied on results from the state of Florida, where the vote was so close they needed a recount. -
Hanging “chads" in Florida
Many Florida votes used Votomatic-style punched card ballots where incompletely punched holes resulted in partially punched chads. These votes were not counted by the tabulating machines. The aftermath of the controversy caused the rapid discontinuance of punch card ballots in the United States. -
Bush v. Gore
Election night 2000, Many people thought that Al Gore had won, but George W. Bush was declared the winner. The election was too close to call. Florida electors were unable to choose either Bush or Gore because of the close votes. The Supreme Court interposed itself into the election contest. The Court hoped to end the election crisis by putting a stop to the Florida Supreme Court’s decision to extend the time for certifying the vote. But on December 1, the certification had already occurred. -
Bush inaugurated as President of the United States
The inauguration was the start of the first four-year term of George W. Bush as President and Dick Cheney as Vice President. -
Timothy McVeigh put to death
McVeigh was convicted for the murder of 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing. He died by lethal injection on June 11. He bombed the Alfred P Murrah federal building because two years before 75 people died during a federal raid on the Davidian cult headquarters. He felt the Government was plotting to disarm gun owners in preparation for a take over by a shadowy elite intent on punishing those who disobeyed its new world order. He used the novel The Turner Diaries as a blueprint for the attack. -
911 terror attacks
19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which triggered major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism. -
Patriot act passed
Congress enacted the Patriot Act by overwhelming margins, arming law enforcement with new tools to detect and prevent terrorism: The USA Patriot Act was passed nearly unanimously by the Senate 98-1, and 357-66 in the House, with the support of members from across the political spectrum. The Patriot Act allows investigators to use the tools that were already available to investigate. The FBI could get a wiretap to investigate the mafia, but they could not get one to investigate terrorists. -
The hunt for Osama in Afghanistan
1988, Bin Laden created a group, called al-Qaeda that would focus on symbolic acts of terrorism. Al-Qaeda’s attacks increased. Al-Qaeda operatives were planning the biggest attack: the September 11, 2001 attacks. In the frenzy of the “global war on terror,” bin Laden eluded capture. For ten years the US searched for his hiding place. August 2010, they traced bin Laden to a compound in Pakistan. -
North Korea admits testing nuclear weapons
In 2002 North Korea extended its nuclear missile program this would end up pressuring the U.S and other N.A.T.O. countries. In response N.A.T.O. put tighter restrictions upon the communist North Korea. The North Koreans saw these ‘restrictions’ more as ‘guidelines’. -
Enron scandal (Houston, TX)
By the fall of 2000 Enron was starting to crumble under its own weight.The CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling had a way of hiding the financial losses.On january 9, 2002 the Justice Department launches an investigation. Later that year on June 15, 2002 Enron’s Accounting firm, Arthur Andersen is convicted of obstructing justice. -
Shuttle Columbia Explosion
Space shuttle Columbia broke up as it returned to Earth, killing the seven astronauts on board. NASA suspended space shuttle flights for more than two years as it investigated the disaster. It was determined that a large piece of foam fell from the shuttle's external tank and breached the spacecraft wing. The Columbia mission was the second space shuttle disaster after Challenger in 1996. -
War in Iraq
the United States initiated war on Iraq. President Bush and his advisers built much of their case for war on the idea that Iraq possessed or was in the process of building weapons of mass destruction. Hostilities began 90 minutes after war was declared. The first targets were hit with Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. fighter-bombers and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf. Coalition forces were able to capture Iraq’s major cities in just three weeks, sustaining few casualties. -
Capture of Saddam Hussein
December 13th, 2003. After spending nine months on the run, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured. Saddam’s downfall began on March 20, 2003, when the United States led an invasion force into Iraq to topple his government, which had controlled the country for more than 20 years. -
NATO admits countries from the former USSR
In President Putin’s address to the Russian Parliament on 18 April 2014, when he justified the annexation of the Crimea, he stressed the humiliation Russia had suffered due to many broken promises by the West, including the alleged promise not to enlarge NATO beyond the borders of a reunited Germany. NATO expansion was happening from 1947, the day of NATO's creation, to June 5th 2017. -
Former president Reagan dies
Saturday, June 5, 2004 at 8:53 PM, Former President Ronald Wilson Reagan died Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 93 years old. Reagan led a conservative revolution that set the economic and cultural tone of the 1980s, hastened the end of the Cold War and revitalized the Republican Party. He suffered from Alzheimer's disease since at least late 1994. -
Red socks win first world series
The Boston Red Sox win the World Series for the first time since 1918, finally vanquishing the so-called “Curse of the Bambino” that had plagued them for 86 years. Ever since team owner and Broadway producer sold the great Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, the Sox had been unable to win the World Series. Before 1920, the Sox had won five championships and the Yanks hadn’t won any; after the Babe left, Boston’s well ran dry. The Yankees, meanwhile, won a record 26 times after 1920. -
Kerry/Bush Campaign and Election
Incumbent President George W. Bush defeated Democratic Party candidate John Kerry. Foreign policy was the dominant theme throughout the election campaign. Voting controversies and concerns of irregularities emerged during and after the vote. The winner was not determined until the next day, when Kerry decided not to dispute Bush's win in the state of Ohio. The state held enough electoral votes to determine the winner of the presidency. -
South East Asian Tsunami
A massive undersea earthquake occurred just off the coast of Indonesia at 8 a.m. With a magnitude of 9.3, the quake was the most powerful of the last 40 years and the second largest earthquake in recorded history. It set off a deadly tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people and wreaked untold devastation on a wide swath of coastline from Somalia on the east African coast to Sumatra in Southeast Asia. -
Election of Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI greets the crowd in St. Peter's Square after being elected by the conclave of cardinals Tuesday. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected the new pope Tuesday evening in the first conclave of the new millennium. -
Death of Pope John Paul
John Paul II was the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years. Pope John Paul II died in April 2005 at the age of 84. His official cause of death was septic shock and cardiac-circulatory collapse. He had suffered from Parkinson's disease, arthritis and other ailments for several years before his death. -
Hurricane Katrina Hits New Orleans
Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States. When the storm made landfall, it was a Category 3 rating on the Hurricane Scale–it brought winds 140 mph–and stretched 400 miles across. The storm itself did damage, but its aftermath was catastrophic. Levee breaches led to massive flooding, and many people charged that the federal government was slow to meet the needs of the people affected by the storm. People in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were displaced from their homes. -
Hurricane Rita Hits Texas
Hurricane Rita, a Category 5 monster, moved toward the Texas Gulf Coast with frightening speed, causing evacuation orders for low-lying areas. People who would have otherwise hunkered down, were scared into taking drastic action. Rita looked terrifying and was headed straight toward Houston with 175 mph winds and worst-case scenario potential. Rita weakened to Category 3 strength before making landfall. -
Democrats take control of house and senate
On November 9, 2006, In a rout once considered almost inconceivable, Democrats won a 51st seat in the Senate and regained total control of Congress after 12 years of near-domination by the Republican Party. The shift dramatically alters the government's balance of power, leaving President Bush without GOP congressional control to drive his legislative agenda. -
Saddam Hussein executed
On December 13, 2003 Saddam Hussein was found in a bunker by a farm near Tikrit Iraq. He was then moved to a U.S base in Baghdad he would remain there until June 30, 2004. He was tried until his death on December 30, 2006. He would request to be shot but would be denied and be hung instead. He was found guilty and executed for his crimes against humanity. -
McCain/ Obama campaign and race
The great race of McCain and Obama wasn’t too exciting to some but it was a revolutionary election year. Obama won by nearly 10 million populist votes. This election would have been revolutionary due to Obama being the first black president shocking the nation. During his campaign Obama lowered unemployment and created more jobs than most presidents in the country’s history. -
Nancy Pelosi first female speaker of the house
After the Democrats won majorities in both the House and the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, Pelosi was chosen to become the first woman to take the post of speaker of the House. As the leader of the Democratic Party in the House under a Republican president, Pelosi was sometimes a divisive figure. A vocal critic of President George W. Bush's stance on the war in Iraq, she advocated for the withdrawal of troops from the region. -
Steroids in baseball scandal
Former Senator George J. Mitchell released a report that tied 89 Major League Baseball players to the use of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs. The report used informant testimony and supporting documents to provide a richly detailed portrait of what Mr. Mitchell described as “baseball’s steroids era.” The list included eight former most valuable players as well as players from all 30 teams. The use of steroids and human growth hormones are illegal without prescription and banned by baseball. -
First “Bailouts" begin
The Senate passed the $700 billion bank bailout bill.The guts of the bill were the same as the three-page document submitted on September 21, 2008 by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. He had asked Congress to approve a $700 billion bailout to buy mortgage-backed securities that were in danger of defaulting. Paulson wanted to take these debts off the books of the banks. The goal was to renew confidence in the functioning of the global banking system, which had narrowly avoided collapse. -
Barack Obama elected 1st African American President of the united states
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois defeats Senator John McCain of Arizona to become the 44th U.S. president. Obama garnered 365 electoral votes and nearly 53 percent of the popular vote, while McCain challenger captured 173 electoral votes and more than 45 percent of the popular vote. Obama’s vice-presidential running mate was Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, while McCain’s running mate was Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, the first female Republican ever nominated for the vice presidency. -
American Recovery and Reinvestment act
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) nicknamed the Recovery Act, was a stimulus package enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in February 2009. -
President Barack Obama Inauguration
The first inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States took place on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. He had the largest attendance of any event in the history of Washington, D.C., the largest attendance of any Presidential Inauguration in U.S. history, he was the first African American to hold the office of President of the United States, the first citizen born in Hawaii to hold the office, and had the highest viewership ever of the swearing-in ceremonies on the Internet. -
Supreme Court Appointees
President Barack Obama made two successful appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States. The first was Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David H. Souter. Sotomayor was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 6, 2009, by a vote of 68–31. -
Affordable care act
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often shortened to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or nicknamed Obamacare, is a United States federal statute enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. -
Operation Geronimo
A U.S. military raid of an al-Qaeda compound in Abbottabad killed America’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. U.S. agencies had been collecting intelligence about the compound since it was discovered. Multiple streams of intelligence led to the assessment that Osama Bin Laden was hiding there. The death of Osama Bin Laden marks the single greatest victory in the U.S.-led campaign to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda.