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Oklahoma City Bombing
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two men associated with white nationalist groups, loaded a truck with explosives and blew it up, destroying the Alfred Murray Federal Building. This killed 168 people and injured 600. This attack made the country begin to realize the impact foreign or domestic terrorists can have. This is an example of the anti-government militarism beginning to rise in the U.S. (Kruse and Zelizer, 220.) -
Y2K Crisis
As the year 1999 got closer to 2000, citizens were scared that the computer softwares could not shift from the 1900's to the 2000's. They thought that the software would just revert back to the year 1900, but since this year happened already, the system would freak out and explode. They even ran tests where their suspicions were accurate. This made everyone think that this would be the end of the world. -
Columbine School Shooting
At Columbine High School, 18 year old Eric Harris and 17 year old Dylan Klebold entered the school with rifles, pistols, and explosives. In 20 minutes, 13 people were killed and 21 were injured. After the fact, officials found 2 propane tank bombs in the cafeteria that could have killed many more people if they were set off. This event marked the beginning of the era of school shootings and was the worst in American history until the Sandy Hook shooting in December 2012. -
2000 Presidential Election
This was an extremely close election and came down to a technicality. Between Bush and Al Gore, both sides contested the election. In Florida, many ballots were thrown away because they were not hole punched correctly and ultimately shifted the election for Bush to win. Bush lost the popular vote and, if all the ballots were kept, Bush would have lost the election completely. -
9/11
A terrorist organization called Al Qaeda were led by their leader Osama bin Laden to hijack 4 planes in the U.S. Two of these planes were flown into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, a third was flown into the Pentagon, and the fourth was heading to Washington D.C., but crashed in Pennsylvania. Because of this, thousands of people lost their lives. This event brought so many Americans together like never before as the whole world mourned together, but it also instilled great fear in them. -
Facebook Formation
Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes were all students at Harvard University and created the social network, Facebook. This quickly became the largest social network in the world and prompted so many other platforms to soon follow. Today, social media is used daily all around the world for education or personal reasons and the world would not be the same without it. -
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was a category 5 hurricane. New Orleans happened to be directly in its harshest path and was left in shambles underwater. Because Louisiana is below sea level, even a little bit of rain causes a flood. Therefore, this event was catastrophic. This hurricane was the most expensive and deadliest disaster. It costed about $108 billion in damage and killed 1,833 people. New Orleans still is not fully recovered. (Kruse and Zelizer, 280.) -
PRISM Program
As America got more and more nervous about terrorist attacks, the Bush administration launched this program where the National Security Agency was tasked with collecting internet communications to catch possible terrorist threats. As social media became more popular among Americans, the government was gaining more and more information. This was a secret until 2013 and is important because it represents the advancement of federal surveillance and spying in general. (Kruse and Zelizer, 387.) -
Affordable Care Act
This act, which is commonly known as Obamacare, sought to make healthcare insurance affordable. When Obama entered office, he inherited a shaky economy with high unemployment rates. By the time this act was passed, it was reduced to a mix of what Obama wanted it to be and what had a better chance of being passed. This received much push back and it was passed on a partisan vote. While it did not fix the whole issue, it was a step in the right direction as it is important to millions of families. -
Deep Water Horizon Spill
In 2010, an oil rig exploded and is the biggest oil spill in history, spilling about 134 million gallons. For about 3 months, this explosion caused the oil from the floor of the ocean to spray into the Gulf of Mexico, causing the water to catch fire, and devastating gulf coast towns that rely on tourism. This is so crucial because the states of Louisiana and Mississippi were devastated the most from this and the marine life struggled tremendously. -
Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting
At 9:30 in the morning, Adam Lanza shot through the window of Sandy Hook elementary. Lanza proceeded to enter two first grade classrooms, killing 12 girls and 8 boys, all between the ages of 6 and 7. He ended up killing 6 more people, all adult staff members. Once Lanza knew the police were after him, he ended his own life at about 9:40. After this, it came out that he also killed his mother with her own weapons. This is an example of the escalating gun violence in the U.S. since Columbine.