The Biggest News Story Every Year Since 1950

January 13, 2020 by John Harrington

Each year there are major news events that capture the world’s attention. These stories range from massive conflicts or catastrophes that leave thousands dead or stranded to technological developments and supreme court decisions that completely change our daily lives.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed the biggest news stories in each year since 1950. The event we chose for a given year wasn’t always the most talked-about story when it occurred, but each one in retrospect proved to have the biggest impact on history.

Major milestones in civil rights, wars and conflicts, and breakthroughs in science and medicine stand out in news coverage over this time period. As technology evolved, modifying and innovating our lives in ways never dreamed of, progressive ideas also found footing and changed the world. Women, African Americans, and the LGBTQ community demanded, and often won, equal rights — from the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the legalization of same-sex marriage. Here are the most important human rights milestones since 2000. 

Increasingly, major news events in recent years include severe weather events and other catastrophes tied to global climate change. Devastating changes to our climate now endanger the ecosystems of our planet. In the coming years, natural disasters will have an increasingly large role on the course of history. Here are 26 disaster scenarios caused by climate change.

Click here to see the biggest news story every year since 1950.

1950: Korean War starts
> Date: June 25
> Location: Korea

The North Korean People’s Army crosses the 38th parallel into South Korea, eliciting an almost immediate response from U.S. President Harry Truman and marking the beginning of the Korean War — a proxy battle between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. The parties would agree to a ceasefire three years later. The uneasy relations between North Korea and South Korea last to this day.

1951: Rosenbergs sentenced
> Date: March 29
> Location: New York City

Husband and wife Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their part in passing along atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during and after World War II. They are executed two years later. Not everyone is convinced of their involvement in the scheme. Supporters claim they are scapegoats swept up in the Cold War hysteria of the time. Documents would reveal decades later the extent of Julius Rosenberg’s involvement in the spy ring, though Ethel’s participation in the scheme remains inconclusive.

1952: First hydrogen bomb test
> Date: Nov. 1
> Location: Marshall Islands

The United States successfully detonates its first hydrogen bomb, a second generation thermonuclear device. The detonation in the Marshall Islands is part of Operation Ivy, one of a series of nuclear bomb tests. From 1946 to 1958, the United States used the remote Pacific Marshall Islands as its nuclear weapons testing site, conducting a total of 67 nuclear tests.

1953: The dawn of DNA
> Date: Feb. 28
> Location: Cambridge, England, U.K.

Cambridge University scientists James Watson and Francis Crick announce they have discovered the double-helix structure of DNA. Though scientists had been aware of DNA since the 1860s and of its role in genetic inheritance since 1943, Watson and Crick were the first to explain how DNA works to replicate itself and pass on genes from one generation to the next.

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1954: Brown v. Board of Education
> Date: May 17
> Location: Washington D.C.

In a landmark case involving Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, who had to cross a railroad track to reach an all-black elementary school even though an all-white school was closer, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the segregated school system is unconstitutional on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The clause would be used again by the courts to reverse state-level racial segregation practices and ordinances.

1955: Parks starts a movement
> Date: Dec. 1
> Location: Montgomery, Alabama

Rosa Parks makes history by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus. Her arrest for insisting to remain seated leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the ascent of a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., as a local activist leader working to advance the civil rights cause. A successful federal lawsuit by the NAACP against the city leads to the desegregation of the Montgomery bus system on Dec. 21 of the following year.

1956: Hungary suppressed
> Date: Nov. 4
> Location: Budapest

Nine years after the start of the Cold War, Hungarians take to the streets, demanding democratic reforms. Three days later, Soviet Red Army troops invade Hungary, killing thousands. Nine days after the incursion, Soviet troops occupy Budapest in one of the largest and most aggressive actions taken by the Soviet Union since the end of World War II.

1957: The Little Rock Nine
> Date: Sept 24
> Location: Little Rock, Arkansas

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower orders federal troops to protect nine African American high school students as they start classes at the all-white Little Rock Central High School. This would become one of the first high-profile actions the federal government would take against state-level racial segregation.

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1958: US launches first satellite
> Date: Jan. 31
> Location: Cape Canaveral, Florida

The United States successfully launches Explorer 1, three months after the Soviet Union sends its first satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. The two superpowers would go on to send more satellites into space, creating a Cold War space race to build ever more sophisticated orbital communications devices and to achieve spaceflight capabilities and generally space superiority.

1959: Castro takes over Cuba
> Date: Jan. 1
> Location: Havana

U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista flees Havana as Fidel Castro’s forces advance on the Cuban capital. Days later, rebels led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city, followed two days later by Castro’s forces. Castro quickly consolidate power in Cuba, establishing a communist government in the Caribbean’s largest country.

1960: Lunch counter sit-in
> Date: Feb. 1
> Location: Greensboro, North Carolina

When four African American college students — Ezell A. Blair, Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond — sit down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and ask for service, they are denied. The young men refuse to give up their seats, their sit-in leading to a larger six-month protest that results in the desegregation of the lunch counter by that summer and many other restaurants across the south.

1961: Berlin Wall built
> Date: Aug. 13
> Location: Berlin, East and West Germany

By the late summer of 1961, the loss of skilled workers such as teachers, engineers, and doctors to the West reaches crisis levels in East Germany. On Aug. 12, 2,400 East Germans cross into West Berlin, the most in a single day. The next day, with the approval of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, East Germany begins building a wall that would extend 27 miles through Berlin, dividing families and friends for the next 28 years. The wall would serve as an enduring symbol of the Cold War, used by presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to inspire a divided city.

1962: Cuban missile crisis
> Date: Oct.16-28
> Location: Multiple

When the United States learns that the Soviet Union is building nuclear missile installations 90 miles south of Miami in communist Cuba, the Kennedy administration enacts a naval blockade around the island, which is at times tested, to demand the removal of the missiles. The standoff is widely considered to be the closest the two nuclear superpowers come to direct military confrontation. Cooler heads prevail. The Soviet Union offers to remove the missiles in exchange for a guarantee that the United States will not invade Cuba. In secret, the administration also agrees to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey.

1963: JFK assassinated
> Date: Nov. 22
> Location: Dallas

As John F. Kennedy prepares for his re-election bid, the 34th president of the United States embarks on a multi-state tour in September 1963. He is murdered by a sharpshooter’s bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald at about 12:30 p.m. as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Oswald himself is murdered two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

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1964: LBJ’s “War on Poverty”
> Date: Jan. 8
> Location: Washington D.C.

President Lyndon B. Johnson struggles to shift focus away from the Vietnam War and on his stated goals of reducing poverty, ending segregation, and establishing the social programs that many Americans rely on to this day, including the immensely popular Medicare program. During his “War on Poverty” State of the Union Address of Jan. 8, 1964, LBJ outlines the need for the country to reduce poverty, end racial discrimination, attend to the health needs of the elderly, and other progressive goals. LBJ later ushers in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Social Security Amendments of 1965.

1965: Selma to Montgomery march
> Date: March 7
> Location: Selma, Alabama

The fatal shooting of protester Jimmy Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper sparks a march in the state from Selma to Montgomery. Hundreds of civil rights activists march in what becomes known as “Bloody Sunday.” Police confront the marchers, led by John Lewis (who is a House Democrat from Georgia) and others. As the activists cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, police attack the protesters with tear gas and billy clubs, hospitalizing 50.

1966: Mao purges rivals
> Date: Aug. 13
> Location: Beijing

At the end of a weeklong session of the Communist Party Central Committee of the People’s Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong condemns the political elites, calling on China’s youth to rebel against the entrenched political hierarchy. It is the beginning of the decade-long Cultural Revolution that fundamentally transforms Chinese society. Intellectuals, members of the former Nationalist government, and people with ties to Western powers are persecuted, sent to re-education labor camps, or killed by factions of the Red Guards formed in the wake of Mao’s call to action.

1967: Six-Day War
> Date: June 5
> Location: Middle East

Amid escalating tensions with its neighbors, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike that destroys most of Egypt’s air force. Syria, Jordan, and Iraq also attack Israel. As the war continues, Israel takes the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, captures East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and in heavy fighting seizes the Golan Heights from Syria. A ceasefire goes into effect on June 10.

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1968: Dream denied
> Date: April 4
> Location: Memphis, Tennessee

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is fatally shot by James Earl Ray as the civil rights icon stands on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, a tragedy that sparks race riots nationwide. King’s influence in words and actions touch and move not only the nation, but the world, and resonate to this day. Two months later, on June 4, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and brother of John F. Kennedy, is fatally shot by Sirhan Sirhan, an Arab Christian from Jerusalem, who believes Kennedy is “instrumental” in oppressing Palestinians.

1969: Landing on the moon
> Date: July 20
> Location: Moon

President Kennedy’s goal of a manned lunar landing before 1970 is realized six years after his assassination. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins blast off from the Kennedy Space Center at 9:32 a.m. aboard the Saturn V rocket. After three days of travel, Armstrong and Aldrin land the Eagle module on the lunar surface as Collins remains in lunar orbit to pilot the module. Upon their return to Earth, the three astronauts are put in 21-day quarantine to ensure they did not bring back any lunar contagions.

1970: Vietnam War turns to Cambodia
> Date: April 29
> Location: Eastern Cambodia

Although the United States should be scaling back U.S. troop presence in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon approves an operation with the South Vietnamese to invade Cambodia to oust Northern Vietnamese forces there. The Cambodian incursion inflames anti-war protests in the United States as it is perceived to be an escalation of U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia.

1971: Pentagon Papers
> Date: Feb. 8
> Location: Laos

The Pentagon Papers, a study by the U.S. Department of Defense about the country’s involvement in the Vietnam war, are released and published first in The New York Times, then other newspapers. The documents expose several missteps and how several administrations have misled the American public about how involved the military was and about plans to escalate the war in 1964. They also reveal an expanded campaign in Cambodia and Laos, especially clandestine bombing in Laos, which today is considered the heaviest bombardment in history.

1972: Nixon goes to China
> Date: Feb. 21
> Location: Beijing

Nixon, a virulent anti-communist earlier in his political career, surprises the American public by traveling to Beijing for a week of talks in a historic first step towards normalizing relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Until this trip, the United States and communist China were de facto enemies, fighting proxy wars in the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s and South Vietnam at the time of Nixon’s visit.

1973: Roe v. Wade
> Date: Jan. 22
> Location: Washington D.C.

In a landmark 7-2 decision that will be known as Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court rules that under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, abortion is a fundamental right protected by the United States Constitution. The court adds that as the pregnancy develops the state can balance a woman’s right to privacy with its interest in preserving the “potentiality of human life.” As a result, states can ban abortion in the third trimester except in cases where a pregnancy affects a woman’s health.

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1974: Nixon resigns
> Date: Aug. 8
> Location: Washington D.C.

President Richard Nixon announces his resignation amid impeachment proceedings stemming from the Watergate scandal and the administration’s attempt resist a congressional investigation. The scandal exposes abuses of power by the White House after five burglars were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Nixon becomes the only president in U.S. history to resign.

1975: Saigon falls
> Date: April 30
> Location: South Vietnam

Two years after the last American troops left Vietnam, communist troops from North Vietnam capture Saigon, ending nearly two decades of relentless war in the rice paddies and jungles of that Southeast Asian nation. The total number of fatal casualties for the United States is 58,220.

1976: The Concorde changes air travel
> Date: Jan. 21
> Location: London and Paris

Two supersonic Concorde jets take off simultaneously — one from London to Bahrain, operated by British Airways, and the other from Paris to Rio de Janeiro via Dakar in Senegal, operated by Air France — marking the first time paying passengers enjoy commercial travel at faster than the speed of sound. Though travel by one of the 16 Concordes ever put into service could slash travel time from New York to London in half, the high cost of maintenance, soaring ticket prices, as well as a fatal accident in 2000, would seal the fate of the narrow, slope-nosed aircraft.

1977: Rise of the personal computer
> Date: January
> Location: Chicago

Personal home computers began to emerge in the 1970s, but many of the earliest versions resembled calculators that would plug into televisions sets. By 1977, however, the desktop home computer begins to resemble the more modern versions – with an accompanying, attached or separate, computer screen and a magnetic tape or floppy disk storage device. The Commodore PET is unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago that year, while the first Apple II and Radio Shack’s TRS-80 also go on sale.

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1978: Cult’s mass suicide
> Date: Nov. 18
> Location: Jonestown, Guyana

More than 900 people die in one of worst recorded acts of cult-related mass murder-suicide as nearly all the victims and perpetrators drink a powdered drink mix laced with cyanide. Most of the victims are Americans, devotees of Peoples Temple cult leader Jim Jones, a former Methodist-trained preacher who built a following and led the flock to Guyana. Among the dead are 276 children. A small number of cult defectors are killed by Peoples Temple gunmen who also slay Leo Ryan, California Congressman who had gone to Guyana to investigate Jonestown.

1979: Islamic Republic born in Iran
> Date: Feb. 11
> Location: Tehran

Worsening economic conditions, increasing discontent with the government, and wide support for religious leader in exile Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini end the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The shah and his family flee Iran in January 1979. On Feb. 11, the monarchy is dissolved, and on April 1, Khomeini declares Iran an Islamic republic. With support among the nation’s clergy and their many followers, he begins rebuilding Iranian society based on conservative Shiite religious principles. In November, a mob raides the U.S. embassy, taking more than 60 Americans hostage. The crisis would be influential in the following year presidential election and would not fully resolve until January 1981.

1980: Reagan elected
> Date: Nov. 4
> Location: Washington, D.C.

With the United States in an economic malaise and the Iranian hostage crisis hobbling the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th president in a landslide. Reagan, who would serve two terms, was the oldest man elected president at the time. Reagan’s election changes the trajectory of American politics, ushering in an era of conservative leadership. During his tenure, he takes a more aggressive approach to the Soviet Union and increases defense spending. Reagan convinces Congress to cut taxes, a move that many economists credit with triggering an economic boom in the 1980s.

1981: AIDS impacts America
> Date: June 5
> Location: Los Angeles

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes a report about five gay men who had been diagnosed by local physicians with a rare form of pneumonia — the first reported U.S. cases of what would later become known as HIV/AIDS. The infectious autoimmune disease spreads so fast that by the end of the 1982, 500 Americans would die from what the CDC later calls acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. The death toll would rise to 5,000 by 1985.

1982: Mexico triggers regional debt crisis
> Date: Aug 12
> Location: Mexico City

Global economic stagnation in the 1970s and early 1980s as well as excessive borrowing among Latin America’s biggest economies boils over when Mexico’s Finance Minister Jesús Silva-Herzog tells the U.S. Federal Reserve his country can no longer service its debt of $80 billion. After the announcement, lenders realize virtually every country in Latin America, led by Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, is not able to pay back loans. The crisis would lead to years of eroding wages, weak to negative economic growth, sky-high unemployment, severe austerity measures, and political instability — known as the “lost decade” in Latin America.

1983: The internet is born
> Date: Jan. 1
> Location: Multiple

The internet as we know it today – a seemingly endless collection of websites hosted on servers scattered across the globe – is still more than a decade away. At the beginning of 1983, however, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) — a small network for academics and researchers — transitions to the standard TCP/IP protocol of the World Wide Web. The protocol would become the internet’s cornerstone and technical foundation as it allows expanded available address space. The protocol also decentralizes the network, thus also expanding accessibility.

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1984: Chemicals kill thousands in India
> Date: Dec. 2
> Location: Bhopal, India

The chemical disaster in Bhopal is still considered history’s worst industrial disaster. About 30 tons of methyl isocyanate, an industrial gas used to make pesticide, are released at a Union Carbide Corp. plant. About 600,000 poor residents of nearby shanty towns are exposed to a highly toxic compound that kills about 15,000 people and countless farm animals, according to Indian government estimates. The calamity leads to a generation of birth defects. To this day, locals claim the now-abandoned site is riddled with toxic materials left behind by Union Carbide, which was acquired by Dow Chemical in 2001.

1985: Reagan, Gorbachev meet
> Date: Nov. 19
> Location: Geneva

Despite his often bellicose criticisms of the Soviet Union, Reagan agrees to meet with his counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, in Geneva in the first meeting between leaders of the two Cold War foes in nearly a decade. Though the meeting yields little of substance, it initiates a closer relationship between the two men, who both seem committed to scaling back the nuclear arms race between the two nuclear superpowers.

1986: Chernobyl disaster
> Date: Apr. 26
> Location: Pryp’yat, Soviet Union

A combination of poor design and human error leads to a power surge in a reactor in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This leads to a massive explosion that puts highly radioactive material into the air. Soviet officials try to cover up the incident, but Swedish scientists notice the increased levels of radioactivity. It takes a little over a week for the radioactive emissions to be contained, but by then radioactive particles had already spread thousands of miles by wind currents to countries as far away as France. A 1,600 square mile area around the plant known as the “exclusion zone” is deemed unsafe, and more than 220,000 people have to be resettled. The radiation causes deformities in nearby livestock and cancer in many people near the blast. Though exact figures are hard to come by, the UN reports years later there were over 20,000 cases of thyroid cancer in children who were in the affected areas. The Chernobyl disaster is still considered the worst nuclear power failure in history.

1987: Stock market tanks
> Date: Oct. 19
> Location: Worldwide

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 508 points, or more than 22%, on Oct. 19, 1987, later referred to as Black Monday. The drop, in percentage terms, is worse than the crash in 1929. It is also worse than the market plunge after the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. Among the reasons cited for the drop are rising tensions in the Persian Gulf, concern over higher interest rates, and the belief that the bull market is ending. Computerized trading, relatively new at the time, accelerates trade orders, which speeds up the market drop. As a result of the collapse, exchanges put in place so-called circuit breakers intended to halt trading when stocks fall too fast. This measure is designed to provide investors a cooling off period and avoid a panic.

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1988: End of fighting in Iran-Iraq war
> Date: July 20
> Location: Iraq-Iran border

From 1980 to 1988, neighboring Middle East countries Iran and Iraq are engaged in a protracted war. It begins when Iraqi dictator Sadam Hussein launches an attack on Iran in 1980, sensing an opportunity in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Iraqi forces initially make incursions into Iranian land, but they lose the area gained in 1982 after Iran is able to mobilize its military and repel the Iraqi forces. Hussein seeks a peace deal that year, but Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini refuses. From 1982 to 1988, the fighting is characterized by sporadic missile launches, attacks on each others’ oil tankers, and the use of chemical weapons, mostly by the Iraqis. By 1988, Iran’s economy is in dire straits, forcing Iran to agree to a UN-brokered ceasefire. The two countries signed an official peace treaty in 1990. Anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million troops were killed in the war and up to 100,000 Kurds.

1989: The Berlin Wall falls
> Date: Nov. 9
> Location: Berlin, East and West Germany

Cracks in the monolithic Soviet bloc are starting to appear in the 1980s, and the very symbol of communist repression comes crashing down in November, when the Berlin Wall is breached, ending a 28-year division of the city. During the day on Nov. 9, a spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party says that starting at midnight that day, citizens of East Germany would be free to cross the country’s borders. Almost immediately Berliners start slamming the wall with axes and sledgehammers. By nightfall, the celebration turns into what one observer calls “the greatest street party in the history of the world,” and the city is reunited. East and West Germany would reunite one year later.

1990: Democracy in Poland
> Date: Jan. 28
> Location: Poland

With the hold of the Soviet Union and communism on East Europe loosening, Poland’s ruling communist party votes to dissolve and become more moderate. In the following elections, Lech Wałęsa, leader of the Solidarity Movement and the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wins the election and becomes president.

1991: American goes to war in Middle East
> Date: Jan. 17
> Location: Saudi Arabia and Kuwait

After Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invades and occupies Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the United States sends forces to defend neighboring Saudi Arabia from being overrun and to protect its vital oil assets there, calling it Operation Desert Shield. With Saudi Arabia secured, the United States implements Operation Desert Storm to push Iraqi forces back across the border with Kuwait in a military operation that lasts until a ceasefire takes effect in April.

1992: Cold War ends
> Date: Feb. 1
> Location: Camp David, Maryland

Just weeks after the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, meet at Camp David to formally declare the end of the Cold War that began shortly after the end of World War II. The meeting comes days after both countries announce they would stop aiming nuclear missiles at each other. Russia declares its 11 former communist satellite republics – from Armenia to Uzbekistan – independent.

1993: The EU becomes reality
> Date: Nov. 1
> Location: Brussels

The Treaty of the European Union, also known as the Maastricht Treaty, goes into effect in November, after a rough series of political wrangling. Among other concessions, the treaty allows the U.K. and Denmark to opt out of the common euro currency. The treaty opens the way to removing border controls among member states and invites new members to join the union.

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1994: Rwandan genocide
> Date: April-July
> Location: Rwanda

For decades, Rwanda has been embroiled in a conflict between the country’s two major ethnic groups — the Hutu and the Tutsi. Over 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people are killed, mostly Tutsis, but some moderate Hutus as well. When Tutsi militant group eventually gains control of the country, some 2 million Rwandans flee to nearby African nations. In 2008, three former Rwandan officials are convicted by an international court of organizing the genocide.

1995: Domestic terror strikes Oklahoma
> Date: April 19
> Location: Oklahoma City

In the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history, anti-government radicals Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. They time the truck-bomb attack for a weekday morning in order to maximize casualties. For the murder of at least 168 people, including 19 children who were in a childcare center in the building, and the injury of hundreds of others, an unremorseful McVeigh is executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001. Nichols is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

1996: The dawn of cloning
> Date: July 5
> Location: Midlothian, Scotland, U.K.

Dolly the Sheep enters the annals of bioengineering when scientists at Scotland’s Roslin Institute become the first to not only successfully clone a mammal, but also the first to do so using an adult cell rather than an embryonic one. After 277 cell fusions that developed 29 embryos, the team manages to turn an udder cell into a virtually identical biological carbon copy of the sheep from which it came.

1997: Machine tops chess champ
> Date: May 11
> Location: New York City

Artificial intelligence and machine learning notch a significant victory in 1997, when IBM’s Deep Blue machine defeats a world chess champion. The refrigerator-sized computer loses to grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the first match but proceeds to beat him twice and tie him three times in the next five games.

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1998: The age of Google begins
> Date: Sept. 4
> Location: Menlo Park, California

With seed money from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos among others, Stanford University Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch the search engine Google. The digital advertising behemoth Google Inc., now Alphabet Inc., is an $863 billion company with several subsidiaries, including YouTube, autonomous-car development company Waymo, and X, the company’s research and development division.

1999: NATO’s first independent strike
> Date: March 24
> Location: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

In order to get Yugoslav forces out of Kosovo during the Kosovo War, NATO forces initiate their first-ever military campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Montenegro and Serbia) without U.N. Security Council authorization as Russia and China oppose the attack. The NATO air strikes are aimed at stopping an onslaught against ethnic Albanians by the government of Slobodan Milošević. The NATO attacks last nearly three months, culminating in the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.

2000: International Space Station opens
> Date: Nov. 2
> Location: Low earth orbit

Commanders Bill Shepherd from the United States and Yuri Gidzenko of Russia, along with Russian flight engineer Sergei Krikalev, become the first temporary residents of the International Space Station two years after the first component of the research center was put into low-Earth orbit about 250 miles above sea level. Since that first crew, there have been 229 other visitors to the ISS, some of them multiple times, led by 146 from the United States and 47 from Russia.

2001: 9/11
> Date: Sept. 11
> Location: Multiple

In the worst attack on U.S. soil since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, 19 hijackers inspired by Islamist extremism kill nearly 3,000 people after crashing three passenger-laden commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, United Airlines 93, crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew attempt to regain control of the plane headed to Washington D.C.

2002: Homeland Security Act
> Date: Nov. 25
> Location: Washington D.C.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush enact the Homeland Security Act, the biggest government reorganization of national security efforts since the Department of Defense was created in 1947. The sweeping legislation creates the massive Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for everything from protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks to managing the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

2003: US invades Iraq
> Date: March 19
> Location: Iraq

With the help of British and other allied forces, the United States begins its invasion of Iraq with a rapid bombing called Shock and Awe with the intention of destroying Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction; the weapons are never found. Coalition forces manage to quickly topple the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein but have to fight insurgent forces for years afterward.

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2004: Facebook founded
> Date: Feb. 4
> Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Mark Zuckerberg, a 23-year-old Harvard University student, creates The facebook, a local social networking site named after the orientation materials that profiles students and faculty and given to incoming college freshmen. Within 15 years, Facebook would become a $512 billion digital advertising behemoth so integral to many people’s lives that it is criticized for helping foreign powers and propagandists influence the U.S. political system.

2005: Katrina overwhelms New Orleans
> Date: Aug. 29
> Location: U.S. Gulf Coast

After spending four days in the Gulf of Mexico bulking up to a category 5 hurricane, Katrina slams into New Orleans, inundating the city and creating a humanitarian crisis that lasts for weeks. The catastrophe underscores the precarious situation not only in the Big Easy, but also the surrounding area of the Gulf Coast. At least 1,833 people in the storm’s path are killed, and the storm inflicts $161 billion in damages to the region, the costliest storm in U.S. history.

2006: Hussein executed
> Date: Dec. 30
> Location: Baghdad

Three years after U.S. soldiers pulled him from a hole in the ground where he had been hiding, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is hanged. Husseing had been convicted for crimes against humanity, specifically for ordering the massacre of 148 Shiites in 1982 following a failed assassination attempt against him.

2007: The iPhone
> Date: Jan. 9
> Location: San Francisco

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died in October 2011, reveals to the world one of the most popular branded consumer electronic devices in history, the iPhone. Since the first generation phone that Jobs introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show that year, there have been 24 versions of the mobile device, and more than 2.2 billion units have been sold globally through 2018, when Apple stopped reporting iPhone sales. Only Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone comes close to that volume.

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2008: Dow plunges
> Date: Sept. 29
> Location: New York City

The Dow Jones Industrial Average records the largest-ever intraday drop in points, 777.68, after Congress rejects a massive $700 billion bailout of U.S. banks. The bill would pass days later. The market reacts also to months of global market turmoil amid the 2008 global financial crisis spurred by the U.S. subprime mortgage market crash. The Dow falls by more than half during the 2007-2009 Great Recession, tumbling from 14,164 on Oct. 9, 2007 to 6,594 on March 5, 2009.

2009: America’s first African-American president
> Date: Jan. 20
> Location: Washington D.C.

After winning in a landslide against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, amassing 365 electoral votes and 53% of the popular vote, Barack Obama is sworn in as the first African American president of the United States. Obama inherits the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, but with his party holding majorities in both houses of Congress at the time, the president is able to pass a stimulus package and his signature Affordable Care Act in March 2010.

2010: Catastrophic oil spill
> Date: April 20
> Location: Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana

Eleven workers die and 17 are injured after an explosion and fire erupts on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig 40 miles from the Louisiana coast. The explosion causes the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, spewing 3 million barrels of crude oil over the three months it takes to stop the leak. British oil company BP says costs from the clean-up, legal fees, and settlements reached $65 billion.

2011: Bin Laden killed
> Date: May 2
> Location: Abbottabad, Pakistan

In an intense 40-minute nighttime firefight, 25 U.S. Navy SEALs hunt down and kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Within hours, bin Laden’s body is identified using DNA and then buried at sea in the Arabian Sea.

2012: The ‘God Particle’ is (Probably) Discovered
> Date: July 4
> Location: Near Geneva

Nearly 600 feet below the France-Switzerland border at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Facility, an international team of scientists discovers a new particle widely believed to be the elusive Higgs boson, known as the “God Particle,” which is thought to be a fundamental component of the universe. Higgs boson has been an important element of particle physics theory for decades, but until 2012 there had been no physical evidence to support its existence.

2013: Snowden reveals secrets
> Date: June 6
> Location: Hong Kong

After surreptitiously leaving his job at U.S. National Security Agency contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, computer security consultant Edward Snowden meets secretly in Hong Kong with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Snowden reveals the first of a series of secrets about numerous U.S. and European government surveillance operations. Hailed as a courageous whistleblower and privacy champion by some and a traitor that compromised counterterrorism efforts by others, the American now resides in exile in Moscow.

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2014: Russia invades Ukraine
> Date: March 16
> Location: Crimea

Exploiting political unrest in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin orchestrates the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The action incites peals of condemnation from world leaders and a raft of economic sanctions against Moscow. This strategically important and predominantly Russian-speaking region on the Black Sea has been coveted by the Russians as part of their strategic efforts to check NATO expansion along Russia’s western border.

2015: NASA flies by Pluto
> Date: July 14
> Location: 3 billion miles from Earth

NASA spacecraft New Horizons becomes the first human-made object to fly past and observe the dwarf planet Pluto. New Horizons sends back stunning photographs of this enigmatic and distant member of the solar system, including images of a mountain range and massive icebergs floating in frozen nitrogen. New Horizons is now en route to the Kuiper Belt, a massive asteroid belt at the far reaches of the solar system.

2016: Trump elected
> Date: Nov. 8
> Location: U.S.

Running on a populist agenda, Donald Trump is elected the 45th president of the United States and the fifth president in U.S. history (the second since the 2000) to win despite losing the popular vote. The real estate developer and television personality ran on a platform of putting “America First” in global trade and foreign policy negotiations and cracking down on undocumented immigrants.

2017: Hurricane triple whammy
> Date: August-September
> Location: Multiple

Within just four weeks, three massive hurricanes — Harvey, Irma, and Maria — strike Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean, killing 228 people, inflicting a combined $265 billion in damages, and displacing millions of homeowners. Hurricane Maria inflicts immense damage to the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which was already struggling due to economic insolvency.

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2018: Wildfires
> Date: November
> Location: Northern California

Wildfires engulf northern California in November, the deadliest in the state’s history. The catastrophe costs the lives of 88 people, and the fire consumes 18,500 homes and businesses. State and federal officials estimate that it would cost $3 billion to clean up debris. Climate change activists say the conflagrations are evidence that global warming is no longer a distant concern and that it is occurring now.

2019: Trump impeached
> Date: Dec. 18
> Location: Washington, D.C.

On Dec. 18, 2019, Donald Trump becomes just the third U.S. president to be impeached. A whistleblower reveals that in July Trump had asked Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the business dealings of Hunter Biden, son of democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, as well as cybersecurity company Crowdstrike. These requests were made just after Zelenskyy said Ukraine wanted to buy weapons from the United States. After the call comes to light, Democratic leaders file two articles of impeachment — for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. They say Trump abused his power by using the office of the president to target a political opponent. The obstruction of Congress charge stems from accusations that Trump Administration officials tried to cover up the whistleblower’s report. Trump calls the investigation a “witch hunt” and denies any wrongdoing. The House passes both articles in a vote that goes almost entirely along party lines, moving the impeachment proceedings along to the Senate.

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