2006-December 2008, US timeline compiled by Piero Scaruffi2008

2006: both Ford and General Motors post huge losses and lay off thousands of workers
2006: after George W Bush appoints another Roman catholic to the Supreme Court, the majority of the Supreme Court judges are Catholics for the first time in the history of the USA
2006: Exxon Mobil posts the largest profit of any company in USA history
2006: the USA has 1,210 megachurches (churches for 2,000 or more people) that draw more than four million people a week
2006: the USA and India sign a nuclear agreement
2006: Christian fundamentalist governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota bans abortion
2006: the USA admits that marines killed 25 civilians in cold blood in the Iraqi town of Haditha
2006: the USA has 300 million people, of which 35 million are foreign-born, and it is the third most populous country in the world after China and India
2006: Warren Buffet donates $37 billion to charity, the largest donation ever
2006: most immigrants to the USA are Mexicans
2006: after six years the Dow Jones index trades above its record high close of 11,722
2006: Enron’s CEO Jeffrey Skilling is sentenced to 24 years in prison
2006: the world-wide web has 100 million websites
2006: Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the USA ($35 billion)
2006: the first Muslim ever is elected to the USA Congress (Keith Ellison)
2006: the USA bombs Islamists in Somalia as Ethiopia help push them out of Somalia
2007: the USA trade deficit hits a record $764 bilion
2007: South Korean student Cho Seung-Hui kills 32 people at Virginia Tech
2007: China overtakes the USA to become the world’s second largest exporter and overtakes Canada to become the main exporter to the USA
2007: Toyota passes General Motors as the world’s largest car manufacturer and Japanese car manufacturers pass USA car manufacturers even in the USA market
2007: USA government agencies declare that Al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan and that the terrorist threat against the USA has increased
2007: after crashing due to the crisis of sub-prime mortgage lenders, the USA stock market sets a new record high
2007: Texas carries out its 400th death penalty
2007: the USA dollar falls to 1:2 to the British pound and to an all-time low of 1.50 to the euro and is worth less than a Canadian dollar for the first time in three decades
2007: a fund of the United Arab Emirates buys a 4.9% stake in Citigroup for $7.5 billion, making it the single largest shareholder, ahead of Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia
2007: home prices fall 5.1%, the sharpest drop in 20 years
2007: at the end of the economic expansion of the 2000s the median income of USA families has declined from $61,000 to $60,500
2007: Piyush “Bobby” Jindal becomes the first Indian-American governor in the history of the USA (governor of Louisiana)
jan 2008: Barack Obama, a black man, is the leading candidate for president of the USA
jan 2008: Gold reaches an all-time high of $880
jan 2008: the stock market collapses, triggering similar collapses around the world
jan 2008: the Encyclopedia of Life (Eol.org) goes on line
feb 2008: more than 1% of adult USA citizens is in prison
mar 2008: the price of gold hits $1,000 for the first time ever and oil passes $110 a barrel, while the dollar sets another all-time low against the euro (1.56) and dips below 100 yen (a drop of 6.5% in less than three months), home prices plunge 9.1%, the Eurozone overtakes the USA as the world’s largest economy
mar 2008: five years after the invasion, the USA has lost 4,000 soldiers in Iraq
mar 2008: the police raid a polygamist compound with hundreds of children in Eldorado, Texas, run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
june 2008: oil price hits $139 a barrel

june 2008: a USA air strike kills 11 Pakistani soldiers
june 2008: California legalizes gay marriage
june 2008: President George W Bush’s job approval falls to 23%, one of the lowest ever recorded
june 2008: For the first time more USA soldiers die in the war in Afghanistan than in the war in Iraq
july 2008: George W Bush’s associate Karl Rove refuses to testify before a commission investigating whether the Justice Department prosecuted people for political reasons
july 2008: George W Bush’s aide Karl Rove is accused of having engineered the dismissals of prosecutors on political grounds
july 2008: USA inflation hits a 26-year High
july 2008: Republican senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is indicted of corruption
august 2008: The USA and Libya restore diplomatic relationships that were broken after Reagan bombed Libya
august 2008: Following Russia’s invasion of Georgia, the USA and Poland sign a treaty for a missile defense
august 2008: A USA bomb kills 90 Afghan civilians including 60 children
sep 2008: NATO killed 3,200 civilians in Afghanistan from 2005 to mid 2008
sep 2008: Having repaired relations, Condy Rice becomes the first USA secretary of state to visit Libya since 1953
sep 2008: The USA takes over the two largest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the largest insurance company, American International Group
sep 2008: USA missiles target Taliban inside Pakistan
sep 2008: In a financial crisis, Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch is sold to Bank of America, and the government buys $700 billion of bad mortgages in the largest financial bailout since the Great Depression, and on September 29 the Dow Jones loses 778 points, the biggest single-day point loss ever
sep 2008: A bomb against the USA embassy in Yemen kills 16 people
oct 2008: the Dow Jones loses more 22% in a week of continuous losses, including the biggest single-day decline since 1987
oct 2008: Unemployment reaches 6.5%, the highest rate since march 1994.
nov 2008: Barack Obama, a black man, is elected president of the USA
nov 2008: the world’s oldest person, Edna Parker, dies at the age of 115
Dec 2008: the price of oil plunges to $34 per barrel amid the world recession
Dec 2008: The median home price falls 13.2% from a year before, down to $181,300, the largest drop since the Great Depression
Dec 2008: The USA loses two million jobs in 2008 and the unemployment rate climbs to 6.7%
Dec 2008: More USA workers lost jobs in 2008 than in any year since World War II, with employers laying off 2.6 million people.
Dec 2008: The USA loses $3.6 trillion in the financial crisis

2003-2006, US Timeline by Piero Scaruffi

2003: USA interest rates reach a 45-year-low

2003: the dollar falls 25% to the euro in just one year
2003: Austrian-born Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes governor of California
2003: serial killer Gary Ridgway confesses to be the “Green River Murderer” who killed at least 48 prostitutes and strippers in the Seattle area between 1982 and 1998
2003: the USA economy grows by 7% in the third quarter, the fastest rate in 20 years
2003: serial killer Gary Ridgway admits murdering 48 women (mostly prostitutes)
2003: the foreign-born populationof the USA reaches 33.5 million, out of 280 million people
2003: the USA dispatches 1,700 soldiers to the Philippines, to help fight the Abu Sayyaf terrorists
2003: scientists estimate the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years and 95% of the universe is invisible “dark matter”
2003: serial killer Charles Cullen, a hospital nurse, is arrested for causing the death of at least 40 patients with drug overdoses
2003: 15 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer’s disease
2003: 43,220 people die in traffic accidents in the USA,
2003: Skype is founded by Niklas Zennstroem and Janus Friis to offer voice over IP
2004: the “Spirit” and the “Opportunity” spacecrafts land on Mars and send the first pictures of the planet’s surface
2004: the World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 million people are killed every year in car accidents
2004: A NASA plane sets a new speed record of Mach 7 (8000 km/h)
2004: abuses of Iraqi prisoners, revealed by reporter Seymour Hersh, cause international outcry
2004: Mikhail Gorbacev, Margaret Thatcher and other leaders of the past attend Ronald Reagan’s funeral
2004: scientists transfer properties of one atom and to another atom by entangling their quantum waves
2004: the Bush administration admits that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (which was the reason to invade Iraq)
2004: the dollar falls to an all-time low against the euro (1.30)
2004: Congress approves an $800 billion increase in the nation’s debt limit, the third such increase since George W. Bush became president (the budget deficit exceeds $7 trillion)
2004: Ryan Matthews becomes the 115th prisoner in the USA since 1973 to be released from death row on the grounds of innocence
2004: Evidence of torture surfaces at both Iraqi and Afghan prisons (Abu Ghraib and Bagram) run by the USA military
2004: the number of millionaires jumps almost 10% in the USA
2005: the monthly USA trade deficit reaches $69 billion of which about 25% with China, 12% with Canada and 12% with Japan
2005: the Kyoto protocol (to reduce the level of greenhouse-gas emissions in order to avoid climate changes such as global warming) is adopted by 141 countries of the world but not the USA, China, India and Australia
2005: a gunman kills seven people at a hotel in Brookfield, Wisconsin
2005: a student kills nine people (and himself) at a high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation of Minnesota
2005: Newsweek magazine reports that guards at Guantanamo desecrated the Quran, a news that sparks deadly riots in Afghanistan and anti-American protests in many Islamic countries
2005: Los Angeles elects a Hispanic mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa
2005: the Six Flags amusement park in New Jersey debuts the fastest and tallest rollercoaster in the world, “Kingda Ka”
2005: Microsoft displays the error message “This item contains forbidden speech” whenever someone tries to write the word “democracy” on its Chinese blog
2005: sales of notebook computers account for 53% of the computer market
2005: the Planetary Society of Pasadena, California, launches an experimental solar-sail spacecraft from a Russian submarine
2005: Bernard Ebbers, former Worldcom’s CEO, is sentenced to 25 years in jail, capping a string of corporate scandals
2005: Lance Armstrong, an American, wins a seventh tour de France, an all-time record
2005: the USA approves the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with Guatemala, Costarica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominican Republic
2005: the price of oil jumps from $35 at the beginning of the year to an all-time record of $67 a barrel
2005: USA television channel ABC interviews the most wanted terrorist in Russia, Shamil Basayev
2005: Google’s market capitalization is $84 billion
2005: Yahoo, Google, America OnLine (AOL) and MSN (Microsoft’s Network) are the four big Internet portals with a combined audience of over one billion people worldwide
2005: scientists map the genome of the chimpanzee
2005: the “Katrina” hurricane destroys New Orleans and other cities of Louisiana and Mississippi, displacing more than 500,000 people
2005: under pressure from the USA, North Korea gives up its nuclear weapons program
2005: the “Deep Impact” probe “lands” on a comet, Comet Tempel 1, and confirms that comets contain organic material
2005: members of the Bush administration are indicted for leaking to the press the name of a CIA agent in a vicious attempt to silence a critic of the Iraqi war
2005: agriculture accounts for 2% of all jobs, manufacturing for 10% (but manufacturing output expanded 4% yearly from 1991 to 2001)
2005: the state of Kansas decides to teach alternatives to Darwin’s theory of evolution
2005: the USA carries out the 1,000th execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976
2005: anti-USA sentiment brings to power leftist regimes throughout Latin America
2005: hybrid cars represent only 1% of total cars sold
2005: the Atlanta airport, the busiest in the world, handles 88.4 million passengers from more than half a million flights
2005: Ebay acquires Skype for $3.1 billion
2006: Google acquires YouTube for $1.65 billion
2006: Alan Greenspan is retires from chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank
2006: a spacecraft (“New Horizons”) is launched towards Pluto
2006: American search engine Google accepts to cooperate with the government of mainland China in censoring the world-wide web

1999-2003, US timeline compiled by Piero Scaruffi

1999: Internet fever: 100 new Internet companies in the US stock market, and their stocks reap huge profits for investors
1999: artificial viruses spread through the Internet
1999: the US has 250 billionaires, and thousands of new millionaires are created in just one year
1999: Clinton announces a second year of budget surplus, the first time since 1957 that the USA has had two consecutive years of budget surplus
1999: two heavily-armed students kill 13 teachers and fellow students at a high-school in Columbine and then commit suicide
1999: 125 billion galaxies have been discovered since Hubble discovered Andromeda in 1925
1999: Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian terrorist with links to Afghanistan, tries to enter the US and bomb the Los Angeles airport
2000: life expectancy in the USA is 77
2000: between 1970 and 2000 the percentage of the USA population living in suburbs grows from 38% to 50%
2000: the Dow Jones reaches an all-time high of 11,723
2000: the economic expansion in the US is the longest in the history of the US
2000: 10 billion e-mail messages a day are exchanged over the Internet
2000: British and American biologists decipher the entire human DNA
2000: the NASDAQ stock market crashes, wiping out trillions of dollars of wealth
2000: the population of the USA is 280 million and the most populated state is California with over 30 million people
2000: British and American biologists decipher the entire human DNA
2000: Clinton announces a record budget surplus, the largest in US history
2000: George W Bush becomes president on a technicality, even though Clinton’s vice-president Al Gore wins the majority of votes
2000: the divorce rate in the USA is 57%, the highest ever in history
2000: the state of Texas executes 40 people in just one year, an all-time record for the USA
2000: the USA approves a law (AGOA) to eliminate tariffs on hundreds of items for African countries
March 2000: Microsoft and Cisco together are worth $1 trillion (25 times their yearly revenues)
April 2000: the U.S. stock market for high technology companies (NASDAQ) crashes
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
November 2000: the first astronauts enter the international space station orbiting the Earth
2001: scientists map the human genome
2001: Jimmy Wales founds Wikipedia, a multilingual encyclopedia that is collaboratively edited by the Internet community
2001: the USA enters a recession, ending the longest economic expansion of its history
2001: the USA tests a missile defence shield
2001: the Voyager leaves the solar system
2001: Arab terrorists affiliated with Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organization blow up the World Trade Center, killing 4,000 people
2001: the USA bombs the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan and chases Al Qaeda members throughout the world
2001: the USA opens a special prison camp at Guantanamo to hold terrorist suspects and authorizes the use of torture
2001: several cases of the biological weapon anthrax are detected around the United States
2001: Bush announces that the US withdraws from the anti-ballistic treaty (ABM)
2001: 3% of the American population is in jail
2001: satellite radio is introduced in the USA
2001: Enron collapses, unveiling the biggest corporate scandal in USA history
2001: there are five million Muslims living in the USA
2002: Russia becomes an ally of NATO
2002: Rick Warren publishes “The Purpose-Driven Life”, which sells one million copies a month for two years, becoming the bestselling nonfiction book in the history of publishing
2002: the trade deficit with China increases to a record $103 billion
2002: US stock markets crash, following corporate scandals, the third consecutive year of decline
2002: Bush announces the first budget deficit since 1998, bringing the grand total to six million billion dollars (about $21,000 per US citizen)
2002: American scientists synthesize a live virus from chemicals
2002: the NASDAQ falls below its post-September 11′s low
2002: Wal-Mart is the biggest company in the world with over 200 billion dollars in revenues (followed by Exxon and General Motors, also American)
2002: the West Nile virus spreads from state to state and kills dozens of people
2002: George W Bush enacts a doctrine of first strike against foes and of continued military supremacy by the USA
2002: a serial sniper (John Allen “MUhammad” Williams) shoots a dozen people at random in the Washington/Maryland area
2002: Texas executes more people (33) than all of the other 49 states (32)
2002: cardinal Bernard Law has to resign following a wave of sex-abuse scandals involving Catholic priests
2002: Bush coins to expression “axis of evil” to describe the totalitarian regimes of Iraq, Iran and North Korea
2002: Robert William Pickton is suspected of killing more than 50 drug-addicted prostitutes during the 1990s in Vancouver, Canada
2003: The space shuttle “Columbia” crashes during landing, killing the whole crew
2003: Airbus passes Boeing as the world’s largest civilians aircraft manufacturer
2003: Texas executes the 300th inmate since the death penalty was reinstated in 1982
2003: George W Bush orders the invasion of Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein
2003: the USA has a record 2 million inmates

TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

1995-1999, US timeline compiled by Piero Scaruffi

1995: a right-wing extremist blows up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 160 people in the worst terrorist incident in the history of the USA
1995: Craig Newmark starts craigslist.com on the Internet, a regional advertising community
1995: the GATT ( General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) evolves into the World Trade Organization
1995: 36 million cars are manufactured in the world, of which 7.6 million in Japan and 6.3 million in the USA, although 8.6 million cars are sold in the USA alone
1995: African-American Muslim Louis Farrakhan organizes the “million man march” on Washington
1995: David Koresh’s Branch Davidian religious fanatics fight the FBI at Waco, Texas
1995: the DVD is introduced
1995: Ward Cunningham creates WikiWikiWeb, a manual on the internet maintained in a collaborative manner
1995: the first extrasolar planet is detected (orbiting 51 Pegasi, a star in the Pegasus constellation, 40 light years from the Sun)
1996: Walt Disney builds a dream town, Celebration, in Florida
1996: Sabeer Bhatia launches Hotmail, a website to check email from anywhere in the world
1996: the computer “Deep Blue” by IBM beats the world champion of chess
1996: Eric Rudolph sets off bombs at the Atlanta Olympic Games that kill two people
1996: Gary Faye Locke becomes the first Chinese-American governor in the USA (governor of Washington state)
1997: Amazon.com is launched on the web as the “world’s largest bookstore”, except that it is not a bookstore, it is a website
1997: the USA signs a treaty banning chemical weapons
1997: Evite is founded by Al Lieb and Selina Tobaccowala
1997: Orville Lynn Majors is arrested for having willingly caused the death of over 100 patients at an Indian hospital
1997: there are 23,000 McDonald’s restaurants in 109 countries
1997: most countries of the world agree on reducing the level of greenhouse-gas emissions in order to avoid climate changes such as global warming, (Kyoto Protocol)
1997: The average yearly income of a USA citizen is $29,000 whereas the average income of a Mexican is $8,000 and the average income of a Nigerian is $900
1998: Pierre Omidyar founds Ebay, a website to trade second-hand goods
1998: Adam Riess discovers that the expansion of the universe is accelerating (dark energy)
1998: 38 million vehicles sold worldwide (4.5 million workers and revenues of 1.5 billion dollars)
1998: Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and scores of Internet-related start-ups create overnight millionaires
1998: a pill to fight impotency, Viagra, is the best-seller of the year
1998: Osama bin Laden, from his base in Afghanistan, wages a holy war against the USA by bombing two USA embassies in Africa
1998: Clinton is impeached for lying about his adultery with Monica Lewinsky
1998: Jorn Barger coins the term “weblog” for webpages that simply contain links to other webpages
1998: Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google to develop a search engine
1999: the AIDS epidemis peaks
1999: the USA women’s soccer team wins the world cup
1999: Sarah Knauss, oldest person in the world, dies at 119
1999: the first planetary system outside the Solar System is detected (Upsilon Andromedae, 44 light years from the solar system)
1999: 500 million people in the world take international flights
1999: Blogger.com allows people to create their own “blogs” (personal journals)
1999: an outbreak of the West Nile virus kills nine people in New York
1999: the recording industry sues Napster, a website that allows people to exchange music
1999: the world prepares for the new millennium amidst fears of computers glitches due to the change of date (Y2K)
1999: Microsoft is worth 450 billion dollars, the most valued company in the world, even if it is many times smaller than General Motors, and Bill Gates is the world’s richest man at $85 billion (1/109th of the US economy)
1999: NATO bombs Serbia to stop repression against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo
1999: 13 students are killed in a high school of Littleton, Colorado, by two students (eight fatal shooting spree in two years)

1988-1994, US historical timeline compiled by Piero Scaruffi

1988: a missile fired by an American warship downs an Iranian civilian plane and kills all 290 passengers aboard
1988: first fiber optic cable across the Atlantic
1988: terrorists backed by Libya blow up a Pan Am plane over Scotland killing 259 people probably on behalf of Iran
1988: Reagan’s vice-president George Bush is elected president
1989: the USA fights the drug cartels of Colombia
1989: Magellan Corporation introduces the first hand-held GPS receiver
1989: the Berlin wall falls, thus ending the Cold War
1989: the USA invade Panama and remove dictator Manuel Noriega
1989: the Soviet Union withdraws from Afghanistan and Afghanistan plunges into chaos
1989: Congress declares sanctions against Iraq to protest Iraq’s use of poison gas against the Kurds
1989: the Arsenio Hall show debuts on tv, the first major talk show hosted by an African-American
1989: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is founded to bring together the USA, Japan, Australia, Canada, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, New Zealand, Philippines
1989: Gartner analyst Howard Dresner coins the term “business intelligence”
1989: Tele-evangelist Jim Bakker is convicted of fraud
1990: Jack Kevorkian performs the first assisted suicide
1990: the Human Genome Project is launched to decipher human DNA
1990: computer viruses spread over the Internet
1990: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invades Kuwait and US president Bush organizes an anti-Iraqi coalition
1990: the Hubble space telescope is launched
1991: the USA leads the Gulf War against Iraq, the first war to use high-precision bombs guided by the GPS
1991: serial killer Dennis Rader kills ten people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991
1991: serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute, is arrested for killing seven men who abused her
1991: the Soviet Union is dismantled
1991: serial killer Arthur Shawcross is sentenced to 250 years in jail for the murders of ten women and claims to have killed (and eaten) women and children since the Vietnam war
1991: Pan Am goes out of business
1991: MTV’s “The Real World” launches the fad of “reality shows”
1991: the “Riot Grrrls!” movement is born at Olympia, Washington
1991: 2200 homicides are committed in New York, 1050 in Los Angeles
1991: the world-wide web (invented by Tim Berners-Lee in Geneve) debuts on the Internet
1991: The first economic recession ever strikes California
1991: John Gotti is arrested and the American Mafia declines
1992: racial riots erupt in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, etc (48 dead)
1992: John Mackey founds the food store “Whole Foods”
1992: Jeffrey Dahmer is convicted for killing and dismembering 17 young men
1992: one million Americans are in jail
1992: street gangs terrorize entire areas of metropoles like Los Angeles
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1992: Bill Clinton is elected president of the U.S., the youngest ever since John Kennedy
1992: USA troops land in Somalia to stop fighting by clans, but are massacred
1993: Marc Andreesen develops the first browser for the World Wide Web (Mosaic)
1993: serial killer Joel David Rifkin is arrested for killing 17 prostitutes in the New York area
1993: the “Youth Day” in Colorado is the largest youth event since Woodstock
1993: Colin Ferguson opens fire on a train killing six commuters
1993: the USA, Canada, Japan, Russia, the European Space Agency and Brazil launch a project to build the International Space Station, the largest international scientific project in history
1994: the first genetically engineered vegetable (Flavr Savr tomato) is introduced
1994: Pizza Hut begins selling pizzas via the WWW
1994: Fidel Castro allows 50,000 people to leave Cuba
1994: the USA invades Haiti to restore Aristide as president
1994: Netscape, the company founded by Marc Andreesen, goes public even before earning money and starts the “dot.com” craze and the boom of the Nasdaq
1994: Jerry Yang launches the first search engine, Yahoo

1983-1988, US Timeline by Piero Scaruffi

1983: Reagan removes Iraq from the list of nations that support international terrorism
1983: Los Angeles passes Chicago as the second largest city in the country
1983: William Inmon builds the first data warehousing system
1984: HIV is identified as the cause of AIDS
1984: Americans, French and Italians withdraw from Lebanon
1984: William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” popularizes the “cyberpunks”
1984: Apple introduces the Macintosh, which revolutionizes desktop publishing
1984: the CDROM is introduced
1984: the Domain Name Server is introduced to classify Internet addresses with extensions such as .com
1984: Arab terrorists kill 241 American marines in Lebanon
1985: the Arpanet is renamed Internet
1985: between 1977 and 1985 consumption of oil in the USA drops 17%, imports drop 50%, and imports from the Middle East drop 87%
1985: the dollar declines against European and Japanese currencies (it will decline 50% in three years)
1985: Leonard Knight begins building “Salvation Mountain” in California
1985: there are more immigrants from Asia (48%) than Latin America (35%)
1985: Ronald Reagan announces a program of “star wars” (SDI)
1985: a hole in the Ozone Layer is discovered over Antartica
1985: Procter & Gamble builds the first business-intelligence system
1986: the USA bombs Libyan cities to deter colonel Qaddafi
1986: the Iran-contra scandal in the USA reveals that the USA sold arms to Iran to fund the contras in Nicaragua
1986: newspapers discover that the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran to fund anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua (“Irangate”)
1986: the space shuttle “Challenger” explodes during take off killing the whole crew
1986: Sperry and Burroughs merge to form Unisys
1986: the US has 14,000 nuclear warheads and the Soviet Union has 11,000
1987: the Montreal Protocol limits the use of substances that damage the ozone layer
1987: Alan Greenspan is appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank
1987: USA warships destroy two Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf
1987: Tele-evangelist and multi-millionaire Jim Bakker resigns from “Praise The Lord” due to a sex scandal
1988: first genetically engineered animal (Harvard Univ)
1988: president Reagan creates the office of “Drug Czar” to fight the traffic of illicit drugs
1988: a person is convicted after a DNA test
1988: USA warships blow up two Iranian oil rigs, sink an Iranian frigate and destroy an Iranian missile boat
1988: a member of the Japanese Red Army (Yu Kikumura) is arrested with explosives on the New Jersey Turnpike
1988: “Morris”, the first digital worm, infects most of the Internet
1988: Pat Robertson founds the Christian Coalition, an anti-abortionist movement

1979-1983, US timeline by Piero Scaruffi

1979: the shah Reza Pahlevi is overthrown by the Islamic Revolution and Iran becomes a theocratic republic led by the ayatollah Khomeini with a strong anti-American posture
1979: the Global Positioning System (GPS) is operational
1979: serial killer Ted Bundy (suspected of murdering up to 50 people) is convicted
1980: billionaire Ted Turner launches CNN, the first cable tv devoted to world news
1980: Rick Warren founds the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest (California)
1980: the Arpanet has 430,000 users, who exchange almost 100 million e-mail messages a year
1980: the value of gold peaks at $850 an ounce
1980: integrated circuits incorporate 100,000 discrete components
1980: Fidel Castro allows 125,000 people to leave Cuba for the USA
1980: racial riots kill 18 people in Miami
1980: Ronald Reagan is elected president
1980: serial killer John Wayne Gacy is convicted of about 30 murders
1980: the Usenet is born, an Internet-based discussion system divided in “newsgroups”
1981: newly elected president Reagan trades hostages for arms with Iran, helps Saddam Hussein’s Iraq against Iran, and authorizes funding and training of Islamic terrorists led by Osama Bin Laden to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan
1981: Wayne Williams is accused of killing twenty-seven young black boys in Atlanta that are probably victims of the KKK
1981: American Airlines introduces a “frequent flyer program”
1981: Techno music
1981: the West Edmonton Mall opens in Alberta (Canada), the largest shopping mall in the world (including more than 800 stores, a hotel, an amusement park, a miniature-golf course, a church, a water park, a zoo and a lake)
1981: USA and Libya fighters engage in combat off the coast of Libya
1981: MTV debuts on cable tv with the Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star”
1981: the U.S. launches the first space shuttle
1981: the IBM PC is launched, running an operating system developed by Bill Gates’ Microsoft
1981: John Gotti rules the Mafia
1981: first cases of AIDS are discovered
1981: the compact disc (CD) is introduced
1981: IBM introduces the PC (“Personal Computer”), that spreads world-wide
1981: Sister Angelica (Rita Rizzo) founds the Eternal World Television Network
1981: Chicago disc-jockeys organize the first “raves”, or clandestine all-night parties
1982: the US government breaks up the largest company in the world, AT&T, worth $60 billion, because it has become a monopoly
1982: Robert Jarvik implants an artificial heart in a patient
1982: the compact disc is introduced
1982: Reagan sends the marines to restore order in Lebanon
1983: the USA, under president Reagan, engages the Soviet Union in a nuclear-arms race
1983: Paul Mockapetris invents the Domain Name System for the Internet
1983: peak of the career of Jimmy Connors, who sets the record of tennis with 109 tournament victories
1983: suicide commandos directed by Imad Mughniyeh (Mugniyah) blow up the US embassy, killing 63 people
1983: Hezbollah suicide commandos organized by Iran blow up the US and French barracks killing 241 marines and 58 French soldiers
1983: at his trial, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confesses having killed more than 200 people
1983: Howard Rheingold founds the environmental magazine “Whole Earth Review” at Sausalito

1973-1979, US Timeline by Piero Scaruffi

1973: Martin Cooper at Motorola invents the first portable, wireless (cellular) telephone
1973: abortion is legalized
1973: members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) impose an oil embargo against the West and oil prices skyrocket (the first “oil crisis”), thus precipitating a world depression (october)
1973: the World Trade Center is inaugurated in New York, the world’s tallest skyscraper
1973: Gary Kindall invents the first operating system for a microprocessor, the CP/M
1974: Ed Roberts invents the first personal computer, the Altair 8800
1974: the Sears Towers open in Chicago, the world’s tallest skyscraper
1974: president Richard Nixon is forced to resign after the Watergate scandal
1974: the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” is released
1974: Jim Bakker begins the “Praise The Lord” ministry
1975: MacDonald’s opens the first drive-through restaurant in Arizona
1975: “Saturday Night Live” airs on tv
1975: the last USA personnel flee South Vietnam as the Vietcongs enter Saigon and terminate the Vietnam War
1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop a version of BASIC for the Altair personal computer and found Microsoft
1976: the supersonic airplane Concorde begins service between Paris and New York
1976: anti-Castro terrorists (possibly led by Luis Posada Carriles and funded by the CIA) blow up a Cuban airliner
1976: the G6 is created to bring the leaders of the biggest national economies together (USA, Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan, France)
1976: the sitcom “Charlie’s Angels” has three women as protagonists
1976: punk-rock and new-wave come out of New York’s alternative music scene
1977: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak develop the Apple II
1977: the soundtrack of “Saturday Night Fever” inaugurates the age of disco-music
1977: the Voyager is launched to reach other galaxies
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1977: Atari introduces a videogame console
1977: Dennis Hayes invents the modem (a device that converts between analog and digital signals)
1978: religious guru Jim Jones and his believers commit a mass suicide at Jamestown, Guyana (917 dead)
1978: the USA begins installation of the GPS
1978: the USA abandons the gold standard
1978: First test-tube (in vitro) baby
1978: Louis Farrakhan seizes power of the “Nation of Islam”, reasserting the principles of African-American nationalism
1978: journalist Myron Farber of the New York Times is sent to jail for refusing to reveal his confidential sources
1979: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan and the USA organizes an Islamic resistance led by Osama Bin Laden
1979: the spacecraft “Pioneer 11″ reaches Saturn
1979: Kevin MacKenzie invents symbols such as to mimic the cues of face-to-face communication
1979: an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant stops development of new nuclear power plants in the USA
1979: the Sandinistas seize power in Nicaragua overthrowing the US-sponsored dictatorship

1968-1973, US Timeline by Piero Scaruffi

1968: civil rights leader Martin Luther King is assassinated
1968: Tommie Smith protests the American anthem at the Olympic games
1968: The Vietcong and North Vietnam (the “Tet Offensive”) begin a joint attack against the USA
1968: reporter Seymour Hersh reveals that American soldiers massacre more than 500 civilians at My Lai, Vietnam
1968: Philip Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove found Intel to build memory chips
1968: 520,000 US troops are in Vietnam
1969: the Unix operating system is born
1969: president Nixon characterizes drugs as “public enemy number one in the United States”
1969: the first Kinetic Sculpture Race is held in Ferndale
1969: the USA uses chemical weapons in Vietnam
1969: Charles Manson, leader of a satanic cult, and his followers kills seven people in a Bel Air mansion
1969: The US begins a secret bombing campaign of Cambodia
1969: Captain Beefheart records “Trout Mask Replica”, possibly the greatest rock album ever
1969: the first “automatic teller machines”
1969: the computer network ArpaNET is born in the U.S. (it will be renamed Internet in 1985)
1969: American astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the Moon
1969: Ted Codd invents the relational database
1969: US president Richard Nixon approves carpet bombing and land invasion of Cambodia
1969: 300,000 young people attend the Woodstock festival of rock music
1969: A huge crowd marches on Washington to demand an end to the Vietnam war
1969: Sylvia Rivera founds the gay liberation movement out of New York
1970: Rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix dies of an overdose
1970: the first Kinko’s opens near the University of California at Santa Barbara
1970: The USA invades Cambodia
1970: optical fiber is invented
1970: five of the seven largest USA semiconductor manufacturers are located in Santa Clara Valley, California
1970: there are more immigrants from Latin America (39%) than Europe (18%)
1971: during riots at the Attica prison, 33 convicts and 10 guards are killed
1971: Richard Nixon secretely helps Pakistan against India and Bangladesh
1971: Cetus, the first biotech company, is founded
1971: a journalist renames Santa Clara Valley the “Silicon Valley”
1971: Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin at Intel invent the micro-processor (a programmable set of integrated circuits)
1971: the video-cassette recorder (VCR) is introduced
1971: end of the Bretton Woods agreement and of fixed exchange rates: currencies float
1971: journalist Gloria Steinem founds the first feminist magazine, “Ms Magazine”
1972: US president Richard Nixon meets with Mao
1972: Magnavox introduces the first videogame console
1972: Nolan Bushnell invents the first videogame (Pong)
1972: Richard Nixon orders carpet bombing of civilian areas in North Vietnam during the Christmas holidays
1972: strategic parity between USA and Soviet Union
1972: the Dow Jones index reaches 1000
1972: a novel by David Gerrold coins the term “computer virus”
1972: Ray Tomlinson invents e-mail for sending messages between computer users, and invents a system to identify the user name and the computer name separated by a “@”
1972: the Global Positioning System (GPS) is invented by the US military, using a constellation of 24 satellites for navigation and positioning purposes
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1973: the USA, defeated, leaves Vietnam after killing close to 2 million civilians and 1 million soldiers, and losing 58,000 men
1973: PBS’ “An American Family” is the first “reality show” on television
1973: Vinton Cerf first uses the term “Internet” (because it is now connecting networks)
1973: the Arpanet has 2,000 users
1973: the CIA helps the Chilean army, led by general Augusto Pinochet, overthrow the socialist government of Salvador Allende (30,000 dissidents are imprisoned and tortured, and 2,000 “disappear”)

1960-1967, US Timeline by Piero Scaruffi

1960: In retaliation for the USA’s imposition of quotas on Venezuelan oil (to favor (Canada and Mexico), Venezuela joins Arab countries to found OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)
1960: Manhattan has 98 buildings which are taller than 100 meters
1960: Russ Solomon opens the first Tower Records in Sacramento (California), the first music megastore
1960: Martin Luther King delivers his speech “We shall overcome”
1960: first laser (Theodore Maiman)
1960: Inspired by Gandhi, black students including Ella Baker and Stokely Carmichael found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to fight for civil rights
1961: John Kennedy is inaugurated as president, the first catholic and the youngest ever, and promises a “New Frontier”
1961: Los Angeles’ surface is 1,175 square kms and its population passes Philadelphia, becoming the third largest city in the country
1961: Soviet troops build a wall to isolate West Berlin and discourage people from fleeing Eastern Germany
1961: a Cuban rebel force trained by the CIA tries to invade Cuba
1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first astronaut
1961: first stereo radio broadcasting
1961: the Beach Boys launch surf-music
1961: Charles Bachman at General Electric develops the first database management system, IDS
1962: the USA intervenes in Vietnam to counter Soviet help to the Vietcong
1962: 1962: Paul Baran proposes a distributed network as the form of communication least vulnerable to a nuclear strike
1962: John Kennedy forces the Soviet Union to stop building missile bases in Cuba
1962: Tom Hayden and others found the “Student for Democratic Society” (SDS)
1962: Michael Murphy founds the “Esalen Institute” at Big Sur to promote spiritual healing
1962: 30,000 troops have to escort a young black student, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi
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1962: Bob Dylan sings “Blowin’ In The Wind”
1962: the audio cassette is introduced
1962: Americans lift into orbit the first telecommunication satellite, the Telstar
1962: Helen Gurley Brown publishes “Sex and the single girl”, defending a woman’s right to have sex for pleasure
1963: president John Kennedy is assassinated
1963: Bell Labs introduces the touch-tone phone
1963: Martin Luther King leads 200,000 blacks on a march to Washington and delivers the speech “I have a dream”
1963: a bomb blows up in a black church of Birmingham, Alabama
1963: Malcom X, considered too extremist, is expelled from the “Nation of Islam”
1964: Cable TV is deployed in U.S. cities
1964: Mario Savio founds the “Free Speech Movement” and leads student riots at the Berkeley campus
1964: jazz musician John Coltrane cuts “A Love Supreme”, possibly the greatest jazz album ever
1964: Smoking is proved to be dangerous
1964: IBM introduces the first “mainframe” computer (the 360) and the first “operating system” (the OS/360)
1964: president Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act
1964: The CIA fabricates the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a pretext for direct US intervention in Vietnam
1964: John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz (at Dartmouth College) invent the BASIC programming language
1964: Michael Scott-Morton introduces the concept of a decision-support system
1965: Gordon Moore predicts that the processing power of computers will double every 18 months
1965: civil-rights activist Stokely Carmichael delivers a speech on “Black Power”
1965: Fidel Castro allows one million Cubans over five years to leave Cuba and settle in the USA
1965: the Digital Equipment Corporation unveils the first mini-computer, the PDP-8, that uses integrated circuits
1965: 34 people die in racial riots in the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts
1965: African-American leader Malcolm X is assassinated at a rally by members of the “Nation of Islam”
1965: the SDS organizes the first pacifist march on Washington
1965: spacecraft Mariner 4 takes the first pictures of Mars’ surface
1966: Cassius Clay is jailed for refusing to serve in Vietnam
1966: William Buckley starts the tv show “Firing Line” that will run until 1999 and promote a convervative ideology
1966: there are 2,623 computers in the USA (1,967 work for the Defense Department)
1966: the summer of Love of the hippies in San Francisco
1966: Rock composer Frank Zappa debuts with “Freak Out”, a double album
1966: Psychedelic rock comes out of of San Francisco’s hippie culture
1966: Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and other African-American activists found the “Black Panther Party” at Oakland, California
1967: Jack Kilby (at Texas Instruments) develops the first hand-held calculator
1967: the USA has 200 million people, of which 9.7 million are foreign-born
1967: the first “Super Bowl” final of “football” (American rugby) is held
1967: racial riots kill 26 people in Newark and 43 in Detroit
1967: Cuban liberation hero Che Guevara is killed by American agents in Bolivia
1967: pacifists march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam war
1967: the CIA supports a coup in Greece that installs a dictatorship of colonels
1967: sixteen states still refused to recognize mixed-race marriages