http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/american.html
2004: the “Spirit” and the “Opportunity” spacecrafts land on Mars and send the first pictures of the planet’s surface
2004: Dickson Despommier proposes to build vertical farms
2004: Google launches a project to digitize all the books ever printed
2004: Mark Zuckerberg founds Facebook
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
2004: Massachussetts legalizes gay marriage
2004: California approves $3 billion to human embryonic stem-cell research, resulting in the founding of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the biggest-ever public scientific program 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: Carlton Cuse’s “Lost” (2005) and Tim Kring’s Heroes (2006) pioneer interactive television programs
2005: Gnutella connects 1.81 million computers
2005: The Internet is used by one billion people
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-USA 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, a USA citizen, 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
2005: Republican representative Tom DeLay of Texas is indicted of corruption (campaign finance violations)
2005: The largest solar plant in the world is inaugurated in the Mojave Desert of California, producing 354MW of electricity, which is more than all the rest of commercial production of solar energy in the world
2005: the USA and India sign a nuclear agreement
2006: Google acquires YouTube for $1.65 billion
2006: Lyndon and Peter Rive found SolarCity
2006: Jack Dorsey creates the social networking service Twitter
2006: Alan Greenspan is retires from chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank
2006: a spacecraft (“New Horizons”) is launched towards Pluto
2006: USA search engine Google accepts to cooperate with the government of mainland China in censoring the world-wide web
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: 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: Keith Ellison is the first Muslim to be elected to Congress
2006: after six years the Dow Jones index briefly 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: After the Democratic Party takes control of Congress, Republicans start employing filibuster to stop every Democratic initiative
2007: 138 million USA citizens have experimented with illegal drugs
2007: the USA trade deficit hits a record $764 bilion
2007: The “The Million Book Project” led by Carnegie Mellon University digitizes more than one million books worldwide
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: There are 12.5 million Illegal immigrants in the USA, of which more than half are from Mexico
2007: Republican senator Larry Craig of Idaho resigns following his arrest for soliciting gay sex
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
Jun 2007: A USA strike kills more than 80 civilians in Chora, Afghanistan
Sep 2007: USA mercenaries hired by the company Blackwater and including Nicholas Slatten open fire on a crowd in Baghdad and kill 14 people (“Nissour Square Massacre”)
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)
2007: The number of Afghan civilian deaths caused by USA bombings triples between 2006 and 2007
Sep 2007: Blackwater security guards shoot on a crowd in Baghdad, killing 17 people
Oct 2007: The Dow Jones hits a record high of 14,164 on 9 october 2007
Dec 2007: The USA economy enters a recession
2007: 1.4 million violent crimes are committed in the USA, including 17,000 murders and 9.8 million property crimes, while 1.35 million high-school students report being either threatened or injured with a weapon
2007: the highest number of births in the history of the USA (4.3 million)
2007: The ratio of debt to personal disposable income is 133%
Sep 2007: The Canadian dollar rises above the USA dollar
2008: the average price for gasoline passes $4 per gallon
2008: Rickey Johnson is released from a Louisiana prison after serving 25 years for a crime he did not commit
May 2008: Al Jazeera’s cameraman Sami al-Hajj is released from Guantanamo
Now 2008: For a few months San Francisco issues marriage license to same-sex couples
2008: Warren Buffett is the richest man in the world
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
may 2008: USA’s home prices drop by 15.8%, the steepest decline in 21 years
june 2008: oil prices pass $140 a barrel
june 2008: a USA air strike kills 11 Pakistani soldiers
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: A USA airstrike in Azizabad (western Afghanistan) kills 92 civilians including 60 children
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
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, the two remaining investment banks in the United States, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, decide to become traditional banks, 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.
oct 2008: Blowing himself up in Somalia, Shirwa Ahmed is the first USA citizen to become a suicide bomber
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
Dec 2008: The GDP of the USA falls 6.2% in the last quarter of 2008, the worst decline since 1982, with exports falling 23.6%
Dec 2008: Microsoft Windows owns almost 90% of the operating system market for personal computers, while Google owns almost 70% of the Internet search market
2008: More than 10,000 people die of heroin overdose in the NATO countries in just one year, a number higher than all casualties from all NATO wars since 2001
2008: 1.6 million people are in federal prisons, an all-time high
2008: 41% of children are born to single mothers, about 25% to a Hispanic mother, and births to women over 40 account to 3% (triple the rate of the 1980s)
Jan 2009: The USA loses 741,000 jobs in january alone, the most since 1949
Jan 2009: Facebook has 140 million users and grows by about 500,000 users a day, the fastest product ever to reach that many users in five years
Feb 2009: An unmarried woman, Nadya Suleman, gives birth to 14 children (eight at the same time) through in-vitro procedures
Feb 2009: Car sales decline more than 40% from a year before
Feb 2009: The price of oil plunges to $40/barrel
Mar 2009: Ten people are killed by an armed man in Alabama
Mar 2009: Bill O’Reilly’s show is the number one news show on tv for the 100th consecutive month
Mar 2009: A gunman kills eight people in a nursing home of Carthage (North Carolina)
Mar 2009: A gunman kills 13 people in upstate New York
May 2009: A USA air strike on Granai (in the western district of Bala Baluk) kills 147 Afghan civilians
May 2009: Unemployment hits 9.2%, the highest rate in 25 years
Jun 2009: The recession begun in 2007 ends in june 2009, the longest USA recession since World War II (18 months)
Jul 2009: The USA budget deficit tops $1 trillion
Aug 2009: Sonia Sotomayor becomes the first Hispanic to serve in the Supreme Court
Aug 2009: The unemployment rate reaches 9.7%, a 26-year high
sep 2009: Yielding to Russian pressure, the USA cancels a missile defense system in Eastern Europe
2009: China passes Germany as the world’s top exporter and China passes Canada as the USA top exporter
2009: LimeWire, the largest free file-sharing system, has over 70 million unique monthly users
Oct 2009: There are more than 100,000 NATO troops (including about 68,000 USA soldiers) in Afghanistan alongside 200,000 Afghan soldiers fighting less than 25,000 Taliban
Oct 2009: Luquman Ameen Abdullah, who was trying to establish an Islamic state in Michigan, is killed by the FBI
Oct 2009: The recession ends in the USA
Nov 2009: The US dollar hits a 14-year low against the Japanese yen down to 86.5 yen
Nov 2009: A Muslim in the USA army, Nidal Hasan, kills 13 people at the Fort Hood base in Texas
Dec 2009: The Internet is used by more than two billion people
Dec 2009: The USA accounts for 26.7% of world GDP
Dec 2009: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian Muslim trained by Al Qaeda in Yemen, tries to bomb a USA airplane
Dec 2009: A USA court sends free the Blackwater security guards who shot on a crowd in Baghdad in 2007, killing 17 people
Dec 2009: Jordanian suicide bomber and Al Qaeda secret agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi kills seven CIA agent a Jordanian secret agent in Afghanistan
Dec 2009: Facebook has 350 million users and grows by about one million users a day; Wikipedia has 350 million users per month and 14 million articles.
Jan 2010: Three USA soldiers are killed in Pakistan by the Pakistani Taliban, the first USA casualties inside Pakistan
Jan 2010: USA missionaries, mostly belonging to a Baptist church in Idaho, try to kidnap 33 Haitian children after the country is devastated by an earthquake
Feb 2010: Right-wing movements organize a “National Tea Party Convention” in Nashville
Apr 2010: The USA discloses that it has a total of 5,113 nuclear warheads in its arsenal
Apr 2010: An explosion on a BP rig causes a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the biggest environmental disaster in the history of the USA
May 2010: Pakistani-born Faisal Shahzad tries to blow up a car bomb in Times Square, New York
Jun 2010: A former employee kills five people and himself a business in New Mexico
Jun 2010: General Motors sells more cars in China than in the USA
Jul 2010: A USA strike kills 52 civilians in Afghanistan including 17 children
Jul 2010: More than 90,000 secret USA military records about the Afghanistan war are leaked to a website
Jul 2010: 66 USA soldiers die in Afghanistan in july 2010, the deadliest month since the war began
Jul 2010: WikiLeaks releases thousands of top-secret USA documents about the war in Afghanistan
Aug 2010: Nine people are shot dead by a worker at a warehouse in Connecticut
Aug 2010: Thirty-eight USA billionaires, led by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, pledge 50% of their wealth to charity
Aug 2010: The USA declares a formal end to its combat mission in Iraq
Sep 2010: After an argument with his wife, a man in eastern Kentucky kills five people with a shotgun before killing himself
Sep 2010: The CIA launches more than 20 drone attacks against Pakistani territories, the highest number ever
Oct 2010: The Australian dollar reaches parity with the USA dollar
Nov 2010: WikiLeaks releases thousands of top-secret USA documents
Dec 2010: Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency charges former US vice-president Dick Cheney of bribing officials
Dec 2010: Former Republican leader Tom DeLay is convicted of illicit campaign financing
Dec 2010: The SpaceX Falcon 9, the first private spaceship to orbit Earth, takes off
2010: A record 700,000 foreign students study in the USA, of which 128,000 are from China and 105,000 are from India
2010: The budget deficit reaches $14 trillion or almost 100% of annual GDP
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Oak Ridge, TN, circa 1945
Life in West Tennessee 