College Times

Issue date: 1/7/10 Section: Top 10s

Media Credit: David Swanson

Media Credit: Autumn Cruz

Media Credit: MCT Handout

1. September 11 Terrorist Attacks

The U.S. opts to wage wars on two fronts thousands of miles away in Afghanistan and Iraq.

During a person's lifetime, there are certain moments that define who they are, what they've done and where they're going. Furthermore, if the certain moment affects more than just a handful of people, say the entire country, one will likely see an attitude shift and changes in the way things are done. One of these moments happened on September 11, 2001. While the details won't be rehashed here, the aftermath will.

Not even a month after the attacks, the country initiated a war in Afghanistan, primarily in an attempt to defeat Al-Qaeda, a group known for instigating terrorists attacks.

The Patriot Act was enacted soon after 9/11 as well, just 45 days after, to be exact, which dealt with expanding the rights of the US government in the arenas of gathering information, regulating financial transactions and detaining immigrants on the basis that they might be terrorists.

With this unity as the foundation, the war in Iraq was initiated. This time, it was the plan to seek out and destroy the alleged weapons of mass destruction said to be in the possession of the Iraqi government. Perhaps one of the staples of the war coverage were the images and video taken from the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Firdos Square, which signaled to America and Iraqi civilians that this war wasn't a fleeting idea in the minds of President Bush and his staff.

In the aftermath, we became a Living Room War nation, sending our brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, relatives and friends thousands of miles away to fight wars we still cannot fully know the consequences of as we sit in front of our big screens, watching the action as if it were a reality television show.

At times, we find ourselves more caught up in the business of celebrity and fame, forgetting those who fight for us every day. And now, it would seem to some, it has become something of a back-shelf item. We're at war, but that isn't always clear by the atmosphere here at home.

2. Recession strikes the globe; World markets crash; Joblessness poisons the developed-world economies

We were never so happy to hear the stock market bell ring as we were in 2009. The endless and monotonous footage of some old guy pushing the button, which initiated the start of the stock market, became a daily news story, which was an altogether frightening and uplifting thought.

Frightening because Wall Street crashed, which in turn, affected Main Street. Recession struck the globe, and it appeared to be felt in almost every corner of the world.

Uplifting because, if the bell was ringing, that meant there was business being done, and if that was the case, there was only room to move on up, not down.

Although, this didn't prevent the world markets from crashing, and the developed worlds' populations from feeling the permeating and oft-times degrading effects of joblessness.

The sub-prime housing market took several blows forcing bank foreclosures on houses in many cities across America, and even with the banks' acquisitions, they suffered as well. We saw Washington Mutual join hands with Chase, and many airlines, retail and grocery stores, and sadly, individual people, claim bankruptcy.

The unemployed numbers in America skyrocketed, and we learned what it really meant to pinch pennies. And never before in our lives did we care so much about the price per barrel of oil, because the higher the price per barrel, the likelihood was that the price per gallon of gasoline would follow.

Morning news shows began showing stories of women who became so smart about clipping coupons that they could get a whole week's worth of groceries for pennies. Wal-Mart expanded into new territories, and the idea on everyone's mind was how to get things as cheap as possible.

3. Indian Ocean earthquake, tsunami kills close to 300,000

It seemed like a calm day after Christmas in 2004. People were just getting up, still riding the post-Christmas high, turning on their televisions to partake in some trashy holiday television, when it happened: all the news stations were broadcasting the horrifying video footage of the after effects of a 9.3 magnitude middle-of-the-Indian-Ocean earthquake. A huge, nearly 80-foot wave radiated off the earthquake, traveling as far as Antarctica and Japan, according to many news stories from 2004.

Noted as the single worst tsunami in history, in many of the places it hit, it spread about a mile and a half inland. The main countries hit were Burma, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Maldives.

The official death toll was 276,856, according to the US Geological Survey, although some claim it was higher, closer to 300,000. It was also reported by the USGS that close to 2 million people were displaced, forced to seek refuge in other countries or shelters close to their non-existent homes.

As the Western world was captivated by this massive natural disaster, it didn't take long for people to want to help. The plight of the many affected people and countries prompted a widespread humanitarian response. In all, the worldwide community donated more than $7 billion in humanitarian aid for supplies, first aid and rebuilding supplies.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated soon after the tsunami that reconstruction would probably take between five and 10 years. This prompted governments and non-governmental organizations to give more to the rebuilding efforts, also for fear the final death toll might ultimately double as a result of diseases.

4. Sichuan earthquake kills 68,712

In May of 2008, tragedy struck the Orient. The event has largely gone forgotten and underreported in the United States, but the Sichuan earthquake killed approximately 65,000 more people than were killed on 9/11.

As one of the world's most densely populated areas, China's Sichuan province couldn't have been a weaker target. The 7.9 magnitude earthquake rattled the population of 87 million, leaving nearly 69,000 dead, 18,000 missing and 370,000 injured. Still, the earthquake only ranked as the 19th deadliest of all time, with many of the other top spots going to China and nearby Asian countries.

Mass death was only the beginning of Sichuan's worries, with just over 4.8 million people left homeless. Aftershocks, some reaching as high in magnitude as 6.0, sent waves of energy through the province, shaking down already destroyed homes and buildings and injuring more citizens.

Over the next three years, the Chinese government pledged 1 trillion Yuan, or about $146 billion, to help rebuild the devastated area. In actuality, about $141 billion was spent by November 2008, according to government data. At the same time, about 1.9 million households were still left without shelter.

A three-day national period of mourning was announced, starting on May 19. A public outpouring made the Tiananmen Square memorial one of the largest public mourning events in China, right alongside the memorial that grieved the death of Mao Zedong.

5. Google begins its takeover as the lead organizer of information in the world; Social networking becomes an ubiquitous part of everyday life

This decade saw the rise of collegiate nerds and the magic that can happen when they're bored in their dorm rooms.

Prior to 1998, mention the name "Google" and you would have received one of two responses - "Do you mean the number googol, as in ten to the hundredth power?" or "Do you have a speech impediment? It's goggle!"

Twelve years later, Google is the largest name in online search engines, organizing the world's internet-based information into clear, coherent and useful results. It was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both students at Stanford.

Today, Google is one of the world's largest corporations. Features like Gmail, Google Earth, Google News and Google Images help boost the search engine's popularity. The company has been named the "number one best place to work" and the "most powerful brand in the world" by Fortune.

This century also saw the rise of what was deemed social networking. People, eager to express individuality and creativity, created public pages with little to no HTML writing experience under websites like Friendster, MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, Twitter and Facebook. Each of the sites allowed users to post and share photos, blogs, comments and make "friends." Facebook, created by a Harvard student, is currently the largest social networking site on the web, with Twitter emerging as something quicker and edgier.

6. Obama elected as first Black president of the United States

The history of the United States and African American relations is generally considered a grim one. The English colonization of the States gave rise to the enslavement of Africans, which dates back as far as the 1560s. It wasn't until 1863 that slavery was abolished. Even throughout the 1900s, racism made the United States a tense place to live.

The new millennium offered an optimistic ground for race relations. The American public, largely frustrated by perceived blunders of the Bush era, elected an unlikely candidate to the office of President of the United States. Democrat Barack Obama, a Black senator from Illinois, beat out former Vietnam War POW John McCain in the November 2008 election and became the first Black president of the United States.

Obama - born in Hawaii and educated at Columbia and Harvard universities - met a great amount of criticism when he went into office. A group of people known as "birthers," claimed that Obama was in fact not born in Hawaii but Kenya, home of his father, and therefore was unable to be president. An alleged Kenyan birth certificate was released in August 2009, which was later revealed to be a forgery, since actual Kenyan birth certificates from 1961 look much different.

7. Hurricane Katrina destroys the Southeastern coastal lands, including New Orleans; kills 1,836

When Category 5 Hurricane Katrina reached the Southeastern United States in August of 2005, its fury destroyed entire towns, killed 1,836 people, tallied unbelievable sums of monetary damage and called attention to the United States' ability to respond to disaster.

In all, Katrina was the costliest Atlantic hurricane of all time by a wide margin, tallying $89.6 billion in damage. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi and Louisiana all recorded deaths, and nearly 90,000 square miles of the United States were declared Federal disaster zones.

The worst-hit area in the region proved to be New Orleans, Louisiana, a direct result of the catastrophic failure of the city's levee system. At its worst, 80 percent of the city and its surrounding towns were submerged under water, the flood water lingering for weeks and rendering many neighborhoods entirely unsalvageable. In the aftermath of the disaster, blame for the levee failures was directed at engineers, local and national authorities and operators.

New Orleans also became a focal point of criticism surrounding the US government's response to the storm and its deadly aftermath, dealing largely with the authorities' lack of structure and preparation for such an event. Thanks largely to the presence of the 24-hour news cycle, images of understaffed, undersupplied, often unsanitary shelters - the largest and most glaring of which being the heavily-damaged New Orleans Superdome - were broadcast to the entire world.

8. China emerges as a global superpower

If projections about the possible future of the global economy are to be trusted, the aughts aught to be remembered as the decade a sleeping giant rose from a deep slumber and changed the economic landscape nearly beyond recognition.

In a melding of population mobilization, modern technology, near-unfathomable growth of infrastructure and its own marketplaces and a distinct shift in government policy, China took its place among the big boys on the world's financial stage and staked out a claim as a superpower, a move that provided equal shares profitability and deep concern from the United States and the rest of the Western world.

China is now the No. 2 economy in the world for direct foreign investment, including purchases of billions of dollars in US treasury bills that make it the country's largest creditor. China is poised to overtake India as the world's outsourcing leader, and has taken a leadership position during international interactions such as the Copenhagen Conference on climate change.

The shift raised some deep, potentially troubling questions: what does it mean to American and Western European industry? As the Chinese market modernizes, are China's human rights issues being cleaned up? Does the Chinese government care? What it all means to the world at large remains to be seen, but for the foreseeable future, China is at the center of most financial conversations.

9. First gay marriages take place in California, five months later voters ban gay marriage

When the state of California granted Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin the state's first same-sex marriage license on June 16, 2008, advocates nationwide celebrated a perceived human rights victory. When the passage of Proposition 8 amended the state constitution to ban such practices five months later, it set the stage for years of continued litigation and cemented the gay marriage battle as the decade's biggest civil liberties clash.

While Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage (in 2003) and four states (Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire) have since adopted similar measures, the California Supreme Court's four-to-three decision overturning of the state's same-sex marriage ban in May of 2008 was the most impactful in terms of population, if not public perception. The movement to ban gay marriage gained traction immediately followed the decision, with a free-flow of money and man-power swelling from both within and outside the state to campaign for the passage of ballot initiative Proposition 8, a proposed state constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry Act passed with a 52 percent majority in the California general election in November 2009 and survived a gauntlet of challenges presented to the California Supreme Court in the following months. Still, the battle rages on.

10. Apple reveals the iPod

Today's iPod is a little different than the original first introduced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on October 23, 2001. It's smaller, holds more songs, comes in a myriad of colors and even shoots video. But as the music player morphed slightly over the next eight years, both the music industry and the way the public listens to music were nearly completely transformed.

The player's software, iTunes, ushered in a new era of selective buying driven largely by singles and, according to some, the death of the album and quite possibly the record industry as we know it. In fact, industry experts predict that digital music sales will surpass CD sales sometime early this decade.

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