Today and tomorrow I will present a timeline of the last 38 years. Just one event per year. With little organization. Just think of this as a lot of stuff that happened. If we try to think of them as the "most important events" of their respective years, some of the choices will seem a tad eccentric. 1984, The Sino-British Joint Declaration sets out plans for a transition of Hong Kong to PRC sovereignty. 1985, Microsoft releases Window 1.0 1986, The launch of the Fox Broadcasting Co. 1987. The US FDA approves the marketing of Prozac. 1988. This was the year of the peak of the insider trading scandal that made Rudolph Giuliani a person of importance. Drexel Burnham pleaded guilty this year. 1989. This was the year of the SATANIC VERSES controversy involving the Ayatollah Khomeini and Salman Rushdie. 1990. East and West Germany re-unite after decades of separation. 1991. The Soviet Union dissolves itself. 1992. The European Union comes into being, as a stronger an...
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Someone on a social media site recently challenged me to produce a short list of the biggest historical events since 2000. I took her to mean "since 2000 inclusive." And to keep the list respectably short, I've limited myself to one Big Event from each year. After a little thought, I came up with the following, which as you can see I'm reproducing here. I considered invoking an event in the world of baseball for the Big Event of 2004, but thought better of it. (New Englanders will know what I had in mind.) 2000: The world is devastated on January 1st by the consequences of the Y2K bug ... uh, never mind. The refutation "ambulando" of the Y2K doomsayers serves as evidence that the digital world is more resilient than it had been in the fears of some and the (semi-secret) hopes of other. 2001: Al Qaeda attacks US targets in Virginia and New York, kills thousands. 2002: The new “euro” notes and coins are introduced as circulating currency in m...