NEWS
- George W. Bush is officially inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States in Washington D.C.
- Iraq holds its first free democratic parliamentary elections since 1958.
- Mahmoud Abbas is elected to succeed Yasser Arafat as President of the Palestinian Authority.
- Former Presidents Bush and Clinton work together to raise money to relieve victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami.
- The Governor of Baghdad, Ali al-Haidri, is assassinated by insurgents.
- The ESA’s Huygens probe lands on Titan.
- Talk show host Johnny Carson dies.
- The SciFi Channel debuts the first episode of the “reimagining” of Battlestar Galactica. The series is among the most critically acclaimed the decade, is the biggest hit by the history of the channel, and is considered by many non-fans (and some fans) to be the best SF series in history.
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is published.
- After several tries, the Donovan McNabb-led Philadelphia Eagles finally win the NFC Championship Game and make it to the Super Bowl.
- USC blows out Oklahoma to win the national NCAA football championship.
NEWS
- North Korea announces that it possesses nuclear weapons, though this is never really completely proven.
- The Kyoto protocol, meant to help prevent climate change, goes into effect world-wide, though the United States is not on board.
- A suicide bombing in Beirut kills former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri along with sixteen others, setting off chaos in the nation.
- A series of suicide bombings in Iraq kill worshipers on the Shia holiday of Ashura.
- Meanwhile, President Bush asks for an additional $81.9 billion from Congress to fund the war. He gets it.
- Million Dollar Baby, a movie about a female boxer and her old guy trainer, wins the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director for Clint Eastwood, Best Actress for Hilary Swank, and Best Supporting Actor for Morgan Freeman. Jamie Foxx and Cate Blanchett also win awards.
- UPN announces the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise. It ends in May, the first time no Trek series has been on the air since the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the 80s. The final episode is universally thought to be terrible.
- Journalist Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide.
- Christo’s installation The Gates is held in New York City’s Central Park and generates worldwide buzz.
- Blink-182 goes on “permanent hiatus”, and Korn’s guitarist leaves the band after converting to born-again Christianity.
- The first episode of the animated series American Dad! airs following the Super Bowl on FOX, while another animated hit, Avatar: The Last Airbender premieres on Nickelodeon.
- U.K. soap opera EastEnders celebrates its 20th anniversary by killing off one of its characters.
- The NHL is unable to come to a labor agreement with its players union and makes the unprecedented decision to officially cancel the season.
- The New England Patriots hold on to beat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21 and win their third championship in four years. Donovan McNabb throws up on the field while trying to lead an Eagles comeback and Terrell Owens plays a strong game despite a broken foot, but it’s not enough. WR Deion Branch is voted MVP.
NEWS
- The case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman whom her husband wants to let die, dominates American headlines. The Republican-led Congress tries to intervene despite Mrs. Schiavo having been in a vegetative state for 15 years, but her feeding tube is eventually disconnected.
- Steve Fossett completes the world’s first round-the-globe, non-stop, non-refueled trip in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer.
- Brian Nichols kills three while escaping from an Atlanta courthouse and takes a hostage in an attempt to elude law enforcement. The hostage apparently convinces him to release and turn himself in by “appealing to his better nature”, though it later turns out they also drugged him.
- Kyrgyzstan experiences what is known as the “Tulip Revolution”, resulting in the overthrow of its President Askar Akayev.
- WorldCom is found guilty of securities fraud.
- Johnnie Cochran dies.
- Dan Rather retires
- The U.S. version of The Office airs for the first time on NBC and ends up being one of the decade’s main comedic trendsetters.
- Meanwhile, a modernized version of Doctor Who, starring Christopher Eccleston in the title role, is a huge hit in its debut on the BBC.
- 50 Cent’s releases The Massacre, which sells a million copies in a week and has five top five singles.
- The final episode of NYPD Blue airs.
- G4 airs the first episode of cult-hit geek news show Attack of the Show!
- Hearings on steroid use in Major League Baseball are held in a Congressional Committee and result in a ridiculous spectacle. Mark McGwire refuses to answer questions, saying “I’m not here to talk about the past,” Sammy Sosa suddenly loses his ability to speak English, and Rafael Palmeiro flat out denies he’s ever uses steroids.
- The #1 ranked University of Illinois pulls off an amazing 15 point comeback in the final four minutes in their NCAA basketball tournament quarterfinal game versus Arizona.
NEWS
- Pope John Paul II dies in Rome. He is replaced by German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who a few accuse of past Nazi connections. Cardinal Ratzinger takes the name Benedict XVI as pontiff. He is the 265th pope.
- Cleric Moqtada Sadr organizes tens of thousands of demonstrators to march through Baghdad in protest of the American occupation. They rally in the square that once held the famously pulled-down statue of Saddam Hussein.
- In the face of international pressure, Syria pulls its last troops out of Lebanon after 29 years.
- A Japanese passenger train derails near Osaka, killing over 100.
- Eric Rudolph officially confesses to the 1996 Olympic Park bombing.
- Zacarias Moussaoui pleads guilty to murder charges but denies claims that he is the “20th hijacker.”
- Prince Charles marries Camilla Parker Bowles. She takes the title of the Duchess of Cornwall.
- The unique, ultra-violent graphic novel adaptation Sin City makes new arguments for computer technology in movie-making.
- Hollywood finally releases its big-budget Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie, with middling results.
- Mariah Carey’s comeback album The Emancipation of Mimi debuts at #1.
- ABC News anchor Peter Jennings announces live on the air that he has lung cancer.
- Illinois can’t quite go all the way, losing a very good NCAA basketball final to the University of North Carolina, 75-70. All five North Carolina starters then jump to the NBA, with varying degrees of success.
NEWS
- One the largest months for insurgent attacks in Iraq. A suicide bomber kills 60 when he blows up a Kurdish Police recruitment center in Irbil.
- Protests grow violent in Uzbekistan during the trial of 23 accused Islamic militants. The Uzbek military ends up opening fire and killing as many as 700.
- Private Lyndie England pleads guilty to charges related to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal during her court-martial.
- The identity of Watergate source Deep Throat is finally revealed to be Mark Felt, who during the scandal was Associate Director of the FBI.
- Tony Blair is re-elected as Prime Minister of Great Britain.
- The final Star Wars prequel, Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith, showing the creation of Darth Vader, is the year’s biggest Box Office hit.
- Country-tinged singer Carrie Underwood of Checotah, Oklahoma, wins the fourth season of American Idol. She goes on to become perhaps the most successful Idol winner.
- FOX revives Family Guy to strong DVD sales and high ratings for re-runs on Adult Swim, a possible TV first. The revival turns out to be a great success.
- The anti-racism drama Crash is released in theaters and is a surprise success. The film sharply divides critics, receiving raves from some and complete dismissal from others.
- Tom Cruise officially becomes a permanent subject of public ridicule when he jumps on Oprah’s couch while shouting about just how in love he is with Katie Holmes. “Jumping the Couch” enters the pop culture lexicon.
- Nine Inch Nails releases With Teeth, their first studio album in six years, Weezer releases possibly their first really good album of the decade, Make Believe, Audioslave has a series of major hits with Out of Exile, and the Gorillaz album Demon Days is a surprise international success. Twelve rock albums hit number one this year, the most since the early nineties.
- Liverpool defeats AC Milan on penalties to win their first European club soccer championship.
NEWS
- Vice President Cheney infamously states that the Iraqi insurgence is in its “last throes”.
- Gay marriage is legalized in Canada and Spain.
- The U.S. and Russia try to launch a joint light-sail spacecraft, Volna, the first of its kind, but the rocket explodes 80 seconds after lift-off.
- William Donaldson resigns as Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission. Donaldson’s tenure was known for a general relaxation of various regulations on the financial sector.
- Michael Jackson is officially cleared of child molestation charges.
- Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, starring Christian Bale, successfully reboots one of the more famous comic book heroes simply by taking him seriously.
- The Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie spy dramedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the Steven Spielberg action epic/response to 9/11 War of the Worlds are both hit blockbusters.
- March of the Penguins, a nature documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman, surprisingly ends up being one of the year’s most popular and defining films.
- Destiny’s Child announce that they will disband following the completion of their world tour.
- Christopher Eccleston leaves Doctor Who in the first season finale and is replaced by David Tennant, who will prove to be even more popular in the title role.
- Anne Bancroft dies.
- The Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs play a back-and-forth seven game NBA Finals, with the Spurs eventually prevailing four games to three. The series is the lowest rated in history and is known for a defensive style of play.
- Boxer Mike Tyson fights for the last time.
- Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell breaks the World Record at 100 meters while running at the Olympic Stadium in Athens.
NEWS
- Four explosions rock the London public transit system (three on the Underground and one on a bus) on July 7. 56 are killed and over 700 are injured. The bombings were the work of four British Muslims who were opposed to the U.K.’s involvement in the Iraq War.
- The Irish Republican Army issues a statement calling for an end to the violent campaign it has waged since 1969. All units are ordered to dump their arms.
- The annual G8 summit is held in Gleneagles, Scotland, resulting in violent protests, particularly from the anti-war, anti-America faction.
- The Egyptian resort Sharm-el-Sheikh is hit by a series of bombings, resulting in 88 deaths.
- Sandra Day O’Connor, who had been the first woman to appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, retires from the bench. President Bush nominates John Roberts to replace her.
- New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize winner, goes to jail for refusing to name her sources after being asked to disclose them in Court during the Valerie Plame investigation. She spends three months in prison.
- A series of simultaneous world-wide concerts to combat poverty, Live 8, is held, headlined by a reunion of Pink Floyd.
- The next-to-last book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling is published. The book sells three million copies in sixteen hours.
- Fantastic Four ends up as perhaps the biggest superhero-related film failure of the decade.
- Meanwhile, Vince Vaughn and Luke Wilson open big at the box office in the comedy hit Wedding Crashers.
- Luther Vandross dies.
- Days before for the July 7 terror attacks, the 2012 Summer Olympics are awarded to London.
- The NHL and its Players’ Union finally agree on a new contract, though it’s too late to save the 04-05 season.
- Wade Boggs, Ryne Sandberg, and Peter Gammons are among those inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- Lance Armstrong wins his seventh consecutive Tour de France, in what is thought at the time to be his last race.
NEWS
- Hurricane Katrina strikes the Gulf Coast of the United States, causing widespread devastation. The New Orleans levee system experiences catastrophic failure, and 80% of the city ends up underwater. At least 1,800 lose their lives due to the initial storm alone. Federal response is extremely slow and widely criticized, as many refugees are forced to crowd into the Louisiana Superdome (meant to hold 800, 30,000 crowd in) and other evacuation centers. Damage estimates place it as easily the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
- A crowd crush on a bridge in Baghdad (possibly caused by fears of a suicide bomber) causes at least 700 deaths.
- West Caribbean Airlines Flight 705 crashes into a mountain in Venezuela, killing all 152 aboard.
- Israel, at the strenuous urging of everyone else involved, “unilaterally disengages” from 25 Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
- Cindy Sheehan, the mother of soldier killed in the Iraq War, makes a name for herself by camping out outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch and saying she won’t leave until she gets to see the President. She never does get that meeting.
- Al Gore launches “Current TV”, sort of a news channel.
- Peter Jennings dies of cancer.
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke sweeps all the speculative fiction awards, including the Hugo.
- Death Cab for Cutie releases their album Plans, which becomes a surprise major hit and sets many new trends in Rock.
- The series Prison Break debuts on FOX, a serialized adventure in the tradition of 24 and Lost. It never quite reaches the levels of its two predecessors.
- The famous final episode of Six Feet Under airs.
- Rafael Palmeiro is the first “big fish” to officially test positive for steroids in Major League Baseball, fresh off denying he’d ever taken any to a Congressional committee. He is suspended for 50 games.
NEWS
- The situation in New Orleans remains one of widespread chaos. Nearby cities like Baton Rouge and Houston see massive floods of refugees they are not prepared to handle. FEMA Director Michael Brown is praised by President Bush at first, but is soon recalled to Washington and resigns. For the first time in memory foreign countries start sending shipments of relief supplies to the United States. There is speculation that there are no Federal troops to help out because the entire National Guard is in use overseas.
- Meanwhile, rescue efforts are hampered when Hurricane Rita hits the already battered Gulf Coast.
- Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten prints political cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, resulting in widespread protests throughout the Muslim world after they become publicized around the world. Over 100 die when demonstrations turn violent. The Prime Minister of Denmark calls it the nation’s worst foreign policy crisis since World War II.
- The “2005 UN World Summit” is held in New York City. It may be the largest official diplomatic summit in the history of the world.
- Junichiro Koizumi is re-elected as Prime Minister of Japan.
- North Korea theoretically agrees to stop building nuclear weapons in exchange for “aid and cooperation”.
- Chief Justice William Rehnquist dies.
- Rapper Kanye West disrupts a concert to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina by announcing that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Mike Myers stands next to him and looks mortified.
- Joss Whedon’s Firefly movie, Serenity, the product of DVD sales, pretty much tanks at the box office but ends up on a lot of SF-related Top 10 of the Decade lists and continues to sell well on DVD. I see it three times in two weeks.
- Supernatural debuts on the WB network, Bones debuts on FOX, and Criminal Minds and How I Met Your Mother debut on CBS.
- The NBA’s New Orleans Hornets are forced to move to Oklahoma City for the 2005-06 season, going by the awkward name of the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets. The NFL’s New Orleans Saints, meanwhile, play at least one home game in New York before spending most of the year playing in Baton Rouge.
- Jerry Rice, the consensus Greatest Wide Receiver of All Time, retires from the NFL.
NEWS
- A massive earthquake hits the disputed mountainous region of Kashmir. Around 80,000 die.
- President Bush nominates Harriet Miers, his former legal counsel (who was never a judge) to the Supreme Court. This does not go so well. His elevation of Tom Roberts to Chief Justice does go through.
- Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, is indicted on charges relating to the Valerie Plame case.
- Saddam Hussein’s official trial begins in Iraq.
- The American death toll in Iraq reaches 2,000.
- Another series of suicide bombings kills 25 people in Bali.
- The Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou 6 puts two men in orbit for five days.
- Ben Bernanke replaces Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
- Rosa Parks dies.
- The Colbert Report debuts on Comedy Central and very quickly becomes at least as big a hit as The Daily Show.
- The Houston Astros defeat the Atlanta Braves to win the decisive game of their first round baseball playoff series in eighteen innings, the longest post-season game in Major League history. Utility man Chris Burke wins the series with a walk-off homer.
- The Astros and the St. Louis Cardinals then play an exciting NLCS that ends in a four games to two victory for the Astros, putting the team in its first World Series since entering the league in 1961. However, the series is most remembered for the spectacular towering home run hit by Cardinals superstar Albert Pujols off Astros closer Brad Lidge to win Game 5, from which Lidge never seems to have recovered psychologically.
- The World Series, however, breeds little interest nationally, though the Chicago White Sox’s easy win over the tired Astros gives them their first championship since 1917.
- College football rivals USC and Notre Dame play their most famous game of the modern era, the major players of which include Brady Quinn, Matt Leinart, and Reggie Bush. The #1-ranked Trojans win on a last-second sneak by Leinart.
NEWS
- Angela Merkel is sworn in as the first female President of Germany.
- Surgeons in France carry out the first successful human face transplant.
- 25-year-old Briton Andrew Stimpson is reported as the first person to be “cured” of HIV. However, the technique used does not seem to be repeatable.
- A series of coordinated suicide bombings in Amman, Jordan, kills at least 50 and wounds over a hundred.
- The film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is released in theaters and becomes another worldwide hit.
- Keira Knightley headlines a surprisingly successful Pride and Prejudice film.
- Madonna breaks the all-time record for Top 40 singles by a female artist with “Hung Up”. Her album Confessions On A Dance Floor hits #1 in 40 countries simultaneously, another record.
- Ted Koppel steps down after 25 years as host of the ABC news show Nightline.
- The Philadelphia Eagles are finally tired of the crap from their star WR Terrell Owens and suspend him for the remainder of the season, mostly for continuing to be such a jerk. A hilarious media circus ensues.
- Major League Baseball announces new, official punishments for positive steroid tests, after much pushing from Congress. Suspensions are 50 games for a first offense, 100 for a second, and life for a third.
NEWS
- The New York Times reports that the National Security Agency is using warrentless wire-taps to spy on American citizens, with the cooperation of the major phone companies. The NSA seems to think this allowed under the USA PATRIOT Act.
- Elections are held for a new government in Iraq, though they’re only partially successful.
- An Iranian aircraft crashes into an apartment building in Tehran. Over 100 in total are killed.
- The .eu domain tag is launched for internet use.
- Chad and Sudan officially declare war on each other, which feels sort of retro at this point.
- Richard Pryor dies.
- Brokeback Mountain, the story of the secret gay love of two cowboys played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, directed by Ang Lee, becomes the cultural debate of the year, with most critics praising it to the skies but at least one theater chain refusing to show it.
- Steven Spielberg’s other War on Terror epic Munich, Peter Jackson’s meticulous remake of King Kong, and Terence Malick’s much-beloved re-telling of the Pocahonatas story The New World are among other films released this month.
- The West Wing actor John Spencer dies, forcing the series to pretty much re-write its ending on the fly.
- Johnny Damon, one of the stars of the 2004 Red Sox team, signs with the arch-rival New York Yankees and becomes the latest symbol of everything that’s wrong with baseball. The Yankees force him to cut his hair.
- Former 100 meters World Record holder Tim Montgomery is found guilty of steroid use and suspended for two years.
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