Everyone was talking about a "new economy" which referred to an internet-driven economy. Most of the dot. Cisco Systems, for example, traded at more than times earnings in March of In April , an inflation report caused the speculative bubble to burst and there were huge investment losses.
After that terrible day in September , our economic climate was never to be the same again. It was only the third time in history that the New York Stock Exchange was shut down for a period of time. In this case, it was closed from September 10— Besides the tragic human loss of that day, the economic loss cannot be truly known.
Enron , one of the top energy companies at this time, and Arthur Andersen, one of the top five public accounting firms, were caught in a corporate fraud scandal that led to the bankruptcy of Enron and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen.
Enron hid billions of dollars of debt from its shareholders in failed deals and projects. Furthermore, it pressured its auditors, Arthur Andersen, to ignore the issues. This led to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of , which expanded penalties for accounting fraud and instructed accounting firms to remain independent of their clients.
Other firms, such as Tyco and Worldcom, experienced similar scandals. These scandals shook the securities markets and investor confidence. The market reached lows not seen since and by July and September of The cost of these wars is ongoing. By December , it was estimated that U. This has been an incredible financial drain on our economy, and it is impossible to know what the final cost will be. The rise of China and India as world financial powers is nothing short of amazing.
China, alone, grew at an average rate of 9. Countries like the United States initially started outsourcing work to China and India because of cheap labor, but this is no longer the case. They kept their work in the two countries because they found talent—talent for innovation in high-tech fields.
Millions of scientists and engineers are educated in India and China each year, compared to a much lower number in the U. The balance of power in technologies is likely to move West to East. It quickly became the biggest natural disaster in U. Hurricane Rita quickly followed Katrina, only making matters worse. In the early part of the 21st century, the U. Housing values were high. Already a well-known party activist, it takes Hitler only two years from receiving his citizenship status to becoming the leader of Germany.
With the Great Depression sending millions of Americans to soup kitchens and chasing whatever work they can find, newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins his weekly "Fireside Chats" as Americans are eager for guidance and solace during those dark times. FDR's first radio talk explains to Americans in plain language why he ordered that banks would close temporarily at different time in different parts of the country.
The purpose, he explains, is to curb panic rushes of withdrawals, which has been hurting efforts to stabilize the banking system. Germans, who had been suffering from a disastrous economic depression in , begin to embrace the ideas of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party — the Nazi Party. It becomes the largest party after the elections.
In , Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany. After President Paul von Hindenburg dies in , Hitler then purges members of his own party — the bloody Night of the Long Knives — with the help of Nazi storm troopers and becomes the unquestioned leader of Germany.
President Roosevelt, grappling with the Great Depression, signs into law his signature Social Security Act, a law that creates the country's first retirement security system.
Earlier that year, as part of his "New Deal" policy, the president established the Works Progress Administration, a massive economic stimulus program, putting millions of Americans to work building the country's public infrastructure. As the concept of racial purity and superiority dominates Germany in the s, African-American sprinter Jesse Owens of Oakville, Alabama, shows them who is the master racer. During the Summer Olympics in Berlin, and under the gaze of Adolf Hitler, Owens wins four Olympic gold medals for the meter and meter sprints, the long jump, and the meter relay.
Workers at the General Motors Fisher Body Plant Number One lay down their tools and occupy the factory, demanding union representation, a fair minimum wage, safer working conditions, and not to outsource labor to non-union plants. Despite efforts by GM and local police to extricate them from the plant, including shutting off the heat, cutting off food supply, and attacks that leave 16 workers and 11 police officers injured, the strike lasts 44 days. Growing anti-Semitic scapegoating amid Germany's crippling economic conditions culminates in the Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass," a pogrom sparked by a speech from German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
Storm troopers and other Nazi groups are ordered to attack and destroy Jewish businesses, homes, and houses of worship. In one night of attacks in Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking area of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, dozens of Jews are killed and tens of thousands are rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
Under the cover of predawn darkness, a German battleship floats quietly into the center of Danzig Harbor and opens fire on a Polish stronghold in Westerplatte, the first shots of World War II. In the following weeks, Nazi forces, including 2, tanks and 1, aircraft, would shatter Polish defenses and surround Warsaw, which surrenders 26 days after the Danzig Harbor attack.
Eight years later, they would restructure their popular local business to focus on hamburgers, milkshakes, and fountain sodas, emphasizing speed, a simple menu, and low prices. Knowing the U. Navy ships parked at Pearl Harbor.
The surprise assault by Japanese aircraft leads to the deaths of 2, people, including 1, sailors aboard the ill-fated USS Arizona, one of 19 vessels that were damaged or destroyed in the attack. Nearly aircraft were also damaged or destroyed. The first U. It is the beginning of a military buildup that would culminate in the invasion of France more than two years later. Before then, the United States was providing only material support to its ally across the Atlantic, while building up what President Roosevelt called the "Arsenal of Democracy" in anticipation for the inevitable entry of the United States into the war in Europe.
Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman had been studying the potential medicinal value of lysergic compounds when he accidentally exposed himself to LSD, which he had created years earlier in his lab. This was the first LSD trip, a quarter-century before the counterculture endorses the hallucinogenic compound.
Hoffman describes the "not unpleasant" experience as "uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. Army tests the drug on soldiers numerous times from to , briefly toying with the idea of using LSD as a weapon to disorient enemy soldiers during combat. The plan for the biggest one-day military campaign in history, the invasion of Normandy by Allied forces to push the Nazis out of France, is hatched in extreme secrecy a year earlier.
President Franklin Roosevelt. The invasion starts at a. The surrender of Japan marks the end of World War II amid one of the most tumultuous years of the 20th century. Though the surrender of Japan was inevitable, the prospect of a horrific Allied assault on the Japanese mainland convinces the United States to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The atomic bomb attacks, along with the entry of the Soviet Union in the war against Japan, compel the Japanese to surrender. More American babies are born — 3. The number of births grows to 4 million per year from to , the last year of the baby boomer generation, the biggest generation at that point in history. The sun sets on the British Empire in India in , as the Asian nation becomes the world's largest democracy.
Independence is the culmination of decades of work by Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indian nationalists committed to throwing off the yoke of British colonialism. The transition to independence comes at a price. The subcontinent is partitioned into two nations, Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
It is estimated that 1 million people die during the migration. With the Cold War worsening, the Soviet Union detonates its first nuclear bomb and quickly exerts its influence over Eastern Europe.
To respond to the Soviet threat, U. Three years later, a ceasefire would halt the war. The uneasy relations between North Korea and South Korea last to this day. Husband and wife Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their part in passing along atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during and after World War II. They are executed two years later. Not everyone is convinced of their involvement in the scheme.
Supporters claim they are scapegoats swept up in the Cold War hysteria of the time. Documents revealed decades later would show the detailed extent of Julius Rosenberg's involvement in the spy ring, though Ethel's participation in the scheme remains inconclusive.
The United States successfully detonates its first hydrogen bomb, a second generation thermonuclear device, in the Marshall Islands as part of Operation Ivy, one of a series of nuclear bomb tests. From to , the United States used the remote Pacific Marshall Islands as its nuclear weapons testing site, detonating a total of 67 nuclear tests.
Cambridge University scientists James Watson and Francis Crick announce they have discovered the fundamental behavior and double-helix structure of DNA. Though scientists had been aware of DNA since the s and its role in genetic inheritance since , Watson and Crick were the first to explain how DNA works to replicate itself and pass on genes from one generation to the next. In a landmark case involving Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, who had to cross a railroad track to reach an all-black elementary school even though an all-white school was closer, the U.
Supreme Court rules that the segregated school system was unconstitutional on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The clause would be used again by the courts to reverse state-level racial segregation practices and ordinances. Rosa Parks makes history by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus. Cold War tensions escalate when Hungarians take to the streets, demanding democratic reforms. Three days later, Red Army troops invade Hungary, killing thousands.
Nine days after the incursion, Budapest is occupied by the Soviet troops in one of the largest and most aggressive actions taken by the Soviet Union since the end of World War II. President Dwight D. Eisenhower orders federal troops to protect nine African American high school students as they start classes at the all-white Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas.
This would become one of the first high-profile actions by the federal government against state-level racial segregation. The United States successfully launches Explorer 1, three months after the Soviet Union sent its first satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. The two superpowers would go on to send more satellites into space, creating a Cold War space race to build ever more sophisticated orbital communications devices.
When four African American college students — Ezell A. Blair, Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil and David L. The young men refuse to leave, leading to a larger six-month protest that results in the desegregation of the lunch counter by that summer.
By the late summer of , the loss of skilled workers such as teachers, engineers, and doctors to the West reaches crisis levels in East Germany.
On Aug. The next day, with the approval of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, East Germany builds a wall that would extend 27 miles through Berlin, dividing families and friends for the next 28 years. The wall would serve as an enduring symbol of the Cold War, used by presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to inspire a divided city. When the United States learns that the Soviet Union is building nuclear missile installations 90 miles south of Miami in communist Cuba, the Kennedy administration starts a naval blockade around the island, which is at times tested, and Kennedy demands the removal of the missiles.
The standoff is widely considered to be the closest the two nuclear superpowers come to direct military confrontation. Cooler heads prevail. The Soviet Union offers to remove the missiles in exchange for a guarantee that the United States will not invade Cuba. In secret, the administration also agrees to withdraw U. As President John F. Kennedy prepares for his re-election bid, he embarks on a multi-state tour starting in September Oswald himself is murdered two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
Johnson struggles constantly to pivot away from the war to focus on his stated goals of reducing poverty, ending segregation, and establishing the social programs many Americans rely on to this day, including the immensely popular Medicare program.
As the activists cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, police attack the protesters with tear gas and billy clubs, hospitalizing Lewis would pass away in July , his body crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the last time in a horse-drawn carriage. At the end of a weeklong session of the Communist Party Central Committee of the People's Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong condemns the political elites, calling on China's youth to rebel against the entrenched political hierarchy.
It is the beginning of the decade-long Cultural Revolution that fundamentally transforms Chinese society. Intellectuals, members of the former Nationalist government, and people with ties to Western powers are persecuted, sent to re-education labor camps, or killed by the factions of Red Guards formed in the wake of Mao's call to action.
Amid escalating tensions with its neighbors, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike that destroys most of Egypt's air force. Syria, Jordan, and Iraq also attack Israel. Kmart Corp becomes the largest retailer in American history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Two Snipers in Washington DC area kill 10 people and injure 3 more spreading panic and fear. The Basque terrorist organisation ETA continues it's bombing campaign in support of its aim for self determination for the Basque country.
Terrorists detonate massive bombs in two nightclubs in Kuta, Bali , killing and injuring over Mount Nyiragongo Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo displaces an estimated , people.
Chechen Rebels take theatergoers hostage in Moscow and threaten to blow up the theatre , 3 days later special forces storm the building resulting in the death of hostages and 41 rebels. Leaders of the world's richest nations meeting at the G8 summit in Canada agree to help the poorest countries in the world by providing funding for economic and political development in Africa.
Tornadoes strike a number of southern states from Louisiana to Pennsylvania on Veterans Day killing Iraq rejects new U. WorldCom files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the largest such filing in United States history. Andrew Fastow former chief financial officer for Enron Corp is indicted on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Forest fires in Colorado have destroyed nearly , acres of land making them the worst in the states history.
The Prestige oil tanker sinks polluting more than a thousand beaches on the Spanish and French coast. Restrictions are further loosened for mercy killings and assisted suicide for patients with unbearable, terminal illness in the Netherlands.
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