2001
September 11 attacks
Nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers turned four passenger jets into guided missiles on a clear September morning. The Twin Towers collapsed in clouds of pulverized concrete, the Pentagon burned, and a fourth plane fell in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back. Nearly three thousand people died and the United States entered a war that would outlast a generation.
War in Afghanistan begins
Less than a month after the Twin Towers fell, American and British bombs lit up the skies above Kabul and Kandahar. Northern Alliance horsemen rode alongside CIA officers carrying laser designators and suitcases of cash. The Taliban regime crumbled within weeks, but Osama bin Laden vanished into the mountains around Tora Bora, and the war would drag on for twenty years.
China joins the WTO
After fifteen years of negotiation, China formally entered the World Trade Organization, accepting tariff cuts and market openings in exchange for permanent normal trade relations with everyone. Western politicians predicted convergence and liberalization. They got the largest manufacturing economy in human history instead, and a decisive transfer of industrial gravity east.
Nepal royal massacre
Crown Prince Dipendra, reportedly drunk and furious over a forbidden marriage, walked into a family billiard room at the Narayanhiti Palace with assault rifles and killed his father, mother, and seven other royals before turning a gun on himself. Nepal's Hindu monarchy never recovered from the carnage, and a Maoist insurgency surged in the vacuum of legitimacy.
Wikipedia launches
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger flipped a switch on a free encyclopedia that any stranger could edit, hosted on a single server. Experts predicted vandalism and chaos. Instead a strange volunteer civilization assembled itself, article by article, in dozens of languages, becoming within a decade the planet's default reference and a quiet rebuke to gatekeeping.
Apple unveils the iPod
Steve Jobs, in jeans and a black turtleneck, slid a small white slab from his pocket and promised a thousand songs in it. Critics called the price absurd. Within five years the click wheel had reshaped the music industry, killed the album, and laid the cultural groundwork for the iPhone.