2003
Invasion of Iraq
American and British forces crossed into Iraq from Kuwait, chasing weapons of mass destruction that no inspector could find and that did not, in fact, exist. Baghdad fell in three weeks and a marine helped topple Saddam's statue in Firdos Square. Then the looting began, and the sectarian war, and the long American education in occupation.
Human Genome Project completed
Thirteen years and three billion dollars after it began, the international consortium declared the human genome essentially finished, with 99.99% accuracy across its three billion base pairs. Ninety-nine percent of the gene-containing portion sat in public databases, free to anyone with an internet connection and the training to read it. The biological century, scientists insisted, had finally begun in earnest.
Europe's deadly heat wave
An August of unprecedented temperatures killed more than 70,000 people across Europe, half of them in France, where elderly Parisians died alone in airless apartments while the country was on holiday and the authorities were at the beach. The morgue trucks parked outside Rungis market made the climate crisis suddenly, undeniably, a public health emergency.
Saddam Hussein captured
American soldiers from the Fourth Infantry Division pulled the former Iraqi dictator out of a spider hole on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit. He was bearded, disheveled, and meekly surrendered without firing the pistol at his hip. "We got him," Paul Bremer told reporters. The insurgency, undeterred by its leader's capture, kept escalating.
Columbia disintegrates over Texas
The shuttle broke apart sixteen minutes from home, leaving white contrails across the Texas sky and pieces of seven astronauts scattered across two states. A briefcase-sized chunk of foam had punched through the wing on launch. NASA grounded the shuttle fleet and the Bush White House began plotting its retirement.
Georgia's Rose Revolution
Crowds carrying long-stemmed roses stormed the Tbilisi parliament during a session and Eduard Shevardnadze, a Soviet survivor who had once been Gorbachev's foreign minister, resigned within hours. Mikheil Saakashvili, a young American-trained lawyer, took over and yanked Georgia firmly westward. The post-Soviet space had its first color revolution; Moscow took notes and tightened the locks at home.