The decade that was(‘nt)
In this first of a series of reviews, we transcend technical details and choose to not mention 9/11, Bush, Iraq, China, Facebook, sub-prime and other incidentals. While these represent important events and personalities, they are also boring reminders of everything that went wrong with our lives. We choose instead, to focus on things that either improved our lives, or had no impact whatsoever. Unsurprisingly, the list comprises more of the latter and very little of the first.
This has been a decade like no other. For one, going by most news reports, it seems to have lasted nine years instead of the conventional ten. But who can deny the impact of the events of the years past in altering the power equation on our planet, or the inventions that have rocked the very fabric of the world that we live in? Some argue that the power equation has not really changed (P=I^2*R then and now they say) or that the world is not really made of fabric unless you are talking in a multi-dimensional quantum space-time sense. But these are people without a sense of humour, and we shall disregard them.
We shall, instead, focus on “stuff”. Stuff that happened, but went unnoticed, and deserves to be in any serious review of the decade.
2001
January 8 – Noah, a gaur, is born, the first individual of an endangered species to be cloned
April 1 – In the Netherlands, the Act on the Opening up of Marriage goes into effect. The Act allows same-sex couples to marry legally for the first time in the world since the reign of Nero
April 30 – Blanche Barton, High Priestess of the Church of Satan, steps down
Why does the second "Kabhie" have an e while the first does not?
2002
April 18 – The discovery of a new insect order, Mantophasmatodea, is announced
August 10 – Turkmenistan adopts a law to rename all the months and most of the days of the week according to a book written by the president
October 21 – 9 of 13 DNS root servers are disabled in a DDoS attack
Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is declared the most irritating movie of all times
2003
March 13 –The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old upright-walking human footprints had been found in Italy
May 19 – Pen Hadow becomes the first person to walk alone, without any outside help, from Canada to the North Pole
August 28 – Bank robber Brian Douglas Wells is killed when a time bomb around his neck explodes, allegedly in an act of betrayal by his co-conspirators
November 23 – A total solar eclipse is seen over Antarctica
December 25 – Beagle 2 is scheduled to land on Mars, but nothing is heard from the lander
2004
May 19 – Tony Blair is hit with a purple flour bomb in the chamber of the House of Commons during a session of Prime Minister’s Questions
October 20 – The Ubuntu operating system is first released
November 25 – The Indian political party Congress Jananayaka Peravai merges into the Indian National Congress
No movie starring Mithun Chakraborty is released in any language
2005
April 6 – The first 13th root calculation of a 200-digit number is computed by Frenchman Alexis Lemaire
December 12 – Scientists announce that they have created mice with small amounts of human brain cells
December 16 – The 43rd Mersenne prime is found
December 31 – Another second is added, 23:59:60, called a leap second, to end the year 2005. The last time this occurred was on June 30, 1998
2006
August 24 – The International Astronomical Union defines ‘planet’ at its 26th General Assembly, demoting Pluto to the status of ‘dwarf planet’ more than 70 years after its discovery
November 17 – The PlayStation 3 is released
November 19 – The Wii is released
Ram Gopal Varma produces 6 flops in a row, the last two of which are officially termed “disasters”
2007
2007 is announced the International Heliophysical Year
June 1 – A 2,100-year-old melon is discovered by archaeologists in western Japan
2008
April 28 – India sets a world record by sending 10 satellites into orbit in a single launch
2009
29 June 2009 Rakhi Ka Swayamwar is launched
September 12, 2009 Perfect Bride premieres on Indian Television
August 7, 2009 Ram Gopal Varma produces his 12th flop in a row with the release of Agyaat
These are by no means exhaustive, or even the most important events of the decade. These are just random selections that make you feel good. Oh and none of these is made up, they actually did happen (according to wikipedia anyhow).
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009 etc.