What were the key events of the decade?

Does not pertain to, and has been removed from, Texas Music group.

9/11,Katrina,and the 2004 Southern Asia Tsunami.

Sorry, this is not relevant to SF/F, so removing it.

It's all relative...What one man sees as major progress another sees as a major setback.

How has no one mentioned the stock market crash? and unemployment rates? Russian invasion of Georgia. Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Drug wars in Mexico? You can sit in El Paso and actually watch a war zone every night... there are tracers and automatic gun fire all night every night... more people die in Juarez each month than Iraq. North Korean nuclear tests. Deep Throat finally has a face. Tibetan riots. Chinese riots... the debacle in Myanmar. USS Cole. Space Shuttle Columbia. Steve Irwin. 2003 Iran earthquake. US-China incident (our spy plane collided with their fighter jet...).

Um , I would trade michel jackson for , hurricane katrina and the destruction of New Orleans . The asian tsunami , of course . Also the housing crash /bubble /scam - should be high on the list . Also GM foods failed to be contained and contaminated the world , that is pretty significant , because much starvation will ensue . Also corporations secretly buying up water rights and making collecting rain water illegal . The emergence of lateral power structures . Youtube , wikipedia , ect ...twitter possibly (we'll see if that isn't outdated rapidly).

The rise of cell phones was definitely a massive societal shift that most people don't even think about, precisely because they've become so ubiquitous. It's incredible to think that people were still using pagers (yes, PAGERS) in the 90s.

lol, pagers.

Facebook was also undeniably a major game-changer in the way people socialize with each other. Back in the 90s, if you told someone you had 583 friends, they'd be absolutely perplexed, and wouldn't even know what to make of such an unrealistically high number. Nowadays, having less than 200 "friends" on Facebook opens you up to suspicion regarding the healthiness of your social life.

Also, the rise and fall of instant messenging. Remember AIM? Heh...

9/11
Tsunami
That one really bad president we had... i forgot his name
Hurricane Katrina
The war in Iraq
The Grand Recession
The rise of youtube
Global Warming
$4 gas
Unmeasurable government corruption
Obama election

I'm only 20 years old so this last decade was very defining for me. I was eleven when 9/11 happened; 15 when Hurrricane Katrina happened; 17 when $4 gas happened; 18 when Obama was elected.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this but when i type Barack Obama in this box, it still shows the red dotted line telling be to spell check. it's a little funny.

I like that Wikipedia is on that list. Started off small and insignificant and it's not something that is allowed to be cited.

the destroying of the moral authority of the United States abroad, coupled with ignoring basic constitutional rights of the citizens over the past eight years, items that took two hundred years to accomplish.

if asking what had the most profound effects, one could say the internet's effect on society as a whole. information overload....

The Tsunami was one of the biggest events. So MANY died then, it redefined how island and coastal communities in the Indian Ocean looked at the sea and the environment. It really brought home to them the reality of what effect climate change will have on them when the sea levels continue to rise- and how much WORSE the effects of any big storms or tsunamis will be to all the 100s of millions of people in that region in the coming years.
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto mentioned in the article was stupid. Far more important than that sad end to the non-event of her presidential bid to Pakistan was the terrible destabilisation brought to the country by the actions of the Bush Administration that directly led to the failure of the government there and the new rise of extremists. Compared to that the presidential bids of two former failed, corruptformer presidents was nothing but a very sad little joke.

I would say the decade was a total wake up call on many fronts, mother nature slapping us in the face and still people sleep. The corruption of corporate communism in our government has awoke millions of Americans, 2010 is coming fast and the rabble is finally realizing it. We now can continue to change things for the better!

Can you please, stop this "decade" thing? The decade isn't coming to end in 2009.
Give it another year and eventually it will, you'll see.
New decades, centuries and millenniums (or millennia) only start in #1 years, e.g 2001, 2011. Now stop spreading ignorance, honestly!

why is this in comedy?

I think the key events are well covered above. However, to me this feels like the worst decade I've witnessed.

I became a young adult at the time the cold war came to an end and the Berlin Wall came down. The future was full of hope then. It was an exciting time to grow up.

This decade was a mess and I don't feel optimistic about the future. I can think of little progress in politics, culture and music since the 90s. If anything it's regressed. It's a society that alienates themselves behind fake online personas. Perhaps that's my view just because I'm a little older now.

There are some positives. I think there have been some great scientific progress and Obama is nice to end the decade on.

Id put 9/11 at the top of the list since it led to the "war on terror" which is going to be a major factor in international politics for many years to come. The election of Obama was also a major historic event whether or not you agree with his policies. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the recession are also major events.

Cool post although i disagree that Michael Jackson's death or the publishing of the last Harry Potter book were really key events of the decade =/

Damn the whole DECADE? I would definately, off the top of my head, list 9/11, the Iraq War & capture of Saddam, the Tsunami and Obama's election as major events that will be going down in the history books for sure!

@Manatee_man
That was goooooooooood.

For variety---------
http://current.com/1k32q4c

Not relevent to "Superhero Central" ironicbliss, and please stop spamming...

The 2004 Asian tsunami that devastated Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia.

-In Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad officially becomes new president.

-Israel completes the unilateral disengagement from all settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank.

-Hurricane Katrina as a Category 3 storm makes landfall at 6:10 a.m. The eye is just east of New Orleans, Louisiana. This date is now known as Black Monday to New Orleanians and many residents of the Gulf Coast

These 3 things stood out to me.

I would've imagined that the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent global evaluation of terrorism's morality and the justification of varied retaliatory efforts would have completely dominated that entire list.

But I guess Michael Fucking Jackson is important too...

cult of opinion

hmmmmmmmm,....its a start,.....this is an example of what "current developing stories" should engage itself in, this sort of thing