A couple of years ago, I did a list of all the terrible shit that had happened in my life, up to that year. I wrote this list to balance the equation.
1972:
• I survive the birthing process.
• The Immaculate Reception is responsible for the Pittsburgh Steelers winning their first-ever post-season game.
1973:
• Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion.
• U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ends with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.
• The first American prisoners of war are released from Vietnam.
• Pioneer 11 is launched on a mission to study the solar system.
• The Sears Tower in Chicago is finished, becoming the world’s tallest building.
• Secretariat wins the Kentucky Derby.
• Skylab, the United States’ first space station, is launched.
• Secretariat wins the Preakness Stakes.
• Skylab 2 (Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz, Joseph Kerwin) is launched on a mission to repair damage to the recently launched Skylab space station.
• Secretariat wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing winner since 1948.
• Skylab 3 (Owen Garriott, Jack Lousma, Alan Bean) is launched, to conduct various medical and scientific experiments aboard Skylab.
• The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ends, officially halting 12 years of combat activity in Southeast Asia.
• The Battle of the Sexes: Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in a televised tennis match, 6–4, 6–4, 6–3, at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas.
• NASA launches Mariner 10 toward Mercury.
• NASA launches Skylab 4 (Gerald Carr, William Pogue, Edward Gibson) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on an 84-day mission.
• Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
• The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its DSM-II.
• The Endangered Species Act is passed in the United States.
1974:
• Rubik’s Cube puzzle invented by Hungarian architecture professor Ernó Rubik.
• The Arecibo radio telescope sends an interstellar radio message towards the M13 Great Globular Cluster.
1975:
• Altair 8800 is released, sparking the microcomputer revolution.
• The United Nations proclaims International Women’s Day.
• NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
• NBC airs the first episode of Saturday Night Live.
• The Price is Right expands from 30 minutes to its current hour-long format on CBS.
• The 1975 cult classic movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show came out in America.
1976:
• The Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is released by Seymour Cray’s Cray Research.
• The first commercial Concorde flight takes off.
• Clifford Alexander Jr. is confirmed as the first African-American Secretary of the United States Army.
• Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
• The Ramones release their first self-titled album.
• The United States celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
• The first class of women is inducted at the United States Naval Academy.
• Nadia Comăneci earns the first of 7 perfect scores of 10 at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
• The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars.
• Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.
• The Ramones made their first “professional” performance at CBGB’s.
• The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars, taking the first close-up color photos of the planet’s surface.
• The space shuttle Enterprise is rolled out of a Palmdale, California hangar.
• The Irish rock band U2 is formed after drummer Larry Mullen Jr. posts a note seeking members for a band on the notice board of his Dublin school.
• Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Ford, becoming the first candidate from the Deep South to win since the Civil War.
• The first megamouth shark is discovered off Oahu in Hawaii.
• The first laser printer is introduced by IBM.
• California’s sodomy law is repealed.
• Diffie-Hellman cryptography is proposed.
1977:
• The world’s first personal computer, the Commodore PET, is demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.
• Apple Computer Inc. is incorporated.
• Snow falls in Miami, Florida for the only time in its history
• U.S. President Jimmy Carter pardons Vietnam War draft evaders.
• Fleetwood Mac’s Grammy-winning album Rumours is released.
• The punk band The Clash’s debut is released in the UK on CBS Records.
• Optical fiber is first used to carry live telephone traffic.
• Scientists report using bacteria in a lab to make insulin.
• Star Wars opens in cinemas and subsequently becomes the then-highest grossing film of all time.
• The first Apple II series computers go on sale.
• American Roy Sullivan is struck by lightning for the seventh time.
• Women Marines disbanded; women are integrated into regular Marine Corps.
• The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the “WOW!” signal for a notation made by a volunteer on the project.
• The United States launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
• A nuclear non-proliferation pact is signed by 15 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union.
• The Atari 2600 game system is released.
• Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols is released in the United Kingdom.
• British Airways inaugurates regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.
• TCP/IP test succeeds connecting 3 ARPANET nodes (of 111), in what eventually becomes the Internet protocol.
• WAVES disbanded; women integrated into regular Navy.
1978:
• United States President Jimmy Carter signs a bill into law which allows homebrewing of beer in the United States.
• Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin win the Nobel Peace Prize for their progress toward achieving a Middle East accord.
• Artificial insulin is invented.
• Abortion is legalized in Italy for the first time.
1979:
• The Sahara Desert experiences snow for 30 minutes.
• The U.S. Voyager I spaceprobe photos reveal Jupiter’s rings.
• The space shuttle Columbia is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center, to be prepared for its first launch.
• President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel sign a peace treaty.
• Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT II agreement in Vienna.
• Los Angeles passes its gay and lesbian civil rights bill.
1980:
• Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations.
• The Miracle on Ice occurs.
• Empire Strikes Back is released.
• Pac-Man is released in Japan.
• First woman democratically elected head of state, in Iceland.
• AC/DC releases the Back in Black album.
1981:
• U.S. hostages released from Iran.
• STS-1, the first flight of the space shuttle Columbia.
• Longest baseball game in history (33 innings, 8 hours and 25 minutes).
• Donkey Kong is released.
• MTV is launched.
• Launch of the first IBM PC.
• Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court.
• The first American “test-tube baby” is born.
1982:
• Launch of the Commodore 64.
• Cal Ripken, Jr. plays the first game of what will become a 2,632 consecutive-game streak.
• Lawn Chair Larry, flies 16,000 feet above Long Beach, California, in a lawn chair with weather balloons attached.
• The first emoticons are used on the precursor to the Internet.
• The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1983:
• ARPANET switches to TCP/IP, heralding the start of the Internet.
• Return of the Jedi opens
• GPS opened for civilian use
• Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a worldwide nuclear war by correctly identifying a warning of attack by U.S. missiles as a false alarm.
• The immunosuppressant cyclosporine is approved by the FDA, leading to a revolution in the field of transplantation.
1984:
• The Macintosh goes on sale after a game-changing Superbowl ad.
• The 1984 Summer Olympics are held in Los Angeles.
1985:
• DNS is created.
• William Schroeder is the first artificial heart patient to leave the hospital.
• Back to the Future opens in theatres.
• The wreck of the Titanic is discovered.
• The original NES becomes available in the United States.
• Calvin and Hobbes debuts in 25 newspapers.
1986:
• Pixar Animation Studios is opened.
• “Captain Midnight” interrupts the HBO satellite feed.
• Greg LeMond wins his first Tour de France.
• Democrats regain control of the United States Senate for the first time in 6 years.
• Matt Groening creates the Simpsons characters.
1987:
• Supernova 1987A, the first “naked-eye” supernova since 1604, is observed.
• U2 releases The Joshua Tree.
• The world’s first conference on artificial life is held at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• The Perl programming language is created by Larry Wall.
• Thomas Knoll and John Knoll develop the first version of Photoshop.
1988:
• The Supreme Court sides with Hustler Magazine in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell
• The comic strip FoxTrot makes its first appearance in US newspapers.
• NASA resumes Space Shuttle flights, grounded after the Challenger disaster.
• The United States Air Force acknowledges the existence of the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk.
• The first prototype B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is revealed.
• The first World AIDS Day is held.
• TAT-8, the first transatlantic telephone cable to use optical fibers, is completed.
• The first extrasolar planet, Gamma Cephei Ab (confirmed in 2002) is detected.
1989:
• The first of 24 Global Positioning System satellites is placed into orbit.
• Tim Berners-Lee produces the proposal document that will become the blueprint for the World Wide Web.
• The Dalai Lama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
• NASA launches the unmanned Galileo orbiter on a mission to study the planet Jupiter.
• The Berlin Wall is torn down.
• The Velvet revolution begins in Czechoslovakia.
• The last two Japanese World War II holdout troops surrender.
• The first full-length episode of The Simpsons is broadcast.
1990:
• Poland becomes the first country in Eastern Europe to begin abolishing its state socialist economy. Poland also withdraws from the Warsaw Pact.
• In Lithuania, 300,000 demonstrate for independence.
• Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison.
• An agreement is reached for a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.
• The Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth is sent back from the Voyager 1 probe.
• Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union.
• West Germany and East Germany agree to merge currency and economies on July 1.
• The Hubble Space Telescope is launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.
• The World Health Organization removes homosexuality from its list of diseases.
• The US and the USSR agree to end production of chemical weapons and to destroy most of their stockpiles of chemical weapons.
• Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled.
• U.S. President George H. W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act, designed to protect disabled Americans from discrimination.
• The first ban of smoking in bars in the US (and possibly the world) is passed in San Luis Obispo, California.
• Tim Berners-Lee begins his work on the World Wide Web, 19 months after his seminal 1989 outline of what would become the Web concept.
• East Germany and West Germany reunify.
• Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to lessen Cold War tensions and reform his nation.
• The earliest known portable digital camera sold in the United States ships.
• The first known web page is written.
• Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 meters beneath the English Channel seabed.
• J.K. Rowling begins writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
1991:
• Comedy Central launches.
• Sonic the Hedgehog released.
• The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved.
• The United States and the Soviet Union sign the START I treaty limiting strategic nuclear weapons.
• Tim Berners-Lee announces the World Wide Web project and software on the alt.hypertext newsgroup.
• The Super Nintendo is released in the United States.
• The Soviet Union dissolves.
1992:
• Ice Cube has his Good Day.
• The U.S. and Russia stop targeting each other with nuclear weapons.
• The Cartoon Network is first broadcast on television.
• Bill Clinton elected president.
1993:
• “The Velvet Divorce” — Czechoslovakia peacefully separates into two countries.
• START II treaty signed.
• First Pentium chips hit the market.
• Hubble repair mission completed.
1994:
• Dan Jansen finally strikes gold in the Lillehammer Olympics.
• Apple releases the first PowerPC-based Macs.
• Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president.
• The last Russian troops leave Germany.
• Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9’s fragments hit Jupiter.
• George Foreman becomes the oldest heavyweight champion in boxing history.
• Netscape Navigator released.
1995:
• Yahoo! founded.
• Shawn Nelson goes on a tank rampage in San Diego, killing no one.
• The DVD format is announced.
• eBay is founded.
• The Dayton Agreement to end the Bosnian War is reached.
• The federal 55mph speed limit is canceled.
1996:
• The Keck II telescope is opened in Hawaii.
• The Nintendo 64 is released in Japan.
• Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, is born.
• NASA announces that the AH84001 meteorite may contain evidence of life on Mars.
• Clinton defeats Dole, earning his second term as President.
• NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor.
• Apple buys NeXT.
1997:
• Madeleine Albright becomes the first female Secretary of State.
• J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is published in London.
• The Pathfinder probe lands on Mars.
• Steve Jobs formally returns to Apple.
• NASA launches the Cassini–Huygens probe to Saturn.
1998:
• The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon
• Data sent from the Galileo probe indicates that Jupiter’s moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
• The High-Z Supernova Search Team becomes the first team to publish evidence that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.
• Google is founded.
• Russia launches the first module of the International Space Stations.
• Apple announces the iMac.
1999:
• Family Guy debuts on Fox.
• Former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic join NATO.
• Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.
• The Dow closes above 10,000 for the first time.
• Napster debuts; my music collection grows exponentially.
• Apple Computer releases the Power Macintosh G4.
• The Sega Dreamcast is released in the United States.
2000:
• The Y2K bug is largely ameliorated by a lot of coding leading up to the calendar switchover.
• A rare conjunction of 7 celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, planets Mercury–Saturn) occurs during the new moon.
• The preliminary draft of the Human Genome Project is released, years ahead of schedule.
• The Nintendo GameCube is unveiled.
• The first resident crew is launched to the ISS; people have been living in space ever since.
2001:
• The world’s first self-contained artificial heart is implanted.
• Apple introduces the iPod.
• The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touches down in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
• The first space tourist flies to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz.
2002:
• The Mars Odyssey probe arrives at Mars and begins mapping the planet from orbit; three months later, data indicates large subsurface water ice deposits.
2003:
• The Human Genome Project is completed, with 99{3b4d110c5d1596d2297e6430d163d306168bc3d03da137601e3ed8beb4b12205} of the human genome sequenced to 99.99{3b4d110c5d1596d2297e6430d163d306168bc3d03da137601e3ed8beb4b12205} accuracy.
• Dewey, the first deer cloned by scientists at Texas A&M University, is born.
• Perihelic opposition: Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in over 50,000 years.
• The Hubble Space Telescope starts Hubble Ultra-Deep Field.
2004:
• NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers land on Mars.
• The Cassini–Huygens spacecraft arrives at Saturn.
• NASA’s MESSENGER is launched.
• Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne makes the first flight required to win the Ansari X Prize, which it goes on to win.
• The Ubuntu operating system is first released.
• Brazil successfully launches its first rocket into space.
• NASA’s hypersonic Scramjet breaks a record by reaching a velocity of about 7,000 mph in an unmanned experimental flight. It obtains a speed of Mach 9.6, almost 10 times the speed of sound.
2005:
• Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, is identified.
• The Huygens probe lands on Titan.
• YouTube is launched.
• The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is launched.
2006:
• NASA’s Stardust mission successfully ends, the first to return dust from a comet.
• NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter enters orbit around Mars.
• The European Space Agency’s Venus Express spaceprobe enters Venus’ orbit.
• The Human Genome Project publishes the last chromosome sequence.
• Twitter is launched.
2007:
• The first iPhone is announced.
• Gliese 581 c, a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet habitable for life, is discovered in the constellation Libra.
• The final book in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is released and sells over 11 million copies in the first 24 hours.
2008:
• The proton beam is circulated for the first time in the Large Hadron Collider.
• SpaceX Falcon 1 becomes the world’s first privately developed space launch vehicle to successfully make orbit.
• The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully launches the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft on a lunar exploration mission.
• Barack Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States.
2009:
• NASA’s Kepler Mission is launched
• UNESCO launches The World Digital Library.
• NASA launches the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/LCROSS probes to the Moon.
• Paleontologists announce the discovery of an Ardipithecus ramidus fossil skeleton, deeming it the oldest remains of a human ancestor yet found.
2010:
• Scientists announced that they have created a functional synthetic genome.
• The first 24-hour flight by a solar-powered plane is completed by the Solar Impulse.
• Researchers at CERN trap 38 antihydrogen atoms for a sixth of a second, marking the first time in history that humans have trapped antimatter.
2011:
• The world’s first artificial organ transplant is achieved, using an artificial windpipe coated with stem cells.
• NASA announces that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured photographic evidence of possible liquid water on Mars during warm seasons.
• NASA launches the Juno probe, bound for Jupiter.
• The Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, the most elaborate Martian exploration vehicle to date, is launched.
2012:
• CERN announces the discovery of a new particle with properties consistent with the Higgs boson after experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.
• Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory mission’s rover, successfully lands on Mars.
• Researchers successfully perform the first implantation of an early prototype bionic eye with 24 electrodes.
• Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner becomes the first person to break the sound barrier without any machine assistance during a record space dive out of the Red Bull Stratos helium-filled balloon from 24 miles altitude.
2013:
• Mangalyaan (aka Mars Orbiter Mission) is launched by India from its launchpad in Sriharikota.
• In a study published in the scientific journal Nature, researchers from Oregon Health & Science University in the United States describe the first creation of human embryonic stem cells by cloning.
2014:
• The Rosetta spacecraft’s Philae probe successfully lands on Comet 67P.
• President Barack Obama announces the resumption of normal relations between the U.S. and Cuba.