Also of note

• Rodney King beating (1991): In the early morning hours of March 3, 1991, Rodney King was stopped by police officers after a high-speed chase through Los Angeles. For 15 minutes, officers used batons and stun guns to subdue King. Watching the brutal beating unfold was George Holliday, who had just bought a new videotape recorder. Within days, the video would be seen worldwide—the first of a numbing number of such recordings that would surface over the next decades. In 1992, when a jury acquitted the officers of the most serious charges, Los Angeles erupted in four days of riots that left 50 dead and more than 2,300 injured. Pres. George H.W. Bush said of the verdict, “It was hard to understand how the verdict could possibly square with the video.”

• Magic Johnson announces he’s HIV positive (1991): On November 7, 1991, basketball legend Magic Johnson announced his retirement, stunning the world by saying that he had been diagnosed as having the virus that causes AIDS. At a time when AIDS was a deeply stigmatizing disease, Johnson committed himself to being an advocate for understanding: “I think sometimes we think, well, only gay people can get it…And here I am saying that it can happen to anybody, even me, Magic Johnson.”

• The trial of O.J. Simpson (1995): On the evening of June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally murdered outside Simpson’s California home. Almost immediately Simpson’s ex-husband, football legend O.J. Simpson, was the prime suspect, in part because of a history of domestic violence. Simpson’s trial began in January 1995 and was nationally televised, becoming a far more compelling daytime drama than any soap opera. On October 3, 1995, after an eight-month trial that featured allegations of police planting evidence and gloves that Simpson supposedly wore the night of the murders not fitting him, Simpson was acquitted. The verdict divided the nation largely along racial lines. Simpson was subsequently found liable in a civil case where the burden of proof was lower.

• The Oklahoma City bombing (1995): On April 19, 1995, a massive homemade bomb tore through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people including 19 children. The bombing was the work of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two former Army soldiers associated with far-right ideology and fueled by their deep suspicion of the federal government. Until the 9/11 attacks six years later it would be the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.

• The death of Diana (1997): On the evening of August 31, 1997, news reports interrupted Saturday evening programming with the news that Diana, the princess of Wales and ex-wife of then Prince Charles, had been injured in a car accident in Paris. Initial reports said she suffered a broken arm, but as the hours went by, concern increased. Then came the devastating news that “the people’s princess” had died at 36. What followed was a global outpouring of grief, conspiracy theories surrounding her death, and the heartbreaking image of her sons, William, then 15, and Harry, 12, following their mother’s casket through London.

• Columbine High School shooting (1999): On the morning of April 20, 1999, students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, entered Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, armed with guns and explosives. Over the course of 20 minutes they would go on a shooting spree that would ultimately leave 14 dead. They later killed themselves, bringing the death toll to 16. While neither the first nor the worst school shooting, Columbine stunned the nation and the world. The litany of school shootings in the wake of Columbine includes Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, and Robb Elementary.

• Presidential election (2000): U.S. voters went to the polls to elect the president on November 7, 2000. They didn’t find out who would be their next president until December 12, 2000, a full 35 days after the election. The drama that played out between the campaigns of Vice Pres. Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush introduced phrases including “hanging chads” and “butterfly ballots.” In the end, the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore ruled that the recounting of ballots in Florida had to stop, making Bush the victor. Bush had won one more electoral vote than needed, even as Gore had garnered more than 500,000 more popular votes.

• Indian Ocean tsunami (2004): On December 26, 2004, a 9.1 earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a tsunami and created one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history. Over the course of seven hours, a series of waves, some as high as 30 feet, ravaged 15 countries including India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, killing more than 200,000 people and leaving millions without food, water, shelter, or jobs.

Hurricane Katrina (2005): The devastating August 2005 storm that struck the Gulf Coast of the United States killed nearly 1,400 people, most in Louisiana and Mississippi. It also highlighted the failure of the government (federal, state, and local) to maintain basic infrastructure. The failure of the New Orleans levees caused the city to flood, hitting poorer Black neighborhoods particularly hard. The emergency response was slow, leaving tens of thousands of people stranded in a football stadium with little food, water, and sanitation. Many people fled the city, never to return.

Also of note

• First iPhone (2007): On January 9, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off the company’s newest innovation, what The New York Times described as “a new mobile phone that downloads and plays music.” Jobs demonstrated the phone by playing the Beatles’ “Lovely Rita, Meter Maid.” For his part, Jobs was less prosaic than The Times, saying, “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” He wasn’t wrong.

• Arab Spring (2010): The wave of pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa in 2010 and early 2011 was remarkable and searing in the way that young people for the first time used social media to fight back against authoritarianism and circumvent censorship. While not universally successful, the Arab Spring did lead to the ouster of corrupt rulers, including Tunisia’s Pres. Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Pres. Hosni Mubarak.

• Presidential election of 2016: The presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, which began in 2015 as he descended a golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York City, always seemed the longest of long shots. With no political experience, a willingness to say outlandish things, and a host of scandals, it seemed inevitable that Trump would flame out—except that he didn’t. He won the Republican Party nomination, connecting with voters with his “Make America Great Again” mantra. He then defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton with an electoral college win, although Clinton garnered some three million more popular votes. During his presidency Trump would become the first president to be impeached twice.

• COVID-19 pandemic (2020–23): The terrible flulike disease that was highly contagious had been in the news as early as January 2020 when The New York Times published the headline “China Grapples With Mystery Pneumonia-like Illness.” But March 11, 2020, would be the day when no one could continue to ignore COVID-19. That was the day that actor Tom Hanks posted on social media that he had the virus. Less than an hour later the NBA would suspend its season after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive. Soon schools and many workplaces would send people home. Phrases including “community spread” and “social distancing” would become the norm. The first vaccine would, remarkably, be available by the end of the year. But not before the virus would, according to World Health Organization figures, claim three million lives worldwide in that first year.

Death of George Floyd (2020): On Memorial Day 2020, as COVID continued to dominate headlines, George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Minnesota, would spark some of the largest street demonstrations in U.S. history. Floyd, who was Black, died under the knee of a white police officer who kept him restrained even as he begged for his life for some nine minutes. Darnella Frazier, 17, took out her phone and recorded the brutality. Soon the world knew Floyd’s name as it had Rodney King’s. 11 months after Floyd’s death, Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed him, was convicted of second-degree murder.

• January 6 insurrection (2021): Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, but in the weeks between Election Day and the certification of the election—a largely ceremonial process held at the U.S. Capitol—he had stirred up doubt about the election with conspiracy theories and countless lawsuits (almost all of which were dismissed). In an address to his supporters on January 6, he told them to “fight like hell.” Hours later mobs of his supporters did that, storming the Capitol and using flagpoles, bats, and pipes to attack overwhelmed law enforcement. Trump reportedly watched the violence on television from the White House, refusing pleas from conservative television hosts, aides, and family members to call for an end to the violence. He finally released a video statement telling his supporters to “go home” more than two hours after the Capitol had been breached. For his actions, Trump was impeached. In 2024 he was again elected president.