End Times

The **End Times** are a period of history, the final phase of Modern Times. They last from the year 2000, following Generation X, and last until the present day. After the End Times comes Future History.

## Timeline

### 2000

Death Race 2000 held.

**January 1:** The Y2K Bug wreaks havoc on the world economy.

**January 10:** America Online purchases Time Warner for $162 billion.

**January 14:** The Dot.Com Bubble pops.

**March 26:** Vladimir Putin elected President of Russia.

**April 22:** Six-year-old Elian Gonzalez seized by federal agents to be returned to his father--Miami.

**September 10:** Julian West awakens and looks backwards at the year 1887, when he went to sleep. It’s not what he expected.

**November 2:** The first crew takes up residence in the International Space Station.

**November 7:** Al Gore wins the popular vote for President of the United States

**December 13:** The U.S. Supreme Court assigns the presidency to George W. Bush.

### 2001

Captained by Dave Bowman and guided by the computer HAL 9000, *Discovery 1* leaves on the first manned mission to Jupiter.

**January 15:** Wikipedia starts correlating the contents.

**February 18:** Dale Earnhardt dies in the final turn of the Daytona 500.

**February 20:** Outbreak of hoof and mouth disease--Britain

**March 2:** Colossal 1,450-year-old Buddha statues dynamited by Taliban--Bamiyan, Afghanistan

**April 1:** The Netherlands becomes the first country to recognize same-sex marriages.

**June 11:** Tim McVeigh executed for the Oklahoma City bombing.

**September 11:** World Trade Center destroyed; Pentagon attacked. George W. Bush cleverly conceals his foreknowledge of the attacks by continuing to read *My Pet Goat*.

**September 18:** Letters filled with anthrax are sent to U.S. journalists and lawmakers; the anthrax later proves to come from a U.S.
 weapons lab--Princeton, N.J.

**October 7:** The United States invades Afghanistan.

**October 23:** Apple introduces the iPod.

**October 26:** George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act.

**November 10:** China joins the World Trade Organization.

### 2002

**January 8:** No Child Left Behind Act is enacted--United States

**February 1:** Kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl is decapitated by Al Qaeda.

**March 1:** The United States invades Afghanistan.

**May 20:** East Timor regains its independence from Indonesia.

**October 2:** Beltway Sniper attacks begin--Montgomery County, Maryland

**November 1:** Animal rights activists unwittingly release chimpanzees infected with the Rage Virus--Cambridge, England

**November 25:** The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is established.

### 2003

**February 1:** Morgan Spurlock begins his 30-day all-McDonald's diet--New York City

**February 5:** U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tells the United Nations that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

**February 26:** First identified case of SARS--Hanoi

**March 19:** The United States invades Iraq.

**April 9:** Saddam Hussein's statue is toppled in Firdos Square.

**April 14:** The human genome is sequenced.

Louvre curator Jacques Saunière is found dead in the museum, an apparent victim of ritual murder.

**May 1:** George W. Bush declares "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq.

**May:** Sunnydale, California, destroyed as an eons-old Hellmouth is closed.

**May 17:** Massachusetts legalizes same-sex marriage.

**June 4:** Martha Stewart is indicted for insider trading.

**June 26:** The U.S. Supreme Court overturns sodomy laws.

**July 14:** *Washington Post* columnist Robert Novak publishes the name of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame.

**July 22:** Uday and Qusay Hussein are killed by the U.S. military.

**October 7:** Arnold Schwarzenegger elected Governor of California.

**October 24:** The last flight of the Concorde.

**December 13:** President Saddam Hussein of Iraq is found hiding in a spider hole--Tikrit, Iraq

### 2004

**February 4:** The launch of Facebook.

**March 11:** Simultaneous bombs on trains in Madrid kill 191.

**September 22:** Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 breaks up over
the Pacific Ocean en route from Sydney to Los Angeles. All 324 people
aboard are presumed lost.

**December 26:** A tsunami in the Indian Ocean resulting from a magnitude 9.3 earthquake kills 225,000 people in eight nations.

### 2005

**January 5:** Discovery of the planet Eris beyond Pluto's orbit.

**January 7:** Six survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 miraculously arrive at the Indonesian island of Sumba.

**January 18:** Teenager Bella Swan meets the vampire Edward Cullen--Forks, Washington.

**February 14:** The website YouTube is launched.

**April 2:** Pope John Paul II dies; Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger succeeds him as Pope Benedict XVI on April 19--Vatican City.

**April 9:** Prince Charles of Wales marries his longtime mistress Camilla Parker Bowles.

**July 7:** Terror attacks on the London Underground kill 56.

**August 29:** New Orleans is devastated when its levees break following Hurricane Katrina.

### 2006

**September 13:** As she dies in childbirth, Bella Swann Cullen transformed into a vampire by Edward Cullen--Forks, Washington.

**October 9:** North Korea sets off its first nuclear bomb.

**June 18:** Paul McCartney would have turned 64.

**June 25:** The death of Michael Jackson--Los Angeles.

**December:** The WikiLeaks project goes public, exposing its first secret document.

**December 13:** The Chinese River Dolphin is declared extinct.

**December 30:** Saddam Hussein is hanged--Baghdad.

### 2007

Valentine Michael Smith born--Mars.

**June 29:** Thousands of consumers line up to purchase the first iPhones.

**July 12:** Puppet Masters from Titan begin their attempted takeover of Earth--Grinnell, Iowa.

**December 27:** Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated--Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

### 2008

Botanist Freeman Lowell commandeers the space freighter *Valley Forge* along with drones Huey, Dewey and Louie--near Saturn's orbit.

Agent Kay travels back in time to 1969 to prevent an alien fugitive from killing a 29-year-old Agent Jay--New York City.

**February 24:** Fidel Castro steps down as President of Cuba, ending a 49-year reign--Havana.

**March 17:** New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigns after he is revealed as a client of high-priced call girls.

**September 10:** The Large Hadron Collider begins operating, but fails to create a black hole--Geneva, Switzerland.

**November:** Somali pirates greatly expand their operations.

**November 4:** Barack Obama elected President of the United States.

**December 11:** Bernie Madoff arrested in connection with his $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

### 2009

**January 15:** US Airways Flight 1549 makes an emergency landing on the Hudson River--New York City.

**January 20:** Barack Obama inaugurated as President of the United States.

**January 26:** The Icelandic banking system collapses.

**April:** The H1N1 influenza pandemic begins.

**May 22:** Manhattan is attacked by the Cloverfield monster.

**June 1:** General Motors files for bankruptcy, the largest company to do so in U.S. history.

### 2010

**January 4:** The 160-story Burj Khalifa opens as the world’s tallest building--Dubai, United Arab Emirates

**January 12:** Earthquake kills 230,000--Haiti

**April 14:** Volcanic eruption closes European airspace for a week--Iceland

**April 20:** The Deepwater Horizon oil platform explodes, spilling 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

**April 27:** Greek debt downgraded to junk bond status.

**May 7:** Scientists reconstructing the Neanderthal genome reveal interbreeding with modern humans.

**May 31:** The Israeli navy kills nine activists as they raid a flotilla trying to break the Gaza blockade.

**July 25:** WikiLeaks reveals tens of thousands of documents
related to the Afghan War, the first of several massive releases of secret U.S. government information.

**August 5:** A cave-in at a copper mine traps 33 miners five kilometers from the surface for 69 days--Chile.

**October 13:** Chilean miners return to the surface.

**November 17:** The Large Hadron Collider traps anti-matter for the first time.

### 2011

**January 4:** The Arab Spring protests begin in Tunisia, causing the government there to fall 10 days later.

**February 11:** Hosni Mubarek steps down as Egypt's dictator.

**March 11:** A 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan triggers a tsunami that disables the Fukushima nuclear plant, resulting in a meltdown.

**April 29:** Wedding of Prince William of England and Kate Middleton.

**May 1:** Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. Special Forces--Abbottabad, Pakistan

**March 19:** NATO intervenes on the side of the rebels in the Libyan civil war.

**May 22:** Joplin, Missouri, destroyed by tornadoes.

**May 25:** Last episode of *Oprah*.

**May 26:** Fugitive Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic arrested for genocide.

**July 21:** The last Space Shuttle concludes its final mission.

**September 17:** Occupy Wall Street protests begin with the occupation of Liberty Plaza--New York City

**October 20:** Moammar Gadhafi is killed as Libyan rebels take control of the hold-out city of Sirte.

**October 31:** Earth's human population reaches 7 billion.

**December 15:** The Iraq War officially ends.

## 2012

**January 1:** The Fiscal Cliff.

**February 15:** Meteorite strike injures 1,000--Chelyabinsk, Russia

**June 24:** Lonesome George, the last tortoise of its kind, dies--Galapagos

**July 4:** Higgs Boson discovered--Switzerland

**July 15:** "Gangnam Style" released--Seoul

**October 29:** Superstorm Sandy hits the East Coast of the United States.

**December 21:** Mayan calendar ends--beginning of the end of the world.