Well Seniors, we did it. We made it through the past 18 years of the glorious planet earth, through all the changes, through all the different fads, through all the economic challenges, through all the global conflicts, through all the struggles that we have dealt with in our personal lives, through, well, everything. There have been ups and downs, and points where even we began to question if it was all worth it. But alas, we made it through, and while some of us may be looking forward, today I wanted to look back at it all, every year from 2004 to now, not only talking about major world events, but also what may have been happening around our lives and what it was we were all into at the time. This is a long road, so let’s get started with the year some of us were born in, 2004.

2004:

• Facebook is launched by Mark Zuckerberg for Harvard Students
• The second transit of Venus occurs, the first one since 1882
• NASA lands the Opportunity rover on Mars
• The 2004 Summer Olympics are held in Athens
• The 2004 Presidential election results in George W. Bush being elected for a second term
• The Nintendo DS and PSP are released

2005:

• YouTube is launched by three ex-PayPal employees
• Hurricane Katrina decimates the Gulf Coast, resulting in billions of dollars in damages and many deaths
• Pope John Paul II dies
• Hong Kong Disneyland Opens
• The Xbox 360 is released to the public

Main thing here is YouTube, which as a website has gone on to be one of the most popular sites on the internet, and many people now make careers off of making videos for YouTube, which is awesome! Definitely around this time new sites we use all the time are being launched. 

2006:

• The Winter Olympics are held in Turin
• Twitter is founded
• The Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii are released
• The 2006 FIFA World Cup is held in Germany, with Italy winning
• Pluto is no longer a planet
• Disney purchases Pixar for $7.4 Billion

I wanted to talk about the Wii, which came out this year. That system was the first game console that a lot of us owned, and while this year it really only had Twilight Princess and Wii Sports, it would eventually grow to have some classic titles on it, ones that we still talk about and play today. While we still do play games, no amount of nostalgia will replicate the Wii in my eyes. Twitter also happened to launch, which is the go-to social media platform for many. All around good year!

2007:

• Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone, marking a new device that changed the entire world
• The subprime mortgage crisis begins, which would be one of the factors contributing to the Great Recession
• Google unveils it’s Street View to the world
• The 2008 Presidential election results in Barack Obama being elected president

The internet at this point is in it’s “golden age”, where videos go viral left and right and we all can recite them word-for-word. Also, the iPhone came out, which regardless of if you’re Apple or Android, helped pave the way for the smartphone era we’re still in today. Surely the year following will be just as, if not even more great! (It wasn’t.)

2008:

• The Great Recession Continues, which caused the collapse of major financial markets, becoming the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, and would lead to the bankruptcy of many companies, including Lehman Brothers, which to this day is the largest public bankruptcy in the world
• The Summer Olympics are held in Beijing

Yeah, this year was kind of a downer for a lot of people. Your history teacher has probably already gone over the Great Recession, so I’m not going to go too in depth into it, but it was not the best time to be a person on this earth as some good movies came out, including one that would lead to the start of the MCU; Iron Man, and the game side of things was really great with classics that we still talk about and play today. But man. Thankfully we can only go up from here.

2009:

• US Airways Flight 1549 crash-lands in the Hudson River with no fatalities, in what became known as “The Miracle of the Hudson”
• The world lost the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, from an overdose of propofol
• Bitcoin is launched
• The swine flu pandemic begins

Man, I’m sure glad the swine flu pandemic didn’t alter life too much, could you imagine what would happen if it did? (wink). Anyways things are starting to look better. Lots of good movies, SUPER ICONIC TV shows, and some decent games in there too, including Angry Birds, which was the game that shows mobile games could stand toe-to-toe with console gaming, even taking a chunk out of dedicated systems like the DS and PSP. 

2010 (NEW DECADE!)

• The Winter Olympics are held in British Columbia, Canada
• The First iPad is released
• Blockbuster, the video rental store that was at one point one of the worlds largest companies, files for bankruptcy and closes all but 1 of it’s stores
• My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic begins airing

This is the year Blockbuster went bankrupt, although they didn’t cease operations until 2014. While none of us grew up with it, to many it was sad to see the place they rented so many movies from go, although I think we can agree streaming is way better. One TV show that started this year includes MLP: FiM, a show that has created one of the weirdest fandoms in internet history; “Bronies”. I don’t know exactly how they came to be, or why, but hey, as long as it makes some people happy, I don’t mind. The iPad also came out, which while weird to some at first, has gone on to become one of Apple’s biggest products. Solid year all around.

2011

• A massive earthquake and tsunami devastate Eastern Japan and kill nearly 20,000 people
• Osama Bin Laden, the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks, is shot and killed by US Navy Seals in Pakistan
• 4Kids, the controversial anime dubbing company, files for bankruptcy and is absorbed into Konami
• The PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS are released
• Minecraft launches

Not only did the 3DS come out, which would grow to have a very respectable library of games, but we also got Skyrim, a game that is still being played over a decade after it was released. Also, the first Skylanders came out, which resulted in us begging our parents to get us all the toys at the store in order to complete our collection and use them in the game. Lastly, a small indie game that entered early access in 2009 was finally released this year. You’ve probably heard of it, it’s called MINECRAFT!!!! Solid year all around.

2012: 

• The Costa Concordia sinks in the Mediterranean while on a cruise
• The Mayan Calendar ends on December 21st
• NASA’s Curiosity rover lands on the surface of Mars
• Psy releases his mega hit “Gangnam Style”, which is a hit all over the world
• The 2012 Olympics occur in London
• The Wii U is released, which becomes Nintendo’s least successful home console and makes them lose over $450M
• Disney buys Lucasfilm, which includes Star Wars, for $4B
• The 2012 Presidential election results in Barack Obama being elected for a 2nd term

This year was all about keeping the good times rolling from 2011. Many thought that because the Mayan Calendar ended the world would end as a result. Well, we’re still here, so they were wrong. Also wanted to briefly mention the Wii U’s release this year. 

2013

• Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information
• The Boston Marathon Bombing marks the first terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11
• Pope Francis becomes, well, the Pope
• The Year of Luigi occurs
• The Xbox One and Playstation 4 are released, with the Xbox One getting off to a rough start but eventually being a success
• Grand Theft Auto V releases

GTA V and The Last of Us came out, two of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, with GTA V in particular being the highest grossing entertainment product PERIOD. 

2014:

• The Winter Olympics are held in Sochi
• Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappears in the Indian Ocean, and all these years later no one still can determine what happened other than that it crashed somewhere unknown
• The world lost comedian Robin Williams
• Cuba opens to Americans for the first time in decades
• The Ice Bucket Challenge occurs to spread awareness for ALS

Late 2014 was dominated by Five Nights at Freddys, a horror game that had everyone at school and on the internet talking about it. Between 2 games coming out within a span of two months, “Let’s Players” like Markiplier and Jacksepticeye playing it, and the mysteries within the games, everyone was talking about it, even us 4th Graders despite the game being made for a teen audience.

2015:

• The Paris Agreement is proposed for climate change
• Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, responsible for the Wii and DS and immense growth for Nintendo, Dies at 55
• The Supreme Court affirms same-sex marriage in the US
• Susan Wojcicki is made CEO of YouTube, a position she held until 2023

2015 was the year in which the Minions took over the world. How a movie with barely any dialogue made $1B is beyond me, but it worked. 

2016:

• The Summer Olympics are held in Rio
• The UK withdraws from the European Union
• “Killer Clowns” terrify people all across America
• Shanghai Disneyland opens in China, the first new Disney Park since 2005
• The 2016 Presidential election results in Donald Trump becoming President

2016 was the year memes really began to take their modern form. One of the biggest memes of this year was the We are Number One meme, in which people took a song from the children’s TV show, LazyTown, and edited it in strange and funny ways, all while raising money for the real life singer of the song, Stefan Karl, and his cancer fund. 

2017:

• A solar eclipse occurs in August
• The Nintendo Switch launches
• Disney buys 20th Century Fox for $66 Billion

Not much in terms of 2017, with the exception of the Nintendo Switch releasing, bringing Nintendo back after years of struggling. Also, Fortnite released, which became one of the biggest games ever, though it achieved this milestone in 2018.

2018:

• The Winter Olympics are held in PyeongChang, South Korea
•  Tham Luang Cave Rescue occurs, with rescuers attempting to save a soccer team from a cave
• The world lost Aretha Franklin, Stan Lee, and George H.W Bush
• 628K concurrent viewers watched Ninja and Drake play Fortnite, breaking a streaming world record.

Nothing bad, nothing good, just a year. We did get a lot of Thanos memes this year though.

2019:

• Donald Trump becomes the 3rd President to be impeached
• The first ever image of a black hole is taken
•  A fire partly destroys Notre Dame
• PewDiePie loses his title of Most Subscribed YouTuber after a massive campaign to get people to subscribe to him ends
• First case of Covid is confirmed

Some new virus just got confirmed in China, but I’m sure it won’t lead to anything right? RIGHT?

2020 (NEW DECADE!):

• Covid becomes a pandemic and causes most of the world to completely shut down. Everyone is stuck indoors and many are left unemployed as a result
• Protests emerge amidst the murder of George Floyd
• The 2020 Presidential election results in Joe Biden being elected president
• The Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S are released

I’m not even going to talk about this year, you know exactly what made it so awful. 

2021:

• The James Webb Space Telescope is launched
• Crowds attack the US Capitol attempting to stop Joe Biden from being certified and keep Donald Trump as President. This results in Trump being impeached a 2nd time, one week before he leaves office
• The Summer 2020 Olympics are held in Tokyo after being delayed

Okay, things are looking up! 

2022: 

• Russia invades Ukraine in the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II
• The Winter Olympics are held in Beijing
• Queen Elizabith II dies at 96, sending England into a mourning period
• Will Smith slaps Chris Rock and gets banned from the Oscars for 10 years

 And with that we’ve reached the present year!!! While the past 18 years have been a lot, there is still so much of our life left for us to experience and explore the world. It may be scary, but I know we’ll all do great.