Space Shuttle Atlantis’s STS-125 mission completed the final repair and upgrade of the Hubble Space Telescope. There were five repair or upgrade missions to the Hubble Space Telescope: Servicing Mission 1 (SM1): December 2–13, 1993, astronauts installed new instruments, including equipment adapted to correct a defect in Hubble’s main mirror; Servicing Mission 2 (SM2): February 11–21, 1997, installation of new instruments extended Hubble’s near-infrared wavelength range for imaging and spectroscopy, allowing scientists to probe the farthest reaches of the universe; replacement of failed or degraded spacecraft components increased efficiency and performance; Servicing Mission 3A (SM3A): December 19–27, 1999: What was originally intended as a preventative maintenance mission became more urgent on November 13, 1999, when the fourth of Hubble’s six gyroscopes failed. Hubble requires at least three of its stabilizing gyroscopes to conduct science. Hubble entered a hibernation state called Safe Mode while the telescope awaited repairs. NASA split the third servicing mission into two parts to get Hubble back up and running more quickly. Servicing Mission 3B (SM3B): March 1–12, 2002: During SM3B, astronauts replaced Hubble’s solar panels and installed the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which replaced Hubble’s Faint Object Camera, the telescope’s last original instrument. Servicing Mission 4 (SM4): May 11–24, 2009: The Hubble Space Telescope was reborn with Servicing Mission 4 (SM4). The orbiting observatory’s fifth and final servicing mission flew aboard the space shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) from May 11–24, 2009.

Marchionne signs a historic FIAT-Chrysler partnership agreement: the alliance combines Fiat’s technology, its platforms and engines for small and medium-sized vehicles, its vast distribution network in Latin America and Europe with the assets of Chrysler, which has a strong presence in North America. This involves the accelerated sale of substantially all Chrysler assets to a new company that, upon closing, will grant Fiat a 20% stake, with the option of an additional 31%. The deal was strongly supported by President Obama.

Bitcoin is born, a digital currency and peer-to-peer payment system. Andreessen, creator of Netscape and a pioneer in the early years of the internet, hopes this will spark a better model for rewarding content on the internet and creating greater value. The visionary Ted Nelson, in 1963, and Vannevar Bush in the 1940s, envisioned a two-way hypertext system. Nelson called it Xanadu. Essentially, every single piece of information published on a global computer network would be published with the address it points to, as well as the address from which it points. If their vision had been implemented on the World Wide Web, it would have given rise to a system that automatically valued content, counting and weighting the links pointing to the information, making a potential micropayment system for publications easier. Instead, the network developed differently, with a single-way approach.

Piracy is rampant in the Horn of Africa. On Easter Sunday, President Obama orders intervention to free the American captain of a cargo ship. The three pirates are shot in the head from a distance of 30 meters, and the captain is freed. Earlier that week, French forces intervened to free the crew of a yacht, freeing all but one, who dies in the raid.

3:30 AM. Earthquake, magnitude 5.8, hits Abruzzo, with epicenter in L’Aquila. Nearly 300 people are dead and approximately 30,000 people are displaced.

The ISS, following the docking of Space Shuttle STS-119, is completed with the final solar array from the original design. Although the ISS has always been a work in progress, the STS-119 shuttle mission completes the original design.

Iran. A British ship with five sailors on board is boarded and the sailors held hostage for two weeks.

Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, were sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) for their involvement in the execution of 42 merchants in 1992. The IST sentenced two of Saddam Hussein’s half-brothers to death: Watban Ibrahim (former Interior Minister) and Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hussein (head of the security services). Saddam’s former personal secretary, Abed Hamid Humud, received a life sentence, while former Finance Minister Ahmed Kudair was sentenced to six years in prison. Issam Rashid Hwaish, former governor of the Central Bank of Iraq, was acquitted.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s France is fully back in NATO command, having partially withdrawn from it in 1966 under Charles de Gaulle. The rapprochement between France and NATO began in 1995 with military cooperation following the crisis in Yugoslavia.

NASA’s Kepler satellite was launched into orbit on a Delta II rocket. It carried a 0.95-meter Schmidt telescope with an array of 42 CCDs, each measuring 50x25mm with 2200×1024 pixels. During its operational life (2009 to 2018), it discovered 2,662 planets and examined 530,506 stars.

Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America, two million people arrive in Washington DC for the inauguration

Giuseppe Setola, boss of the Casalesi Camorra clan, was captured in Caserta after escaping Carabinieri custody a few days earlier.

Several bloody civil wars that had dragged on for decades have ended without much fanfare: Angola, Chad, Peru, Sri Lanka.

At the beginning of the Obama presidency, the number of democracies (defined by the Polity Project as having an index greater than 6.0 on their scale) reached a new high of 87 (there were 52 in 1989, 36 in 1962, 12 in 1942, 29 in 1922).

American pilot Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III, a former military pilot, had just taken off on an AirBus A320, US Airways Flight 1549, from New York’s La Guardia Airport when he struck a flock of ducks, igniting both engines. With incredible speed and composure, he immediately decided to land in the Hudson River just off Manhattan, avoiding a couple of bridges and landing on water, saving the crew and all 155 passengers. Before leaving the plane, he was the last to double-check it to make sure no one was left aboard.

Air France-KLM acquires 25% of Alitalia-CAI’s capital for a sum close to 322 million euros.

CVN77 (Carrier Vessel Nuclear) Heorge H.W. Bush is the last Nimitz-class aircraft carrier launched by the US Navy. The next generation (from CVN78 onwards) will be the CVN21 class and will span the entire 21st century, with innovations such as the electromagnetic catapult (essentially a long linear motor) that saves enormous amounts of electrical energy and potable water (24 cubic meters) with each launch, as well as significantly reducing mechanical stress on the aircraft and therefore maintenance hours.

Fiat acquires 35% of Chrysler. Fiat, Chrysler, and Cerberus Capital Management (which holds 80.1% of Chrysler’s capital) announce the conclusion of a preliminary, non-binding agreement to establish a global strategic alliance that also provides for the two groups to leverage each other’s distribution networks. The agreement does not include any cash investment by Fiat in Chrysler or a commitment to future financing in Detroit.

After a week of bombing Gaza, the Israeli army begins its ground offensive in Gaza.

Global Financial Crisis. The US Federal Reserve (FED) cuts the interest rate to an unprecedented level: zero. It’s uncharted territory. The monetary policy transmission belt has broken. Money is no longer flowing to businesses and citizens. Washington therefore resorts to another experiment: quantitative easing, printing $1 trillion to flood the United States and the entire world with easy credit. Recovery will be seen within a few months, but only for the US and Chinese economies. By printing dollars, America has pulled itself and, to some extent, others out of the crisis, and has even strengthened the dollar’s role internationally. The FED has, in fact, acted as the world’s central bank, printing a total of $4.5 trillion in several rounds, which has also reached the rest of the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Ten years later, the dollar is the reference currency for countries representing 70% of global GDP, up from 60% in 2008.

Global Financial Crisis. Oil at 38 USD per barrel.

The British pound collapses and practically reaches parity with the euro. (It was worth 1.35 euros until October 2008.)

Swat, Pakistan: A suicide bombing kills 41 people on their way to vote in a local election.

An al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Imad Ahmad Farhan, known as “Imad the Butcher” for confessing to at least 100 murders, is killed in central Ramadi the day after escaping from a police station.

In his fourth visit to Iraq and his final trip abroad, President George W. Bush ratified the agreement with the Iraqi government for a withdrawal from cities by June 30, 2009, and from Iraq by December 31, 2011.

Jos, Nigeria: The central Nigerian city is gripped by fierce clashes between Muslim Hausas and Christian Beroms following the outcome of a local election. Muslims on November 28, because of an unelected representative, burned churches and killed dozens of people with AK47s and machetes. On November 29, at least 380 bodies were piled up in a mosque in Jos.

series of terrorist attacks targeting multiple targets in Mumbai began on Wednesday, November 26, shortly after 10:30 PM local time (6:00 PM GMT). Men armed with machine guns and grenades launched a series of coordinated attacks on the central train station, a hospital, and two luxury hotels, the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi/Trident. A group calling itself the “Deccan Mujahideen” claimed responsibility for the attacks. Throughout the night, Indian security forces battled the gunmen around the two hotels. On Friday, around 7:30 AM, special forces soldiers rappelled from a helicopter onto the roof of a Jewish religious center in Mumbai, where terrorists had taken hostages. In the morning, Indian forces continued their operations: at least 93 people, mostly foreign nationals, were freed from the Oberoi more than 36 hours after the attacks. By 2:30 PM, the Oberoi Hotel was under control. At 5:30 PM, the army launched an assault on the Taj Mahal to neutralize the last remaining extremists. Around 7:00 PM, the Indian special forces ended their operation at the Orthodox Jewish religious center, where Muslims were holding hostages. Six Israelis were found dead. Among the other foreigners killed in the attacks were at least five Americans, two French, two Canadians, and one Italian. In the early hours of Saturday, Indian commandos continued operations to regain control of the Taj Mahal, where two or three armed extremists were still barricaded. “This is the final assault,” Police Chief Hassan Gafoor stated shortly thereafter. Around 8:30 AM, the announcement was made that the attacks on Mumbai were over and that all extremists had been killed. Fifteen terrorists took part in the operation, 14 of whom were killed and one captured; 163 people were killed, including 27 foreigners; and 293 were injured. The captured terrorist says he is Pakistani and that the action had been carefully prepared for 6 months and had the objective of causing 5000 victims and demolishing the Taj Mahal to provoke the Indian 9/11. The Israelis, the Americans (6) and the English were in the crosshairs. 10 are the sites targeted by the terrorists.

Global Financial Crisis. The U.S. government intervenes to help CitiGroup, a bank in financial difficulty. This intervention differs from previous ones in that it does not involve placing the group under full conservatorship (like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), nationalizing it (like AIG), or selling it to another group (like Bear Stearns). US authorities will “invest” $20 billion in Citi preferred shares as part of the $700 billion rescue package allocated to the banking sector, adding to the $25 billion already granted to the bank under this program.

Global Financial Crisis. China surprises everyone with a massive, unprecedented investment plan (despite China’s continued 9% annual GDP growth): $586 billion, equal to 16% of its GDP, over two years.

Space Shuttle Endeavour reaches the International Space Station (ISS) for an expansion mission from 3 to 6 astronauts

Global Financial Crisis. U.S. bank Wells Fargo is acquiring Wachovia Bank in a deal valued at approximately $15.1 billion.

Global Financial Crisis. A scary weekend. Fortis, a Franco-Belgian bank, is at risk of collapse, saved at the last minute by the entry of three nations into its capital: Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. (Fortisvale’s balance sheet is triple Belgium’s GDP). Germany must inject billions into Hypo Real Estate, Iceland nationalizes credit institutions to avoid bankruptcy. France, Luxembourg, and Belgium must join forces to save Dexia (a merger of savings banks), injecting €9 billion into its coffers. With certain American credit institutions labeled “too big to fail,” Europe is discovering something worse: “too big to be saved.”

Three-man Shenzhou-7 spacecraft launch mission, China’s first spacewalk, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia

Suicide bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan: A truck bomb carrying half a ton of explosives explodes in the parking lot, killing 57 people, including the Czech ambassador. Most of the victims were guards, drivers, and taxi drivers waiting in the parking lot. The hotel is almost completely destroyed by a fire caused by a gas leak.

Global Financial Crisis. World stock markets react with a wave of gains to the injection of hundreds of billions of dollars into the markets. The gains are 8%-9%, recovering almost all of the previous days’ losses in a single session.

Global Financial Crisis. The U.S. Treasury announces the establishment of a $50 billion guarantee fund for money market funds. The fund will be financed by the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund. The long-term cost of the financial plan, including bailouts for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG, is estimated at $1 trillion. The insurance fund will be financed by $50 billion from the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund, which was created in 1934 at the end of the Great Depression.

Global Financial Crisis. The major central banks of industrialized countries inject $247 billion into the money markets (European Central Bank: $110 billion, Swiss National Bank: $27 billion, Bank of Japan: $60 billion, Bank of England: $40 billion, Bank of Canada: $10 billion), in order to ease the profound crisis affecting financial institutions. Consequently, government bonds are sold, generating inflows into the stock market. Furthermore, AIG (American International Group), the world’s largest insurance company, is nationalized with a life-saving $85 billion injection. This is an extreme gesture, unprecedented in the century-long existence of the Federal Reserve.

Global Financial Crisis. Barclays acquires Lehman Brothers’ US market operations. The British bank purchases assets with a theoretical value of $250 billion for $72 billion, along with liabilities of $68 billion, and acquires Lehman’s New York headquarters and two data centers in New Jersey for $1.5 billion, operations that employ approximately 10,000 people.

The easy-profit finance industry collapses, the Large Hadron Collider is turned on…

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is switched on at CERN in Geneva. At 27 km long, it is the largest machine ever built. It is a proton-proton collider built 100 m underground, on the border between Switzerland and France. It has four gigantic experiments along its circumference: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb. It reaches energies of several TeV. Then, just nine days later, the LHC breaks down. Or rather, it explodes. One of the countless superconducting devices short-circuits, releasing so much heat that it almost instantly evaporates six tons of liquid helium, and the explosion destroys thirty electromagnets, each weighing 35 tons. No one is injured, but it will take nine months to understand what happened, design a modification, implement it, and restart the LHC. It will, in fact, restart in 2009 at 7 TeV. The entire LHC undertaking is an absolute triumph of project management, engineering, and collaboration. It accelerates hundreds of billions of protons to 99.999999% of the speed of light.

Asif Ali Zardari, co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), is elected president of Pakistan: he is the widower of Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister assassinated on 27 December 2007 in an attack in Rawalpindi.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a bloodless coup nine years earlier, resigns from office

The Hubble Space Telescope discovers a planet orbiting 120 AU from the star Formalhaut and tracks its orbital motion over the years.

Hewlett-Packard has announced the completion of its acquisition of Electronic Data Systems: the $13.9 billion deal should help HP better compete against IBM. This is the largest transaction in the history of IT services, the second largest in the technology industry after HP’s acquisition of Compaq, which closed in May 2002. The merger of the two multinationals will create a group with 310,000 employees and revenues of approximately $130 billion. For comparison, IBM has 386,000 employees and revenues of $98.8 billion.

The United States (US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) and Poland (Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski) sign an agreement for the installation on Polish territory of a missile system for the destruction of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Russian troops are pushing deep into Georgian territory, reaching the cities of Senaki (from Abkhazia) and Gori (from South Ossetia, Stalin’s hometown), up to 18km from the capital Tbilisi.

The Russians are invading South Ossetia, a Georgian territory of 60,000 people linked to Russia and whose annexation it had requested; the invasion, which includes thousands of soldiers, hundreds of tanks and aircraft, will push deep into Georgian territory in a few days and will also involve the other territory claiming autonomy from Tbilisi: Abkhazia.

Beijing Olympics

Radovan Karazdic was captured in Serbia by police and handed over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The United States (US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) and the Czech Republic (Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg) sign an agreement for the installation on Czech territory of a radar system for the detection and shooting down of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Apple launches the AppStore on iTunes for iPhone

Ingrid Betancourt and 15 other American and Colombian hostages were freed by Colombian forces in the jungle, where they had been held captive by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Betancourt was a presidential candidate in Colombia and had been captured by the terrorist organization in February 2002. The raid, made possible by wiretaps, took place in a jungle location between the towns of La Paz and Tomachipan (Guaviare, about 400 kilometers south of Bogotá). The infiltrated soldiers led “Commander Cesar” to believe he was flying the hostages by helicopter to Alfonso Cano, the sixty-year-old Colombian anthropologist who became the leader of the FARC in May (following the death of the Marxist guerrilla’s founder, Pedro Antonio Marun, aka Manuel Marulanda or “Tirofijo”).

Space Shuttle mission STS-124 installs the Kibo Japanese Pressurized Module