Iraq - From the showdowns at the United Nations early in the year to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December, Iraq has dominated the news headlines throughout 2003. The U.S., backed by a “coalition of the willing,” launched an attack on Iraq March 20. Within a month, Baghdad was in the control of the U.S. and the Iraqi regime had been ousted. President Bush declared an end to major combat operations over on May 1, but attacks on coalition troops continued. In December, Saddam Hussein was finally captured alive. But as of that time, no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, the main reason given for going to war earlier in the year.
Space shuttle - On Jan. 16, space shuttle Columbia lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center for its 28th flight. It was a routine mission. But as Columbia lifted off, a small piece of insulating foam broke off and hit the shuttle’s wing. Engineers said at the time that any serious damage was unlikely. However, on Feb. 1, after Columbia re-entered the atmosphere, the space shuttle started to disintegrate. The seven astronauts on board all died when Columbia broke up. An investigation into the disaster revealed poor practices at NASA and technical factors were also responsible for the disaster.
Schwarzenegger - Lingering dissatisfaction with their state’s 2000 energy crisis and alarm over soaring budget deficits sent Californians to the polls on Oct. 7 to oust Gov. Gray Davis from office and replace him with Austrian-immigrant-turned-Hollywood-action-hero Arnold Schwarzenegger. While Democrat Davis became the first U.S. governor to be recalled from office since 1921, voters picked Republican Schwarzenegger from a bizarre ballot that included 134 other candidates — from the state’s lieutenant governor to a porn publisher, a sumo wrestler and a used-car salesman.
Howard Dean - When Howard Dean began running for the Democratic nomination for president a year ago, he was barely a blip on the political radar screen. But the former Vermont governor’s anti-war platform and his feisty anti-Bush rhetoric quickly attracted a large following among the party’s more liberal devotees. Bolstered by a well-organized campaign effort on the Internet and success in early fund-raising efforts, Dean quickly moved up in the polls. And by early November, many pundits were considering him the clear front-runner — even before he had added the backing of two of the nation’s largest unions and 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore.
Wall Street - With the stock market heading toward its first winning year since 1999, and several now-notorious figures of the 1990s facing criminal trials, it seemed that Wall Street finally was putting years of scandal behind. Then came the revelation that New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso had walked away with $187.5 million on one particularly pleasant payday, and the Big Board itself was plunged into a crisis nearly unrivaled in its 211-year history. And that was just the warmup act for a growing investigation into widespread trading abuses in the $7 trillion mutual fund industry, as the harsh floodlights of scandal continued to illuminate the excesses of a market the boomed and then burst.
I took these from MSNBC, they wrote these, I didn’t.