Awesome Aughties

2000
Jan. 1: The global computer meltdown dubbed Y2K? Didn’t happen.

2000
March 21: Pope John Paul II makes the first official visit by a Roman Catholic pontiff to Israel.

2001
June 28: Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is transferred to The Hague to stand trial on war crimes.

2001
July 2: The world’s first artificial self-contained heart is implanted in American patient Robert Tools.

2001
Nov. 11: Twenty-five years after Mao Zedong’s death, China joins the World Trade Organization.

2002
July 1: The International Criminal Court is established to prosecute individuals for genocide and crimes against humanity.

2002
Sept. 14: The robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba is introduced, marking the official beginning of the Jetsons era.

2003
April 14: Scientists finish mapping the human genome, transforming the understanding and treatment of disease.

2003
Sept. 21: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donates $168 million to fight malaria, kicking off the decade of philanthrocapitalism.

2004
Jan. 3: The Mars rover Spirit touches down. It will eventually provide evidence that Earth’s neighbor had a wet past.

2004
May 26: Africa’s longest civil war ends in Sudan. With conflict still raging in Darfur, that’s one down, one to go.

2005
Jan. 30: Iraq holds its first free parliamentary elections since 1958.

2005
Nov. 11: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia, becoming Africa’s first female leader.

2006
Feb. 8: The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that a low-fat diet does not cut health risks. Ice cream for everyone.

2006
March 21: Twitter is born, connecting Iranian revolutionaries and Shaquille O’Neal to an ADD world.

2007
June 28: The bald eagle is removed from the U.S. endangered species list.

2007
July 21: The seventh and final Harry Potter book is released. Hundreds of millions of children in 90 countries return to watching television.

2008
Jan. 10: India’s Tata Motors introduces the Nano, the world’s least-expensive car.

2008
July 1: The U.N. Environment Program reports a 60 percent increase in renewable energy use in 2007.

2009
Jan. 22: Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda is captured, bringing some much-needed peace to the restive region.

2009
Nov. 20: Europe’s Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator goes into full operation near Geneva. Fears that it might produce a world-ending black hole are allayed. For now.