2008: an summary

So today's New Year's Eve, which means it's time for looking back at what happened in 2008, don't you think? To help me remember all that I rely on the Wikipedia entry on 2008. I just highlight some events, or else this blog post would be filled by reports on suicide bombings and other wars, coups and mass killings…

2008 was designated as:

• International Year of Planet Earth.
• International Year of Languages.
• International Year of the Potato.
• International Year of Sanitation.
• International Year of the Frog.
• European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.
• The Year of the Rat (by the Chinese calendar)

I hadn't even noticed all that. I even think that the "International Year of the Frog" deserves being mentioned for its lack of concern from the media.

• January 1 - Cyprus, Malta, adopt the euro.
• January 21 - Stock markets around the world plunge amid growing fears of a U.S. recession, fueled by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis. [SL: "Premonitions? Premonitions?"]
• February 19 - Fidel Castro announces his resignation as President of Cuba, effective February 24.
• February 24 - Raúl Castro is unanimously elected as President of Cuba by the National Assembly.
• March 29 - Presidential and parliamentary elections are held in Zimbabwe.
• April 8 - Privy Council of Sark dismantles its feudal system to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights. and the first elections under the new law will be held in December 2008 and the new chamber will first convene in January 2009. [SL: WTF?]
• June 12 - Ireland votes to reject the Treaty of Lisbon, in the only referendum to be held by a European Union member state on the treaty.
• June 27 - President Robert Mugabe is reelected with 85.5% of the vote in the second round of the controversial Zimbabwean presidential election. [SL: Come on…]
• June 27 - After 3 decades as the Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates steps down from daily duties to concentrate on philanthropy.
• July 2 - Íngrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages are rescued from FARC by Colombian security forces. [SL: Hearing non-stop news reports about the rescue and so on completely drove me crazy!]
• August 8–24 - The 2008 Summer Olympics take place in Beijing, China.
• August 17 - Michael Phelps surpasses Mark Spitz in Gold Medals won at a single Olympics, winning 8.
• September 10 - The proton beam is circulated for the first time in the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, located at CERN, near Geneva, under the Franco-Swiss border.
• September 15 - Following negotiations, President Robert Mugabe and opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara sign a power-sharing deal, making Tsvangirai the new Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.
• October 3 - Global financial crisis: U.S. President George W. Bush signs the revised Emergency Economic Stabilization Act into law, creating a 700 billion dollar Treasury fund to purchase failing bank assets. [SL: The beginning of the end for the world economy…]
• October 9 - Global financial crisis: Following a major banking and financial crisis in Iceland, the Icelandic Financial Supervisory Authority takes control of the 3 largest banks in the country: Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, and Glitnir.
• November 4 - United States presidential election, 2008: Barack Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States and Joe Biden is elected the 47th Vice President. Barack Obama becomes the first African-American President-elect.
• November 22 - Frozen water is found on Mars. [SL: Useful when the Americans bring their Coke or Pepsi on the red planet…]
• December 6 - Riots spread across Greece after a 15-year-old boy is shot dead by a special guard of the Greek Police.
• December 10 - The Channel Island of Sark, a British crown dependency, holds its first fully democratic elections under a new constitutional arrangement, becoming the last European territory to abolish feudalism.
• December 16 - Ruins of an ancient Wari city are discovered in northern Peru. [SL: And what about the crystal skulls?]
• December 31 - An extra leap second (23:59:60) is added to end the year. The last time this occurred was in 2005.

These people passed away:

• January 11 - Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist, conqueror of Mount Everest (b. 1919)
• January 22 - Heath Ledger, Australian actor (b. 1979) [SL: a dreadful loss.]
• February 10 - Roy Scheider, American actor (b. 1932) [SL: "We're gonna need a bigger boat."]
• February 13 - Henri Salvador, French singer (b. 1917)
• March 19 - Arthur C. Clarke, English author, inventor, and futurist (b. 1917) & Hugo Claus, Flemish writer, painter and film director (b. 1929)
• April 5 - Charlton Heston, American actor (b. 1923)
• May 26 - Sydney Pollack, American actor, director, and producer (b. 1934)
• June 15 - Stan Winston, American special effects and makeup artist (b. 1946)
• August 9 - Bernie Mac, African-American actor and comedian (b. 1957)
• September 1 - Don LaFontaine, American voice actor (b. 1940) [SL: he was the voice you could hear in many trailers]
• September 26 - Paul Newman, American actor (b. 1925)
• October 20 - Sœur Emmanuelle, Belgian-born French nun (b. 1908)
• December 13 - Horst Tappert, German actor (b. 1923)
• December 24 - Harold Pinter, English playwright (b. 1930)

That's it. Join me on 31 December 2009 for a summary of the year!