A sort of numbers/trivia game...

[Ken Cheng]

Not really a game, since there's nothing to win or lose, but maybe an interesting exercise anyway.

List every year from the year you were born to the most recently completed year (2009) and identify one significant event from each year. It can be from any part of life (politics, business, science, the arts, entertainment, sports, etc.), but it needs to be something that achieved notoriety in THAT year and sort of defines that year. Rule: you can't repeat what someone else has already listed for that year.

Now of course, if you don't want to reveal your age, you probably won't want to play this game.

I'll start:

1972 - U.S. President Richard M. Nixon visits China, becoming the first U.S. President to do so.

1973 - Pink Floyd releases its landmark album THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

1974 - In the wake of the Watergate scandal, President Nixon resigns from office.

1975 - The Fall of Saigon. American involvement in the Vietnam War comes to an end.

1976 - Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada

1977 - The first STAR WARS movie is released.

1978 - John Paul II becomes Pope after his predecessor, John Paul I dies after only a month in the Papacy.

1979 - Iranian Revolution

1980 - Ronald Reagan elected 40th President of the U.S.

1981 - first space shuttle mission

1982 - cyanide-laced Tylenol scare in U.S.

1983 - Michael Jackson's THRILLER becomes the best-selling album in history

1984 - Michael Jordan begins his NBA career with the Chicago Bulls

1985 - USA For Africa records "We Are The World" for famine relief in Ethiopia

1986 - space shuttle Challenger destroyed in accident

1987 - the Iran-Contra Affair grips U.S. politics

1988 - George H.W. Bush elected 41st U.S. President

1989 - Berlin Wall falls.

1990 - rap music goes mainstream with MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice scoring massive pop hits

1991 - Persian Gulf War

1992 - Los Angeles Riots following Rodney King beating case verdicts

1993 - deadly showdown between U.S. government law enforcement agents and Branch Davidian cultists in Waco, Texas

1994 - O.J. Simpson arrested for alleged murder of wife and her friend

1995 - mass popular use of Internet begins

1996 - Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal join the L.A. Lakers

1997 - Hong Kong returns to Chinese control

1998 - TITANIC becomes the highest-grossing film of all time

1999 - STAR WARS: EPISODE 1 becomes the first STAR WARS movie released in seventeen years

2000 - Y2K fizzles.

2001 - 9/11/2001

2002 - old European currencies replaced by Euro Dollar.

2003 - war in Iraq begins

2004 - former U.S. President Reagan dies

2005 - Hurricane Katrina

2006 - Saddam Hussein executed

2007 - massacre at West Virginia Tech University

2008 - global economic crisis begins

2009 - Barack Obama inaugurated as 44th U.S. President

[Ken Cheng]

The funny thing about filling out those years is that for me, the years from 1972 - 1994 were fairly easy to fill out. I had at least two or three things that I could have put into each of those years. From 1995 on, it got progressively harder (with obvious exceptions such as 2001 with 9/11 and 2008 with the economic crisis). I actually had to go look stuff up to fill in a few of those years in the 2000s.

[darkcser]

Rats! You've already filled out Star Wars for 1977... now there's no point to this exercise for me.