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Oklahoma City Bombing
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two men associated with white nationalist groups, loaded a truck with explosives and blew it up, destroying the Alfred Murray Federal Building. This killed 168 people and injured 600. This attack made the country begin to realize the impact foreign or domestic terrorists can have. This is an example of the anti-government militarism beginning to rise in the U.S. (Kruse and Zelizer, 220.) -
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Y2K Crisis
As the year 1999 got closer to 2000, citizens were scared that the computer softwares could not shift from the 1900's to the 2000's. They thought that the software would just revert back to the year 1900, but since this year happened already, the system would freak out and explode. They even ran tests where there suspicions were accurate. This made everyone think that this would be the end of the world. -
Columbine School Shooting
At Columbine High School, 18 year old Eric Harris and 17 year old Dylan Klebold entered the school with rifles, pistols, and explosives. In 20 minutes, 13 people were killed and 21 were injured. After the fact, officials found 2 propane tank bombs in the cafeteria that could have killed many more people if they were set off. This event marked the beginning of the era of school shootings and was the worst in American history until the Sandy Hook shooting in December 2012. -
9/11
A terrorist organization called Al Qaeda were led by their leader Osama bin Laden to hijack 4 planes in the U.S. Two of these planes were flown into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, a third was flown into the Pentagon, and the fourth was heading to Washington D.C., but crashed in Pennsylvania. Because of this, thousands of people lost their lives. This event brought so many Americans together in ways that they have never been before, but also instilled great fear in them. -
Facebook Formation
Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes were all students at Harvard University and created the social network, Facebook. This quickly became the largest social network in the world and prompted so many other platforms to soon follow. Today, social media is used daily all around the world for education or personal reasons and the world would not be the same without it. -
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was a category 5 hurricane. New Orleans happened to be directly in its harshest path and was left in shambles underwater. Because Louisiana is below sea level, even a little bit of rain causes a flood. Therefore, this event was catastrophic. This hurricane was the most expensive ad deadliest disaster. It costed about $108 billion in damage and killed 1,833 people. (Kruse and Zelizer, 280.)