THE BULLETIN • Thursday, December 31, 2009 A5

OBITUARIES

David Wray / The Bulletin, The Associated Press

NATION & W

ORLDPOLITICS

Jan. 15: Roland Burris, chosen by embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagoje-vich, is sworn in to take Obama’s former Senate seat. Two weeks later, Blagojevich is removed from office.

ECONOMY &

BUSINESSSPORTS

Feb. 1: The Steel-ers win a record sixth Super Bowl, defeating the Cardinals 27-23.

HEALTH & SCIENCE

May 11: Hubble’s final servicing mission be-gins, ending 14 days later.

ENTERTAINMENT

July 6: Robert McNamara, 93, Pentagon chief during Vietnam

Dec. 20: Brittany Murphy, 32, ac-tress best known for “Clueless”

July 4: Steve McNair, 36, popular Tennes-see Titans QB

Dec. 16: Roy Disney, 79, Walt’s nephew , animation guru

June 28: Billy Mays, 50, burly, bearded TV pitchman

Dec. 15: Oral Roberts, 91, TV evangelist, uni-versity foun der

June 25: Mi-chael Jackson, 50, the troubled King of Pop

Oct. 30: Claude Levi-Strauss, 100, father of anthropology

June 25: Farrah Fawcett, 62, “Charlie’s Angel,” ’70s sex symbol

Oct. 22: Soupy Sales, 83, comic who perfected pies to the face

June 23: Ed McMahon, 86, chipper “Tonight” show sidekick

Sept. 27: Wil-liam Safire, 79, Pulitzer-winning columnist

June 4: David Carradine, 72, actor (“Kung Fu,” “Kill Bill”)

Sept. 18: Irving Kristol, 89, “godfather of neoconservatism ”

June 3: Koko Taylor, 80, singer, “Queen of the Blues ”

Sept. 16: Mary Travers, 72, of folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary

May 4: Dom DeLuise, 75, portly actor with offbeat style

Sept. 14: Patrick Swayze, 57, dancer turned movie superstar

May 2: Jack Kemp, 73, quar-terback turned GOP statesman

Sept. 12: Norman Borlaug 95, Nobel winner who fed the world

April 25: Bea Arthur, 86, sharp-tongued “Golden Girl”

Aug. 25: Sen. Ted Kennedy, 77, Senate’s liberal lion

March 25: John Hope Franklin, 94, re-nowned scholar

Aug. 18: Robert Novak, 78, conserva-tive pundit

March 18: Nata-sha Richardson, 45, of British acting royalty

Aug. 13: Les Paul, 94, guitar virtuoso and inventor

March 4: Horton Foote, 92, playwright , screenwriter

Aug. 11: Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 88, founder of the Special Olympics

Feb. 28: Paul Harvey, 90, radio news and talk pioneer

Aug. 1: Corazon Aquino, 76, populist Philip-pines president

Jan. 27: John Updike, 76, Pulitzer-winning novelist, essayist

July 19: Frank McCourt, 78, Pulitzer winner for “Angela’s Ashes”

Jan. 14: Ricardo Montalban, 88, actor in splashy MGM musicals

July 17: Walter Cronkite, 92, anchorman of TV’s golden age

Topping off the decade

Jan. 15: Pilot Chesley Sullenberger crash-lands a disabled U.S. Airways jet into the Hudson River. All 155 on the plane survive.

Jan. 20: Barack Hussein Obama is sworn in as the first African-American president.

Jan. 26:A single mother of six gives birth to octuplets .

Oct. 9: Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize, some say prematurely, for his calls for world cooperation .

June 13:Iran’s presi-dent wins re-election in a violently disputed vote.

June 4: Obama, in Cairo, addresses the Muslim world, saying America will never be at war with Islam.

April 11: Susan Boyle wins over view-ers on the TV show “Britain’s Got Tal-ent”; in November, her first album sells more than 700,000 copies in its first week to become the top debut of 2009.

Sept. 9: Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouts “You lie!” during Obama’s speech to Congress on health care. Wilson later apologizes.

July 3: Sarah Palin announces she will resign as Alaska governor; she steps down July 26.

June 24: South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admits he flew to Argentina to see his mistress after be-ing AWOL for a week.

May 26: Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. She is confirmed and becomes the court’s first Hispanic justice.

Dec. 3: Com-cast reaches a deal to pay more than $13 billion to gain control of NBC Univer-sal from General Electric.

Oct. 29 : The GDP turns positive , a sign the worst economic downturn since the 1930s may be over, though the jobless rate tops 10 percent.

Oct. 7: The federal deficit triples to a record $1.4 trillion as the costs of war and the financial bailout soar.

Sept. 9: Steve Jobs survives a liver trans-plant and returns to lead Apple to its best year ever.

July 29: After at least three years of talks, Yahoo and Microsoft reach a 10-year search deal to challenge Google’s dominance.

June 29: Dis-graced investor Bernard Madoff is sentenced to 150 years for masterminding a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

May 1-June 1:GM and Chrysler collapse into bank-ruptcy. GM emerges under government control, Chrysler under Italian auto-maker Fiat.

Dec. 11: Tiger Woods’ affair leads the world’s No. 1 golfer to an-nounce an indefinite hiatus from the sport .

Nov 4: The Yankees capture their 27th World Series title, beat-ing the Phillies.

Aug. 18: Brett Favre signs a two-year contract with the Minnesota Vikings, coming out of retirement a second time.

Aug. 16: Usain Bolt breaks his 100-meter world record in 9.58 seconds; he sets a record of 19.19 seconds in 200 meters four days later.

July 5:Roger Federer wins a record 15th Grand Slam title.

Feb. 9: Alex Rodriguez admits using steroids with the Texas Rangers from 2001 to 2003.

June 11: With swine flu reported in more than 70 nations, the World Health Organization declares the outbreak the first global flu pandemic in 41 years. By year’s end, nearly 50 million Americans (about 1 in 6) have had the illness.

Oct. 15: A 50-mile bal-loon chase in Colorado captivates a global audience, though a 6-year-old boy is not found with it as feared.

Feb. 27: Obama an-nounces plan to pull all U.S. combat brigades out of Iraq by August 2010. In June, troops leave Iraq’s cities.

April 3: Iowa’s Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage; later in the year, the D.C. City Council votes to legalize it , while Maine voters ban it. Also, Vermont couples begin tying the knot.

May 25: North Korea conducts its second nuclear test.

May 18: Sri Lanka says it has defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels , ending a 25-year civil war.

April 12: U.S. Navy snipers kill three pirates and rescue the captain of a U.S. cargo ship hijacked off Somalia’s coast.

April 27: A low-flying plane, later determined to be Air Force One, panics New Yorkers.

May 31: George Tiller, a rare provider of late-term abortions, is shot dead in a Kansas church.

June 8: North Korea sentences two American s to 12 years’ hard labor . In August, Bill Clinton brings them home.

June 12: The nation’s switch to digital TV is completed.

June 10: A gunman opens fire at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, killing a guard.

July 4: The Statue of Liberty crown reopens to tourists for the first time since 9/11.

July 22: Obama says police “acted stupidly” in arresting a black Harvard scholar ; later, the president, the scholar and the arresting officer have beers at the White House.

Nov. 5: A shooting at the Fort Hood, Texas, Army post leaves 13 dead and 29 hurt.

Nov. 10: The D.C. sniper, who killed 10 in 2002, is executed.

Nov. 24: Two crash Obama’s first state dinner, leading to a Secret Service investigation.

Dec. 1: Obama orders up 30,000 troops for Afghani-stan, but vows to begin withdrawal in 18 months.

Jan. 30: Michael Steele is elected the first black Republi-can National Com-mittee chairman.

April 7: Charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens are dropped.

April 28: GOP Sen. Arlen Specter defects to the Democratic Party.

Sept. 27: Direc-tor Roman Polan-ski is taken into Swiss custody for a 1977 U.S. sex crime conviction.

Nov. 3: Warren Buffett bets big on the U.S. economy, investing $26.3 billion to cement control of the Bur-lington Northern Santa Fe railroad.

Nov. 19: Home foreclosures top 4 million, as more people with fixed-rate loans and good credit lose their homes. Meanwhile, more than 140 banks have failed by the end of the year, as com-mercial real estate loans sour and consumer loan losses mount.

May 20: Michael Vick is released after serving time on federal dog-fighting charges.

Oct. 2: Rio de Janeiro wins its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, the first South American country to be selected.

Nov. 30: Serena Williams is fined a record $82,500 for a profane tirade weeks earlier at a U.S. Open line judge.

March 9: Obama says a ban on federal funds for embryonic stem cell research will be lifted.

Dec. 7: More than 190 countries meet in Copenhagen for the U.N. climate confer-ence but fail to reach a binding agreement.

Nov. 30: CERN’s Large Hadron Collider becomes the world’s high-est energy particle accelerator.

Nov. 17: A government task force says most women don’t need mammograms in their 40s — a stunning reversal and a break with the American Cancer Society’s position.

Oct. 9: NASA crash-lands a spacecraft into the moon. Results later suggest the presence of water on the moon.

June 12: Congress bans “light” or candy-flavored cigarettes and requires tobacco companies to make bigger warning labels and run fewer ads.

Oct. 1: “Late Show” host David Letterman says he had sex with female employees.

May 29: Jay Leno leaves NBC’s “To-night” show after 17 years; Conan O’Brien takes over in June.

June 22: Chris Brown pleads guilty to felony assault of his ex-girlfriend, fellow singer Rihanna. That same day, Kate Gos-selin, star of “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” files for divorce ; the show is later canceled.

Sept. 13: Kanye West upstages Taylor Swift’s speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to complain about her accepting the award for Best Female Video.

Sept. 18: The last episode of “Guiding Light” airs, ending a 72-year run.

Nov. 19: Oprah Winfrey announces her talk show will end in 2011 after 25 seasons.

Nov. 20: “ New Moon” rakes in $72.7 million to break the single-day domestic box office record held by “The Dark Knight.”

Dec. 24: The Senate passes its health care legislation, paving the way for historic reform of the Ameri-can health system.

March 30: Obama asserts unprec-edented government control over the auto industry and engineers the ouster of GM’s chief executive .

Feb. 17: Obama signs the largest economic rescue plan in U.S. his-tory, the $787 billion stimulus.

2009 in Review • Around the World

Barack Obama is sworn in, and he wins a Nobel Prize. The King of Pop is laid to rest. Swine flu is declared a pandemic. Piracy means what it used to. The Supreme Court seats its first Hispanic justice. These are the stories we will remember from 2009.