man opened fire in Las Vegas. Shooting from the Mandalay Bay Hotel, he killed 58 and injured over 500. He shot himself dead as policed closed in. The gunman was initially alleged to be ISIS related but in fact there was no link to any terrorist organisation. The motive remains unknown.
27/1/2017, President Trump of the US issued a controversial executive order instituting a temporary travel ban on the entry of people to the US from seven mainly-Muslim countries. The ban was challenged and overturned in the US Courts.
12/6/2016, An Islamist gunman, Omar Mateen, entered a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and killed 50 people. It was the worst massacre in recent US history.
7/12/2015, Donald Trump, contender for the Republican Presidential nomination, called for a ban on all Muslims entering the US, after an Islamic gunman shot 14 dead in San Bernardino, California, whilst the conflict with ISIS was still ongoing. There were widespread protests at his comments, and over 550,000 people in the UK signed a petition to ban him from Britain.
21/8/2015, Britain and Iran re-opened their embassies in each other’s capitals. This followed a nuclear agreement between Iran and the USA organised by US President Obama (but not yet ratified by US Congress).
15/4/2013, The Boston Marathon race was hit by two bombs, killing 3 and injuring 284.
17/9/2012, Occupy Wall Street protests began in the USA
16/8/2012, Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, was officially given political asylum by Ecuador.
4/4/2011, In the US, Barack Obama announced his intention to stand for re-election for a second term.
28/11/2010, Wikileaks released over 250,000 American diplomatic cables, of which 100,000 which were ‘secret’ or ‘confidential’.
19/9/2010, The BP oil well, Deepwater Horizon, was capped after spilling millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
25/7/2010, Wikileaks released 90,000 covert and classified documents relating to the US occupation of Afghanistan, 2004-2010.
20/4/2010, The Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 workers. Major oil pollution ensued.
27/1/2010, J D Salinger, reclusive author of ‘Catcher in the Rye’, died aged 91.
25/9/2009, Senator Edward Kennedy died, aged 77.
25/6/2009, The American entertainer Michael Jackson died (born 29/8/1958).
18/11/2008, Heads of the big three US car manufacturers asked the US government for assistance during the ongoing Credit Crunch. They said their companies were important as job providers.
16/4/2007, Student Cho Seung Hui went on a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University, killing 32 staff and students. Cho then shot himself.
26/4/2006, Construction of the Freedom Tower in New York began. It was on the site of the Twin Towers destroyed in the 9-11 attacks in 2001.
2/12/2005, Kenneth Boyd became the 1,000th person to be executed in the USA since capital punishment was re-introduced in 1976.
29/8/2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the southern and south –east states of the USA, with winds of up to 175 mph, severely damaging an area as big as Great Britain. New Orleans was particularly badly hit. The city of 500,000 people sits around 1 metre below sea level, due to subsidence associated with the growth of the Mississippi delta, and was flooded, in some areas several metres deep, when the levees protecting the city from Lake Pontchartrain to the north gave way. Several thousand people died. There were allegations that the maintenance of the levees had been cut back to help fund the fighting in Iraq, and that National Guardsmen who could have helped evacuate the victims and restore law and order were away in Iraq. A week after the floods, there was almost no food or potable water, and disease and looting, along with rapes and murder, were rampant. People likened the situation to a Third World disaster, right in America itself.
28/8/2005, The Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, ordered the evacuation of the city as Hurricane Katrina loomed.
18/11/2003, US President Bush visited Prime Minister Tony Blair of the UK; there were ongoing protests against the US war on