En202 - Iconic 21st Century

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The Iconic 21st Century

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• 2000 — The world welcomes the Millennium

• 2001 — The 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers

• 2003 – The Human Genome Project is complete

• 2004 — Facebook is formed by Mark Zuckerberg

• 2007 — Steve Jobs and Apple launch the first iPhone

• 2008 — Barack Obama wins the 2008 election

• 2012 — The US rover, Curiosity, takes a selfie on Mars

• 2012 — The London 2012 Opening Ceremony

• 2014 — Malala Yousafazi receives a Nobel Prize

• 2016 — Britain votes to leave the European Union

• 2018 – Scientists find water on Mars

• 2020 – Covid 19 locks down the world

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From firework displays to souvenir postage stamps, every country around the world celebrates the turn of the Millennium in their own unique way.A computer flaw, the so-called "Millennium Bug," led to anxiety and the Y2K (Year 2000) scare. When complex computer programs were first written in the 1960s, engineers used a two-digit code for the year, leaving out the "19." As the year 2000 approached, many believed that the systems would not interpret the "00" correctly, therefore causing a major glitch in the system.

GPS

The global positioning system itself isn’t a 21st-century invention. But until the year 2000, it was controlled by the U.S. military and not publicly available. Now, we’re out there driving or walking around using GPS navigation to find that new restaurant a mile from where we live. Many of us can’t go anywhere without it, and it’s opening up parts of the world that were extremely difficult to explore before. Road trips with a paper map? That’s so 20th century.

The Lockdowns

Covid 19

You all experienced this and know as much about it's impact as anyone. Click the link to read about some more opinions (from the year 2021).

When Apple announced the iPhone in 2007, it rocked the world. It wasthe world's first modern smartphone with a touch screen and only one button on the front. It bought the internet to our pockets, along with a camera and access to all that social media!

Xbox 360

2002 saw the introduction of the Xbox 360. Microsoft’s home video game console was the first mainstream online service, Xbox Live, to allow multiplayer games and the chance to purchase digital media including games, music and movies. Today multiplayer gaming is a must-have and streaming media is the new normal.

2016’s portable VR console

Oculus Rift

Built on the back of a successful $2.5 million Kickstarter campaign. The Oculus brand was later purchased by Facebook, where its flagship VR headset became a true consumer-friendly standard. While we haven't yet seen the full impact that AR/VR headsets will have on our day-to-day lives, the Rift has led the way so far.

The Apple IPhone

In 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the first touchscreen smartphone: the Apple iPhone. He promised a combination of three devices, a “widescreen iPod with touch controls”; a “revolutionary mobile phone”; and a “breakthrough Internet communicator”. It delivered.

Brexit

23 June 2016: The UK votes to leave the EU

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Bose Headphones

In the year 2000 noise cancellation headphones by Bose became available to buy. While the first noise cancelling headset was invented in 1979 by Doctor Amar Bose, who found inspiration in an aeroplane pilot's headset, the technology didn't make its way to the consumers until 2000. Today, noise cancelling features have become a new standard in headphone purchases. As the tech becomes more accessible.

• Click the link to explore four ways Facbook changed the world!

Facebook

On February 4, 2004, a Harvard sophomore named Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook, a social media website he had built in order to connect Harvard students with one another. By the next day, over a thousand people had registered, and that was only the beginning. Now known simply as Facebook, the site quickly ballooned into one of the most significant social media companies in history. Today, Facebook is one of the most valuable companies in the world, with over 2 billion monthly active users.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, terrorists linked to al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger planes. Two were flown into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers tried to overpower the hijackers. Its target may have been the Capitol or the White House. The attacks resulted in the deaths of 2997 and injuries to more than 6000.

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Is there another 21st Century Invention that we left off the list?

2003 The Human Genome Project

All living things have a secret code inside of them called DNA. The Human Genome Project wanted to crack this code and find out what our DNA says. The project involved scientists from around the world, who worked together to sequence all the genes on the 46 chromosomes of humans. By April 2003 researchers had completed the project, having sequenced 99 percent of the human genome’s gene-containing regions.The hope is that this work will help in the development of drugs that work at the genetic level, or that it may allow for the actual replacement of defective genes with normal ones. Some headway has already been made in the areas of skin cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, migraines, and narcolepsy.

Featuring Sir Paul McCartney, Daniel Craig, Rowan Atkinson, the Artic Monkeys and the Queen, Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony welcomes the games to London.

Should any of the following be on this list?

For her struggle against the suppression of children, and the right of all children to education, Malala Yousafzai activist wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

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The rover snaps a selfie on Mars, capturing the surface of the planet. The photograph was taken from Vera Rubin Ridge on the Red Planet.

Social Media

There were social networking sites before the turn of the century, but It wasn’t until Friend’s Reunited and MySpace in the early 2000s that social networks achieved mainstream success, though even these seem insignificant when compared to Facebook. 21st Century social media connects real life to life online in a way that dominates our culture. When we pull out our smartphones, a great deal of the time we’re checking out what’s happening on social media.

Amazon Kindle

A portable library that stores all your books in one handheld device, the Kindle changed how we read and how we print. Suddenly you didn’t have to choose one beach book for vacation, you could bring them all with you in a handy tablet. It was the 2007 Amazon Kindle which first enabled users to browse, sample and purchase millions of books wirelessly for offline reading through its own Kindle store. It is still the leading e-reader.

A Democrat, Obama became the first African American to run for president for a major political party. He then went on to become the first African American to be elected president of the United States.

Scientists spotted a 12 mile-wide stretch of water underneath a slab of ice at the Martian south pole.Previous research found possible signs of intermittent liquid water flowing on the martian surface, but this was the first sign of a persistent body of water on the planet in the present day.The result was exciting because scientists have long searched for signs of present-day liquid water on Mars, but these have come up empty or yielded ambiguous findings.

Liquid water found beneath the surface of Mars

The 2003 fitness tracker - Fitbit

Fitbit

A wearable, wireless enabled device with an internal motion detector to track steps and count daily calorie burn. The Fitbit gave birth to a whole category of fitness tracker and set the course for the smartwatch boom to come.