The four years members of this year's graduating class have spent at Dartmouth have been marked by unrest and tumult at home and abroad, as the nation and world struggled with terror, war and unprecedented political situations. Here is a short summary of what happened:
2000
In November, just a month and a half after the Class of 2004 came to Dartmouth, a tight presidential campaign between then-Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush came to an end with no clear victor emerging. For weeks, politicians and the populace debated "hanging chads" and the failure of the Electoral College, before the Supreme Court decided in Bush's favor, making him the nation's next president.
2001
In January, Bush was inaugurated amid lingering complaints of unfair vote counts, put to rest later in the spring by full recounts of the ballots that indicated he would have won the state of Florida, upon whose electoral votes the presidency hinged.
The biggest news of the year came on Sept. 11, when terrorists linked with Osama bin Laden's radical al Qaida organization hijacked four U.S. passenger airliners, aiming them at key domestic targets. The terrorists flew one plane into each of the World Trade Center's twin towers in Manhattan, and one into the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked flight crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania, causing many to speculate that it was aimed for another Washington target, such as the White House.
The terrorist attacks quickly brought the nation's -- and the military's -- focus to Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led international coalition began air strikes on strongholds of the extremist Taliban government on Oct. 7. The Taliban had refused to hand over Osama bin Laden and was suspected of harboring Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups.
Terrorism-related fear did not end on Sept. 11, as mysterious letters laced with anthrax were sent to media outlets in Washington and New York as well as Sen. Tom Daschle's office, scaring citizens and confounding investigators. Among recipients and postal workers, there were five anthrax-related deaths.
The attacks also brought U.S. financial markets to a halt for a few days, exacerbating a financial slump that began at the end of 2000. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates a record 11 times in 2002, a measure that stemmed some declines, but the U.S. economy continued to deal with an unusual level of uncertainty.
In June, ousted Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was turned over to a United Nations war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Three indictments charged Milosevic with war crimes in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia over the past decade. Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was put to death by lethal injection that same month, the first federal prisoner executed in 38 years.
2002
In the year following the events of Sept. 11, the world could not escape from terror, as much of the year's news could be traced to the prior year's attacks. The search for bin Laden continued unsuccessfully. After months of speculation on his whereabouts or on whether he had survived United States strikes, bin Laden emerged in November in an audiotape broadcast on Arabic television, celebrating attacks on civilian, military and commercial targets in Yemen, Kuwait, Bali and Moscow and threatening retaliation on the U.S. and its allies for their military campaign in Afghanistan.
The American government responded to terrorist threats by issuing terror alerts, positioning military and National Guard forces and creating a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, led by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.
Meanwhile, the economy continued to suffer after Sept. 11 and a slew of corporate scandals, set off by the collapse of Enron, a Houston, Texas-based energy trading company. The bankruptcy led thousands of employees and investors to lose their savings as the company's stock plummeted. CEO Kenneth Lay and White House officials with close ties to the company denied they knew of Enron's accounting tricks when the media looked for answers to questions surrounding the bankruptcy.
The nation was frightened by sniper attacks at suburban gas stations and strip malls in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., which were performed by an Army-trained expert marksman and his teen-age accomplice. Police arrested John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17, also linking them to deaths in Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana.
The Bush administration turned its attention to Iraq as the site of the next battle in its war on terror. In a September speech before the United Nations, Bush accused Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of illicitly developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and threatened unilateral U.S. action if the world body refused to sanction military force. The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution to return weapons inspectors to Iraq over many countries' fears of war, and threatened serious consequences if Baghdad would not cooperate.
2003
The United States eventually went to war with Iraq, with a small international coalition including Great Britain and Spain, after lengthy debate in the U.N, and the war in Iraq -- including the coalition's invasion and struggles to rebuild the nation and maintain control -- dominated the year's headlines. The war began with targeted bombings March 19, the beginning of a "shock and awe" campaign to kill Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and damage his command structure.
Air strikes led to a swift ground push from Kuwait northward to Baghdad. Speaking to Navy soldiers under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished," Bush declared an end to major combat operations May 1.
But, fighting was far from over, as coalition forces found themselves continually faced with fatal attacks while trying to rebuild Iraq. The coalition did meet with successes, though, including the capture of Saddam in his "spider hole" hideout outside the city of Tikrit.
Outside Iraq, other nations experienced political instability. In Liberia, President Charles Taylor resigned his post and fled the country, opening the country up to international peacekeeping forces, in an attempt to end 14 years of civil unrest. In Europe, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated while Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze gave up power peacefully after widespread protests.
Here at home, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it returned to Earth over Texas Feb. 1, killing all seven astronauts aboard and leading to extensive investigations and policy changes at NASA.
An August blackout left tens of millions of people without electricity, knocking out power from New York City to Toronto, Ontario, for more than a day. The blackout was later traced to three power line failures in Ohio.
In politics, California Governor Gray Davis was recalled and defeated in an unprecedented October election. Davis was under fire for his handling of the state's fiscal crisis. At one point, California faced deficits as high as $38 billion.
2004
The war in Iraq continued a year after Bush declared an end to combat, as American soldiers still struggled to bring peace to the nation, facing attacks and unrest. The U.S. government has said that power will be turned over to an Iraqi government by June 30, despite unrest.
In May, photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad were released, sparking international controversy. The photographs showed prisoners naked, forced into humiliating positions. The soldiers involved blamed orders from higher-ups to torture prisoners as a way to extract military intelligence, while the White House and Pentagon denied involvement in the scandal.
Amid questioning of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has emerged as the Democratic presidential candidate, challenging Bush in the year's election. Kerry won nearly all of the primary contests, including New Hampshire, defeating Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.
The United States faced intensifying debate over the legality and morality of same-sex unions following the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's November 2003 decision to affirm the practice. Vanguard politicians, including San Francisco, Calif. mayor Gavin Newsom and New Paltz, N.Y. mayor Jason West, began issuing marriage licenses or performing weddings for same-sex couples, and later on May 17, an earlier court ruling made Massachusetts the first state to legalize gay marriage, despite state officials scrambling for a constitutional compromise that would bar the practice or allow civil unions instead. Bush and religious conservatives supported a constitutional amendment restricting gay marriage nationwide.
