Spirit of America Bookstore U.S.  Timeline  –  2017  to  2018 Ancient Times - 3500 B.C.E to 1490 C.E. 1491-1800    •    1801-1900    •    1901-1930    •    1931-1950    •    1951-1968    •    1969-2000 •    2001-2010    •    2011-2016    •    2019-2020    •    2021 forward    •    The Looming Future? The Emperor Trump Era    •    2018    •    post-election events The Looming Future? The decision to split this page arose because the 2011-Present page grew overbig and would for many visitors take too long to load, plus the Trump Presidency is a break with democracy and is in opposition to the former Spirit of America context: with the swearing-in of Emperor Trump, the fascist factions of the Republican Party control all three branches of the U.S. government. Trump's  Fascist  AmeriKKKa 2016 July 18-21: Republican Party National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio - the result was nominees Donald Trump and Mike Pence. 2016 July 25-28: Democratic Party National Convention in Philadelphia, PA - the result was nominees Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. 2016 Nov 8: The critical Election 2016: America vs. Fascism: Idiot billionaire Republican Donald J. Trump won the most electoral votes and Republicans retained control of the House and the Senate, while Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million. 2016 Dec 30: The stock market continued to expand the inevitable bubble: Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed at $19,762.60 (its best year since 2013); the Standard & Poor's 500 closed at $2,238.83; and the NASDAQ Composite Index closed at $5,383.12. "Donald Trump won the election, America lost." — G.E. Nordell, November 2016 2017 Jan 8: Four Iranian patrol boats approached within 900 yards of the guided-missile destroyer U.S.S. Mahan which was escorting two other Navy ships northward in the Strait of Hormuz; such behavior is considered harassment, and the U.S.S. Mahan fired three warning shots at the patrol boats, which then withdrew. 2017 Jan 17: President Obama commuted the 35-year sentence of convicted U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley/Chelsea Manning to seven years, which schedules his/her release for May 2017. 2017 Jan 20: Inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President #45/Emperor of the United States. 2017 Jan 21: Women's March on Washington, DC and elsewhere to protest Trump's plans; marches were held in more than 500 U.S. cities and attended by at least 3.3 million people, and was the single largest one‑day demonstration in U.S. history. {Raw Story video [4:45] at Facebook}                   2017 Jan 25 Wednesday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index rose above $20,000 for the first time, closing for the day at $19,912.71 and the S&P 500 broke above $2,300 for the first time, which prognosticators view as market confidence in Emperor Trump's policies. 2017 Feb 7: The end of Public Education in America! Billionaire demagogue Betsy Prince DeVos was confirmed by a squeaker vote in the U.S. Senate to become Emperor Trump's Secretary of Education and privatize the entire Education Department. 2017 Saturday Feb 11: As many as 200,000 Californians who live below Oroville Dam - completed in 1968, still tallest in the country - were evacuated as water began over-running damaged spillways. Recent heavy rains filled the reservoir and release of excess water opened a growing crater in an emergency spillway; while the dam itself is secure, the potential breach of the spillway structure could release thirty vertical feet of the water from behind the dam, an event described as an 'uncontrolled deluge'. UPDATE 10/2017: The official estimate of cost of repairs is now $500M. California's Department of Water Resources is hoping that F.E.M.A. will cover up to 75% of the final cost. 2017 Feb 16: 'Day Without Immigrants' protests hit Washington, DC and dozens of other sities in the U.S. in a national campaign to draw attention to the power and plight of immigrants; oppression by governments (permit refusal, arrests) and employers (fired for marching) was rampant. 2017 March: Credit agency Equifax suffered a major computer systems data security breach which was kept secret until reported by Bloomberg in September; the company said that the earlier intrusion was unrelated to the breach that the company discovered in July but did not disclose until six weeks later; the second breach may have impacted as many as 143 million people. 2017 March 8: 'A Day Without A Woman' protests in U.S.A. organized as part of International Women’s Day [est. 1909]. 2017 March 23: The completion of the international Keystone XL pipeline was approved by a letter from the U.S. State Department and confirmed next morning by Emperor Trump (who owns stock in the builders!). 2017 March 23: House Speaker Paul Ryan postponed the vote on the A.H.C.A. 'TrumpCare' bill; Emperor Trump announced his demand that Congress hold an up-or-down vote the next day; on Friday morning of March 24 Speaker Ryan announced cancellation of that vote; the common conclusion is that Ryan could not get enough Republican votes on their terrible health & tax break legislation. 2017 March 24: The stock markets recovered slightly after a week of selloffs, based on the cancellation of the A.H.C.A. vote; the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed at $20,596.72, the S&P 500 Index closed at $2,343.98, and the NASDAQ Composite Index closed at $5,828.74 – all were down for the week. 2017 March 28: California Attorney General Xavier Becerra charged anti-abortion activists David Robert Daleiden & Sandra Merritt with "15 felony counts of violating the privacy of health-care providers by recording confidential information without their consent". The duo used manufactured identities and a fictitious bioresearch company to initiate meetings with medical officials, covertly record the private discussions, and then release a series of manipulated videos trying to discredit Planned Parenthood. 2017 April 4-5: Sen. Jeff Merkley [Dem-OR] filibustered the vote on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court for over 15 hours, naming reason after reason to oppose Gorsuch, including the fact that nominator Emperor Trump is under investigation by the F.B.I. for various offenses, including treason. 2017 April 6: Emperor Trump faked a missile attack on Syria's Shayrat airfield as retaliation for the illegal chemical bombing attacks by Syrian military on civilians on April 4th. {See details on the Dateline Chamesa weblog.} 2017 Tuesday April 11: Special election in Kansas to fill the 4th Congressional District seat of fringe right-winger Mike Pompeo, just appointed to head Emperor Trump's C.I.A. The Republican Party candidate State Treasurer Ron Estes narrowly beat Democratic Party candidate James Thompson with 52.5% of voters vs. 45.7% (a difference of 8,200 votes). 2017 Saturday April 15: Tax March in Washington, DC or in your local community, demanding that Emperor Trump release his tax returns. 2017 April 18: Special election in Georgia to fill the 6th Congressional District seat vacated when Tom Price became Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services; leading Democratic contender Jon Ossoff, age 30, received 48.3% of the votes (among five Democrats) versus former Secretary of State Karen Handel with 19.8% of the votes (among 11 Republican candidates); there will be a runoff election June 20. 2017 April 19: Fox News Network’s biggest star Bill O’Reilly ('The No-Spine Zone') was fired over the multiple recent allegations of sexual harassment against him. 2017 May 1: Traditional International Workers' Day and May Day are being supported this year by the Resistance Movement in America; expanded events include parades in locations around the world, pledges for 'no purchases, no work, no school' that day, and wearing white in solidarity with immigrants and working families. 2017 May 2: Primary election for mayor of Jackson, Mississippi; the leading Democratic contender is Chokwe Antar Lumumba, backed by the local Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; he beat the Democratic incumbent at 55%, so no runoff election; the final election is June 6th. 2017 May 7: National election for president of France had centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron win by a landslide: 65.5 percent of the vote vs. rightist National Front candidate Marine Le Pen’s 34.5 percent - an embarrassment for backer Donald Trump. 2017 May 17: Convicted whistleblower Bradley/Chelsea Manning, who gave a trove of U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks, was released from federal prison; because legal appeals are pending, Manning remains in the Army on unpaid 'excess leave' status (which maintains access to medical care). 2017 May 20-27: First international trip by Emperor Trump, along with First Lady Melania Trump: Riyadh in Saudi Arabia; Jerusalem in Israel; Bethlehem in Palestine; Rome in Italy (met with Pope Francis); Brussels in Belgium (attended the 28th N.A.T.O. summit); and Taormina in Sicily (attended the 43rd G7 summit) 2017 May 22: Shrapnel-laden suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena by independent British-born Islamic terrorist at the end of a music concert; 22 adults & children were killed and 116 were injured, some critically. 2017 May 25: Special election in Montana to fill the at-large [MT-01] Congressional seat vacated by Ryan Zinke when he became Secretary of the Interior. Violence-prone Republican candidate Greg Gianforte received 49.9% of the vote while folk musician Democratic candidate Rob Quist received 43.8%. (While not a win, Democrats coming close in Montana is a major accomplishment.) 2017 June 1: Emperor Trump announced that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris Accords on Climate Change. 2017 June 2: The governors of California, Washington, and New York announced formation of the United States Climate Alliance, which will serve as a way for states and cities to coordinate actions for meeting U.S. goals agreed to in the 2015 Paris Accords on Climate Change. Mayors of 61 cities and governors of seven other states have agreed to participate. 2017 June 3: Street terrorism in London, England at London Bridge and adjacent Borough Market; seven pedestrians were killed by a van on the sidewalk and by stabbings with 'long knives'; police killed the three attackers and carried out raids, arresting a dozen people; at least 48 injured were taken to hospitals. (Death toll later rose to 8 when a body was found in the River Thames.) 2017 June 3: N.S.A. contractor Reality Leigh Winner was arrested and charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly providing a media organization with a top-secret document that analyzed information about alleged Russian online intrusions into U.S. elections. (By charging her under the 101-year-old law, she will not be allowed to defend herself by arguing that the release of the document was in the public interest.) She pled guilty in June 2018 in exchange for a reduced sentence of 5 years in prison and three years probation. 2017 June 6: Symbolic election for mayor of Jackson, Mississippi; Democrat Chokwe Antar Lumumba beat the Republican candidate and takes office on July First. 2017 June 8: Former F.B.I. director James Comey testified before Congress. 2017 June 13: Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified before Congress. 2017 June 14: Donald Trump turned 71. 2017 early June 14: A 24-story-tall government-run residential building called Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, London, England caught fire just before 1am and burned for 24 hours; the official death toll a week later stood at 79 residents and visitors. The cause of the disaster is attributed to poor management of fire and safety requirements and to the 2016 renovation which included illegal exterior 'cladding'. (The choice for substandard cladding material saved less than £7,000 on a job budgeted at £8.7 million.) 2017 Wednesday morning June 14: A recently homeless Sanders supporter from Illinois shot five people at an early-morning practice for the traditional annual Congressional baseball game; Congressman Steve Scalise (R–LA) required immediate surgery, an aide was taken to the hospital, a lobbyist received a leg wound, and two Capitol Police officers were wounded and still fought back, killing the perpetrator. (Scalise recovered with great effort and returned to Congress on September 28.) 2017 Wednesday afternoon June 14: The House cancelled a scheduled hearing in which a National Rifle Association leader was to push for the deregulation of gun silencers. 2017 June 20: Runoff election for Georgia Congressional District 6: Republican Karen Handel won with 51.9% of the vote while Democrat Jon Ossoff repeated his amazing accomplishment of 48.1% of voters. 2017 June 22: The Republican majority in the U.S. Senate revealed their written-in-secret 'Trump Doesn't Care' health bill, set for a floor vote next week without hearings or amendments. Former President Barack Obama issued a statement: “The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions. Discrimination based on pre-existing conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.  ¶Simply put, if there’s a chance [that] you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm.” 2017 early June 27: A massive cyberattack hit Europe with widespread ransom demands; Ukraine was hit hardest, but computers from Russia to Great Britain were affected. 2017 June 27: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informed his Republican colleagues that they don't have the votes to pass 'TrumpCare' at the moment, and there will be NO vote on health care cuts before the July 4 recess. {A victory for Democrats!} 2017 July 7–8: G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. 2017 July 9-11: Details were revealed about the 9 July 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York City, including texts of a weeklong series of emails. 2017 July 12: Congressman Brad Sherman [Dem-CA30] introduced House Resolution 438, Articles of Impeachment of Donald John Trump for Obstruction of Justice; the bill has been stuck in the House Judiciary Committee since that time. 2017 July 20: The NASDAQ Composite Index set an all-time record at $6,390; several other NASDAQ indexes also set new records. 2017 Late July: Google employee software engineer James Damore wrote and sent a 10-page internal memo in which he argued that the company’s current diversity initiatives were 'discriminatory' against those who weren’t women or people of color, that the company should focus more on 'ideological' diversity, and that the under-representation of women in some engineering and leadership positions among Google’s staff was better explained by biological gender differences rather than by institutional bias. The memo was published on Gizmodo on August 5th, setting off a social media uproar. Damore filed an N.R.L.B. discrimination complaint on August 7, and on the same day was fired for 'perpetuating gender stereotypes' in violation of company policy. Damore is planning legal action against Google for his firing. The saga is listed on Wikipedia as "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber". 2017 Early August: The deadly 'Lucifer' heat wave hit many countries in Europe with record temperatures higher than 100F° over several days, contributing to deaths in Macedonia, Romania, and Poland, and Italy; farmers lost more than $1 billion worth of crops that were simply scorched in their fields. 2017 August: The Republican Party of Nevada is so intolerant of democracy that they launched three recall campaigns against three female members of the state legislature. Their first target is Nevada Democratic Senator Joyce Woodhouse; the second is Democrat-leaning Independent Patricia Farley; the third is new Nevada Democratic Senator Nicole Cannizzaro. The recall petitions do not specify any cause, the citizen signers did so on the simplistic basis that Democrats are not fascist Republicans. 2017 Aug 3: Special counsel Robert Mueller initiated a grand jury in Washington, DC in connection with his investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. 2017 Aug 12: The rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia   turned violent, with one protester dead and 19 injured   (two police officers died in a helicopter crash); hundreds of peaceful protesters marched in Oakland, California and then blocked I-580 in both directions. A smaller rally in Los Angeles and candlelight vigils in San Francisco and in San Diego County remained peaceful. UPDATE 12/2018: The driver of the car was convicted of first-degree murder as well as nine other counts. 2017 Aug 21: Total solar eclipse visible in U.S.A.    2017 Thursday Aug 24: Residents on the coast of Texas & Louisiana began evacuating ahead of Hurricane Harvey's expected landfall late Friday or early Saturday, based on warnings of 'potentially life-threatening and devastating flooding' and up to 35 inches of rain. The Gulf Coast is home to half the nation's oil refining capacity, and energy companies began shutting down coastal refineries, as well as offshore oil production and natural gas production. Two weeks later, the confirmed death toll is now 66. 2017 Wednesday Aug 30: Emperor Trump's campaign visit to Harvey-ravaged Texas was to Corpus Christi - 30 miles away - because Houston was flooded. 2017 Friday Sept 1: Hurricane Harvey is downgraded from hurricane status, but still earned the title 'Superstorm' - it has been designated the most extreme rain event in U.S. history. Hurricane Irma is on the way, possibly aimed at the Tampa Bay area. 2017 Sept 7: A magnitude 8.1 earthquake shook Chiapas, Mexico just before Midnight; the event was centered off the coast and was felt by 50 million people; it was quickly designated the second-largest quake in Mexico since 1787 and the largest Mexican quake since 1985 in Mexico City. Three days later, the estimated damage included 41,000 homes and the official death toll had climbed to 90. 2017 Sept 8: Credit agency Equifax announced that it had suffered a major computer systems data security breach, not discovered until July 29th; the intrusion may have impacted as many as 143 million people in the U.S.A, 44 million in the U.K., and a hundred thousand in Canada. The company has offered free credit security service for a year, but the phone munbers are permanently busy and Equifax hasn't figured out how to send confirmation emails to new clients (and hurricane damage in Florida and Georgia is no excuse). Ten days later Bloomberg revealed an earlier computer systems data security breach in March that was kept secret. In both incidents, Equifax hired cybersecurity firm Mandiant to investigate. 2017 Sept 10: After wreaking widespread devastation in the Caribbean, with at least 36 people there killed, Hurricane Irma hit Florida's West Coast on Sunday morning; at least 101 deaths were reported (44 in the Caribbean and 57 in the United States); 12-13 million residents in Florida were without power, and more than a million people lost power in Georgia. 2017 Sept 11-12: The U.S. Senate approved a bipartisan joint resolution condemning the violence at last month's white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and urging President Trump to denounce racist and anti-semitic hate groups; next day the House unanimously also passed the resolution; by sending the measure to Trump for his signature, lawmakers are trying to force the president to forcefully denounce racist extremism. 2017 Sept 12: Apple unveiled three new iPhones (ten years after the product's launch): the iPhone 8, the iPhone 8 Plus, and the iPhone X (pron. 'ten'). While the first two are upgrades to the company’s previous models, the iPhone X has a fresh design and a slew of new features, including facial recognition – as well as a $1,000-plus price tag. 2017 Sept 12-15: Republican Party state legislators held a mock Constitutional convention over four days in Phoenix, Arizona; the practice topic was balancing the budget, but a real convention could add or delete any number of anti-worker, pro-fascist, anti-human rights, pro-discrimination, and-or voter suppression changes to the U.S. Constitution. (Republicans control 32 of the country's state legislatures, two more would give them the leverage needed to call for such a convention, under Article V of the Constitution.) 2017 Sept 15: After more than 13 years orbiting the planet Saturn, the Cassini mission was ended by sending the spacecraft crashing into the planet's atmosphere (gathering tons of data as it did so). 2017 Sept 18: Hurricane Maria increased strength to Category 5 and made its first landfall, devastating the tiny eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, then continued toward the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico - it could be the strongest storm to hit Puerto Rico in 85 years. 2017 Sept 19: Toys 'R' Us, Inc., the nation's largest toy store chain, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S.A. and Canada; the situation is caused by the huge debt load created by vulture capitalists Bain Capital, K.K.R., and Vornado Realty Trust in 2005. 2017 Sept 19: A magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook Mexico City and the neighboring states of Morelos & Puebla on Tuesday afternoon, killing more than 240 people and damaging buildings over a 100-mile area. 2017 Sept 20: Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico with 155-mph winds, apparently knocking out power to the entire island of 3.4 million people. The death toll as-of October 2nd was 34 people in Puerto Rico, 30 in Dominica, 5 in the Dominican Republic, 3 in Haiti, 3 in mainland United States, 2 on Guadeloupe, and 1 in the U.S. Virgin Islands. UPDATE May 2018: Roughly 4,600 people, possibly more, died in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria, largely from delayed or interrupted medical care, according to a report by Harvard researchers. That's more than 70 times the government's official death toll of 64. The new estimate would make Hurricane Maria deadlier than Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,833 people in 2005. 2017 Sept 22: The Department of Homeland Security notified 21 states that they were targeted for hacking by the Russian government in advance of the 2016 election; in most cases, this targeting amounted only to research and preparation. No voting machines were compromised in any state. 2017 Sept 23: A strong new magnitude 6.2 earthquake shook Mexico, toppling already-damaged homes and a highway bridge and causing new alarm in a country reeling from two recent quakes that together have killed nearly 300 people; the new temblor was centered about 11 miles (18 kilometers) south-southeast of Matias Romero in the state of Oaxaca. More than half the recent deaths - 157 - perished in the capital, while another 73 died in the state of Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico State, six in Guerrero, and one in Oaxaca. 2017 Sept 26: The Republican Party's latest cowardly attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act was defeated when three U.S Senators said that they would vote against it: the vote would be 49-51. 2017 Sept 26: Sonic Drive-In fastfood chain, which has more than 3,500 restaurants in 44 states, reported that it had experienced a credit card-related data breach, possibly compromising millions of credit & debit card accounts; Sonic's stock plunged by 4.4 percent next day. 2017 Sept 29: Former Georgia Congressman Tom Price resigned as Emperor Trump's Secretary of Health & Human Services because he was caught using more than $1M in department funds to charter private jets for personal travel over routes with readily available commercial transport at much lower cost. 2017 Oct 1: The Republican-majority 115th U.S. Congress let the Children's Health Insurance Program {CHIP} expire, defunding health insurance for 9 million American children. 2017 Oct 1: A deranged American-born terrorist killed 59 people and injured over 520 by spraying concert-goers from the 32nd floor of a hotel on the Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada; police located the gunman when smoke alarms reacted to the cloud of gunsmoke in his room; the terrorist had shot himself by the time cops got there. Next day, the stock price of several gun manufacturers rose by 6-7%. 2017 Oct 5: Tropical Storm Nate killed at least 22 in Central America en route to the U.S. - 15 in Nicaragua and 7 in Costa Rica; the storm is expected to hit the tip of Yucatan and then the U.S. Gulf Coast, the prediction being hurricane-force winds from the Coast northward along the Mississippi-Alabama border. The storm's winds weakened to 'tropical storm' level, but still brought heavy rain along its path. 2017 Oct 7: California’s Gov. Brown signed landmark, first-in-the-nation campaign disclosure legislation called the California DISCLOSE Act {AB 249} which requires ballot measure ads and independent expenditure ads for or against candidates to clearly and prominently show the identity of their top three funders – even if they hide behind multiple layers of front groups; the law takes effect 1 January 2018. 2017 Oct 8-9: A series of 17 wildfires began across Northern California that were designated the deadliest wildfires in California history: by Sunday October 15th, officials reported that at least 40 people were killed, over 100 people were hospitalized, and more than 5,700 homes & buildings were destroyed. 2017 Oct 9: The Washington Post reported that Google found that Russian agents spent tens of thousands of dollars to place political ads on its platforms, including YouTube, Gmail, and Google Search, aiming to spread disinformation and influence last year's presidential election. 2017 Oct 14: Terrorist truck bombs exploded in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia; a large explosion went off after a truck was stopped at a checkpoint by police, flattening the Safari Hotel and severely damaging the Qatari embassy. A second truck was stopped by police and later exploded without casualty. The hotel bomb killed an estimated 320 and injured 300 others. A third truck exploded later that day, killing two people. 2017 Oct 16: Hurricane Ophelia lost power before making landfall as a post-tropical storm on the south-western coast of Ireland, but still left 245,000 homes & businesses without power and tens of thousands of people without water; three people died from falling trees. 2017 Oct 17 Tuesday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index rose above $23,000 for the first time, closing for the day at $22,997.44. 2017 Oct 18 Wednesday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index jumped by 160 points (0.7%) to close above 23,000 for the first time ever, boosted by IBM's biggest one-day jump since 2009; U.S. stock futures dropped early Thursday, signaling a pullback, yet still closing at $23,163.04. 2017 Oct 29 Sunday: Tropical Storm Philippe made landfall on the southern tip of Florida and then moved up the Atlantic coast; Philippe is not expected to reach hurricane force, but flash flood warnings are issued for New York City and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, since the storm might produce up to eight inches of rain in some locations. 2017 Oct 30: Lobbyist Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates were indicted by RussiaGate Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Grand Jury on multiple counts each; both surrendered to the F.B.I. that day. 2017 Oct 30: News outlets revealed that a third person, minor Trump campaign employee George Papadopoulos, pled guilty several weeks ago to campaign collusion-related charges. 2017 Nov 3-14: President Trump visit to Asia over 12 days, stopping first at Hawai'i, then to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. 2017 Nov 5: Leakage by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists of the Paradise Papers, a trove of 13.4 million records from law firms Appleby and Estera (who split is 2016) that exposes ties between Russia and U.S. President Donald Trump’s billionaire commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, the secret dealings of the chief fundraiser for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and the offshore interests of more than 120 political figures around the world, including the Queen of England. 2017 Tuesday Nov 7: Historic election victories for Democratic Party candidates running for state governorships and for numerous state and local offices. In Virginia: Ralph Northam won the governor's seat, Justin Fairfax won for Lt. Governor, Mark Herring was re-elected Attorney General, and the Dems flipped at least 14 Virginia House seats. In New Jersey: Phil Murphy won the governor's seat, Sheila Oliver won for Lt. Governor, and Vin Gopal flipped the 11th state Senate district. In Washington State, Manka Dhingra won the special election, flipping control of the state Senate from red to blue. In New Hampshire: Democrats won two more state House special elections - four seats now flipped from red to blue this year! 2017 Nov 15: Very quiet military coup in Zimbabwe, with near-permanent President Mugabe ‘safe’ under house arrest; the stated plan is to bring democracy to the nation. 2017 Nov 21: Bloomberg News revealed that hackers stole names, email addresses, and phone numbers of 57 million Uber riders around the world in a breach dating back to October 2016; data on more than 7 million Uber drivers was also stolen, including over 600,000 drivers' license records. Rather than coming forward about this, Uber's head of security gave a $100,000 bribe to the same hackers who stole the data in order to keep them quiet and delete the evidence. 2017 Nov 24: 311 people were killed and at least 122 others were injured when Islamist militants attacked a Sufi mosque on Egypt's Sinai coast; the attackers reportedly planted bombs inside the mosque, then fired on worshipers as they tried to flee. The worshipers at the mosque were Sufi Muslims, who are considered heretical by Sunni extremists. 2017 Nov 26: The Mount Gunung Agung volcano on the resort island of Bali in Indonesia erupted for the first time since the double eruption of 1963. Authorities canceled flights and evacuated 100,000 people; experts say that lava is welling up in its crater, which indicates the imminent potential for a larger eruption. 2017 Nov 26: Cryptocurrency Bitcoin passed the $9,000 mark, then passed the $10,000 mark on November 30. 2017 Nov 27: Cyber Monday set a record in the U.S.A. with $6.59B in sales, making it the biggest U.S. shopping day in history, according to a report by Adobe Analytics; the total marked a 16.8 percent increase over the previous record of $5.65B set last year. Amazon keeps its sales results to itself, but it's Cyber Monday online sales were around 42 percent, or $2.77B. 2017 Nov 30: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed above $24,000 for the first time in history after surging by 331 points, or 1.4 percent; the S&P 500 closed at $2,647.58 and the Nasdaq Composite closed at 6,873.97 — all three indexes set record highs. 2017 Dec 1: Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making 'willfully' false statements to the F.B.I. about his contact with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak while working for candidate and President Donald Trump. Flynn is said to be coöperating with Meuller's investigators. 2017 Dec 4: A huge wildfire erupted Monday night above the town of Santa Paula in California; it was named the Thomas Fire because it began near Thomas Aquinas College. Whipped by fierce Santa Ana winds, by next day the fire had spread to 65,000 acres (26,000 hectares), involving parts of Ojai and City of Ventura. Destruction of electrical transmission infrastructure left 260,000 customers without power. By Thursday it had burned 90,000 acres, forcing evacuation of 50,000 people. 2017 Dec 6: The same extreme Santa Ana winds continued and spread a wildfire in Sepulveda Canyon, between West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley; it was named the Skirball Fire, after the cultural museum at the top of the pass; officials closed the I-405 Freeway, the Bel Air Country Club, the Getty Museum, several private schools, and streets inside the gated community of Bel Air; classes were also closed at nearby U.C.L.A.   2017 Dec 7: Cryptocurrency Bitcoin rose to hyper-inflated $15,000, a rise of 20% in just one day, on the news that two Chicago exchanges will be trading Bitcoin futures starting next week. 2017 Dec 7: Congress passed stopgap legislation 235-193 to prevent a government shutdown since there is no new budget; the legislation covers federal spending thru December 22, by which time Congressional leaders hope to have ironed out a solution. Standard and Poor's estimates that a government shutdown would cost the U.S. economy $6.5 billion a week. The Senate approved with a vote of 81-14, and Emperor Trump signed the bill next day. 2017 Dec 8-13: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed at a record high for four straight days, ending at $24,585.43. 2017 Dec 12: The Alabama special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions (who became Trump's Attorney General) was won by the Democratic candidate, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. The vote was 21,000 over creepy sex-offender Republican Roy Moore; Moore chose not to concede, hoping that absentee and military ballots might produce a different result. The tally of 49.92% for Jones and 48.38% for Moore was essentially caused by the 22,780 write-in votes by Republicans who could not stomach Moore but could not vote Democrat either. 2017 Dec 14: The Walt Disney Company announced the planned purchase of the majority of broadcast & movie assets from rival 21st Century Fox for $52.4B in an all-stock deal; Rupert Murdoch & family will keep Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports, and the physical Fox movie studios property in West Los Angeles. Murdoch will have 25% ownership of the new entity, which will include Fox's 30% share of Hulu. 2017 Dec 17: Cryptocurrency Bitcoin reached an all-time (bubble) high value of $19,795.61 at 5am. 2017 Dec 17-18: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world's busiest airport, lost power for 11 hours, caused by an electrical fire in a substation; hundreds of passengers were stranded and more than 1,000 scheduled flights were grounded; power was restored early Monday, just before the start of the holiday travel rush. 2017 Dec 20: The dreadful Republican Tax Swindle was passed by both houses of Congress and quickly signed by Emperor Trump. 2017 Dec 21: Congress passed a second stopgap measure to prevent a government shutdown since there is still no new budget; the legislation covers federal spending thru January 19; the House vote was 231 to 188, and the Senate vote was 66 to 32. Trump signed the bill and Congress went home for the holiday break. 2017 Friday Dec 22: Cryptocurrency Bitcoin opened low and dropped lower, all the way to $10,834.94; the effective close mid-day was $13,558.38, a loss of 12.87% and also a loss of 27% for the week. 2017 Dec 22: Southern California's Thomas Fire became the state's largest wildfire in recorded history; as-of Friday night, the blaze had burned 273,400 acres (about 427 square miles), and destroyed more than 1,000 structures; one civilian and one firefighter died. High winds on Saturday imperil Downtown Santa Barbara. 2017 Dec 28: McDonald's, Inc launched the McVegan burger in hundreds of restaurants across Sweden and Finland. 2017 Dec 28: Alabama's Secretary of State certified Democrat Doug Jones as the winner in the December 12 Special Election for U.S Senator. 2017 Dec 29-31: Year-end values for the Stock Market Casino were: Dow Jones Industrial Average Index at $24,719.22, S&P 500 Index at $2,673.61, NASDAQ Composite Index at $6,903.39 and Cryptocurrency Bitcoin at $13,834.33. The  Year  2 0 1 8 2018 Jan 3: Congress reconvened and seated the winner of Alabama's special Senate election, Democrat Doug Jones, reducing the GOP's Senate majority to 51-49. Democrat appointee Tina Smith also was sworn in to replace Democrat former Minnesota Senator Al Franken. 2018 Jan 3-4: A historic cyclone and blizzard on the U.S. East Coast got named Winter Storm Grayson; it brought rare snow and ice to Florida and Georgia then moved northward, gathering strength and dumping up to three feet of snow per hour; by late January 4th, the storm had caused six deaths and was moving past the Bay of Fundy in Canada. The unprecedented storm officially caused ten deaths and flooded lots of towns and streets around Boston; the next three days included single-digit temperatures for one third of the country, with the wind-chill factor going even further below freezing. 2018 Jan 4: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index hit a history-making $25,000, just 19 trading sessions after it hit $24,000. 2018 January: Emperor Trump's lawyers issued an un-Constitutional 'cease and desist' letter against a book by journalist Michael Wolff with reporting on six months of direct access to the internal mess that is the Trump White House. The media frenzy created 'unprecedented demand', so the publisher moved the publi-cation date from Tuesday January 9 to Friday January 5 - making the lawyers's letter entirely moot and the book an immediate Amazon bestseller.    "Fire and Fury: Inside The Trump White House" [2018] by journalist Michael Wolff Kindle Edition from Henry Holt/Macmillan [1/2018] for $14.99 Henry Holt & Co. 9½x6½ hardcover [1/2018] for $18.00 Macmillan audio CD read by Holter Graham [1/2018] for $26.48 2018 January: A heat wave pushed temperatures to 117 degrees Fahrenheit in Sydney, Australia, the hottest in 78 years; authorities in the neighboring state of Victoria were forced to warn drivers that a six-mile stretch of freeway was 'melting'. 2018 Jan 9 A 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck in the Caribbean sea, briefly triggering a tsunami warning for hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands; the quake was felt across Central America, and as far north as Mexico's Quintana Roo state; the U.S. Tsunami Center warned that parts of coastal Honduras and Belize could get waves a few feet high. The bigoted, white supremacist former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, announced that he is running for Senate in Arizona. Heavy rains following the California wildfires produced slides of mud and boulders on hillsides now absent any vegetation; the mudslide death toll rose to 17 next day and rescue crews were still trying to reach about 300 people trapped in their homes in Montecito (east of Santa Barbara). Dozens remained missing, 28 people were injured, and about 100 homes were destroyed. A week later, the official death toll was 20, with four people still missing; at least 73 homes were destroyed and 61 others were damaged. 2018 Jan 12: Wal-Mart, Inc. announced that it will close 63 Sam's Club stores in 24 states and Puerto Rico; as many as 11,000 workers will lose their jobs. Later in the month, Wal-Mart announced elimination of 400 to 500 jobs at its headquarters. 2018 Jan 13: Transgender former soldier & convicted whistleblower Chelsea Manning announced her intention to run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, challenging Democrat Ben Cardin, who has served two terms. 2018 Jan 13: The Bulkang Mayon Volcano in the Bicol Region of the Philippine island of Luzon began weeks of volcanic activity that has included shooting lava nearly half a mile into the sky, clouds off ash in the sky, and rain showers are expected to cause deadly lahars (volcanic flows of mud & water & debris); tens of thousands of nearby residents fled and officials ordered mandatory evacuations in some areas. 2018 Jan 16: A sizeable meteor lit up the night sky in Ypsilanti, Michigan and got filmed by many amateurs, and even by residential surveillance cameras; first reported as causing an earthquake at 2.0 magnitude, officials quickly changed that to a shock wave; fear-mongering conspiracy theorists blamed 'directed energy weapons' on satellites. 2018 Saturday Jan 20: The Republican-controlled Senate was unable to pass a spending bill by Midnight on Friday, and the government was essentially shut down; a four-week spending bill, which passed 230-197 in the House on Thursday, failed 50-49 in the Senate (it needed 60 votes to pass). About 850,000 federal workers will be furloughed, while employees deemed 'essential' will stay on the job without pay. 2018 Sunday Jan 21: CalTrans reopened U.S. Highway 101 in Montecito twelve days after the mudslides. 2018 Jan 22: Toys ‘R’ Us announced plans to close 180 stores (nearly 20% of its Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us locations) pending expected approval by the bankruptcy court. The company did not specify how many jobs will disappear. 2018 Jan 22: Congress has voted to fund the government, but only through February 8 (for three weeks); Senate Democrats agreed to pass a spending bill that would fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years, but not resolve the D.A.C.A. immigration/deportation issue. (Mitch McConnell agreed to allow consideration of a Democrat bill on D.A.C.A. before the February 8th deadline.) 2018 Jan 23: A 7.9-magnitude earthquake centered about 170 miles southeast of Kodiak, Alaska occurred at a half hour past Midnight Alaska time at a depth of six miles; the National Weather Service Tsunami Warning Center quickly issued a tsunami watch for the West Coast from California to Alaska, inducing a varying level of panic, but soon cancelled the alert. 2018 Thursday Jan 23: President Trump arrived at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and gave a keynote address on Friday. 2018 Jan 29-30: The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped on Monday & Tuesday, a two-day, 540-point (2.04%) selloff. 2018 Jan 30: Emperor Trump's first State of The Union address, before Congress and on live television. 2018 Feb 2: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed at $25,520.96, down 665.75 points (2.54%), the S&P 500 fell 2.12 percent, and the NASDAQ 5-day loss was 3.53% – making this the worst week for market measures in two years. 2018 Feb 2: The House Intelligence Committee, which is chaired by Republican Cong. Devin Nunes [CA‑22], released a four-page 'spin' memo alleging surveillance abuses by the F.B.I. { full text of the Nunes 'spin' memo • full text with NPR fact-checking } 2018 Monday Feb 5: Another really bad market day: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed at $24,345.75, down 1,175.21 points (4.60%!), the S&P 500 Index closed at $2,648.94 - a loss of $113.19 (4.10%), and the NASDAQ Composite Index fell 273.42 points (3.78%) to close at $6,967.53. Japan’s Nikkei Index stock average dropped more than 6 percent on Tuesday, after falling 2½ percent a day earlier; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index sank nearly 4 percent, as markets in Australia, Korea and China also fell. 2018 Monday Feb 5: Cryptocurrency Bitcoin dropped 50 percent in 16 days, falling to $6,200. 2018 Feb 6: Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully launched the maiden voyage of the Falcon Heavy cargo rocket, with a 'dummy payload' of Musk's midnight cherry Tesla Roadster; the rocket is headed for orbit around the planet Mars. 2018 Thursday Feb 8: Still another really bad market day: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed at $23,860.46, down 1,032.89 points (4.15%!), the S&P 500 Index closed at $2,581.00 - a loss of $100.66 (3.75%), and the NASDAQ Composite Index fell 274.82 points (3.90%) to close at $6,777.16. Global stocks followed, sinking on Friday. The losses left the S&P 10 percent below its January high, the official threshold of a market correction. 2018 Friday Feb 9: The federal government technically shut down at Midnight for lack of funding; the Senate passed the spending bill around 2 a.m. and the House voted for passage 240-186 at 5:30 a.m.; Emperor Trump signed the bill ten minutes later. 2018 Friday Feb 9: Overall, the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed Friday down 6.2 percent from Monday's opening bell. 2018 Friday Feb 14: A 19-year-old white supremicist former student killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with an AR-15 automatic rifle; fourteen people were taken to hospitals; the shooter was arrested two miles away and has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. 2018 Feb 16 U.S. stocks rose for the fifth straight session on Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index gaining 1.2 percent to regain the $25,000 level for the first time in nearly two weeks; the S&P 500 Index also added 1.2 percent, and the NASDAQ Composite Index rose by 1.6 percent. (The Dow and S&P are still 4 percent to 6 percent below last month's highs, but well above the low points.) Another earthquake in Oaxaca, Mexico, this time at 7.2 magnitude; the earthquake was unusually long, followed by 225 aftershocks, and left about one million homes & businesses without power; few injuries in the quake, but 14 killed when a helicopter inspecting the damage crashed onto a highway. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that RussiaGate Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies for allegedly interfering with the U.S. political system thru an elaborate, social media-powered disinformation scheme and by staging political rallies and posing as grassroots advocates for the candidates. Separately, the special counsel’s office announced that an American citizen had pled guilty to facili-tating payments through stolen identities. Richard Pinedo of Santa Paula, California pled guilty to one count of identity fraud; he is a self-described digital marketing strategist who once ran a website that sold stolen bank account and credit card information to people needing to get around security measures on online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay. He insists, believably, that he had no idea that any of his customers were Russian nationals. 2018 Feb 21: Two-day loss of 422 points left the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index closed at $24,797.78 (again below $25,000); the S&P 500 Index closed down at $2,701. 2018 Feb 21: Special Counsel Robert Mueller's RussiaGate investigation team filed new sealed criminal charges against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates; the new charges involving bank and tax fraud boosted the total from 17 to 58. 2018 Feb 22: Amnesty International officially declared Donald Trump a human rights violator. 2018 Feb 22: Teachers across West Virginia walked off the job over pay and benefits, causing more than 277,000 public school students to miss classes; educators swarmed the state Capitol in Charleston to protest and all 55 counties in the state closed schools. Teachers went back to work after 9-day strike having forced the legislature to enact 5-percent pay raise for all state employees. 2018 March 12: Pennsylvania 18th Congressional District Special Election results 'too close to call'; Democrat Conor Lamb got 49.9% to beat incumbent Republican Rick Saccone's 49.5%; after 1000 absentee ballots were counted next day, Lamb won by only 627 votes and Saccone did not concede; although expected to request a recount, Saccone conceded 8 days later. 2018 March 14: Nationwide 17-minute student & teacher walkout in honor of murdered students in Florida, called for by Women's March organizers. Friday 2018 March 16: Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica, a firm that ran data operations for President Trump's 2016 campaign; Facebook also banned parent company Kogan. Late 2018 March 16: Emperor Trump fired F.B.I. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe - by tweet! - just two days before his pension date. 2018 Monday March 19: Facebook's stock fell by 7.1 percent as CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced calls from U.S. and European leaders to explain how a data firm linked to President Trump's campaign (Cambridge Analytica) got access to information on at least 50 million Facebook users. Facebook shares finished the day down 13 percent from a record high reached in February; Zuckerberg is said to have lost $6B (virtual money) on that single day. 2018 Tuesday March 20: Cambridge Analytica suspended CEO Alexander Nix pending a full investigation into the undercover video that was broadcast by Britain's Channel 4 News in which Nix appeared to boast of the data firm's success in influencing elections in foreign countries. 2018 March 22: Tens of thousands of French citizens took to the streets across France as railway workers, teachers, students, and air traffic controllers went on strike to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s economic and social policies. 2018 March 24: 'Hundreds of thousands' of fed-up American students and teachers and citizens marched together 'begging for our lives' in Washington, DC and many other cities - "Protect kids, not guns".The organizers said that 800,000 marchers showed up in Washington, DC – a bigger crowd than Trump's inauguration. 2018 March 31: A marine fuel oil spill covering about 12 square kilometers (4.6 square miles) in Jakarta, Indonesia put the city of Balikpapan and Semayang Port in an emergency state; the whole area reeked of gasoline fumes, there were several fires, four people were killed, and one person is missing. 2018 April 1: The Hudson's Bay Company, the Canadian corporation that owns the Saks and Lord & Taylor luxury department store chains, confirmed a massive cyberattack; their hired cybersecurity research firm said a well-known ring of hackers had obtained the credit and debit card numbers of five million customers. 2018 April 2: Schools shut down across Oklahoma and Kentucky as teachers walked out on strike and rallied at state capitols to demand more funding for public education. 2018 April 2: After China announced new tariffs on U.S. goods, the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index fell by 758 points before clawing back a bit to close down by 458.92 points (1.9%) and closed at $23,644.19 (again below $24,000); the S&P 500 Index closed down 58.99 points (2.23%) at $2,581.88, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ dropped by 2.7 percent. 2018 April 3: Food retailer Panera Bread acknowledged a data breach, saying that customer information was vulnerable on its company website for at least eight months, specifically customers who had registered for the MyPanera program to order food online. Panera estimated that fewer than 10,000 customers had been affected by the leak; security news site Krebs On Security put the number at closer to 37 million. 2018 April 3: A young Muslim female shooter attacked the headquarters of YouTube in San Bruno, California around lunchtime; she wounded three people, one critically, then killed herself. 2018 April 9: F.B.I. agents raided the office, home, and hotel room of Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen; the material seized included documents related to Cohen's $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels; Cohen reportedly is being investigated for bank and wire fraud, and for campaign finance violations. 2018 April 10: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified {in a suit!} for five hours before members of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees; next day he testified for five hours before the House Energy & Commerce Committee. 2018 April 11: House Speaker Paul Ryan [GOP WI-01 1999-2018] announced that he will not seek re-election in 2018. 2018 April 12: The Oklahoma Education Association [est. 1889], the stste's largest teachers union, ended a nearly two-week walkout that affected most public schools statewide; after decades of cuts to school budgets, the Republican-dominated legislature passed its first major tax hikes in a quarter century to raise $450 million for education. 2018 April 12: Albuquerque, New Mexico became the latest city to decriminalize marijuana possession in small amounts; the ordinance signed into law by Mayor Keller makes possession of less than an ounce a misdemeanor with a fine of $25 (the plan is to make the bust not worth a cop's time, so that their attention can be on more serious crimes). The announcement emphasized that possession is still a state and federal crime. 2018 April 13: Emperor Donald Trump issued a full pardon for traitor and TreasonGate participant Lewis 'Scooter' Libby; Libby was convicted of four felonies in 2007 but his sentence was commuted by President George W. Bush: Libby served no jail time but was unable to practice law. 2018 April 14 & 15: Tax Day Rally and March events [2018 = #2] across America protesting the Trump Tax giveaway. 2018 April 18: Puerto Rico was hit with an island-wide blackout leaving nearly all of the island's 1.4 million utility customers without electricity. Officials blamed an excavator that got too close to a transmission line, and said that it could take up to 36 hours to restore power. While the island's power grid has been nearly fully restored, about 40,000 customers still are without electricity service since the devastation of Hurricane Maria in September. 2018 April 20 (the 4-20 cannabis holiday): U.S. Senator Charles 'Chuck' Schumer [since 1999; Dem NY] introduced a measure to decriminalize marijuana nationwide. 2018 April 20: SunTrust Bank announced that an insider may have stolen 1.5 million customer records with the criminal intent of sharing them outside the organization; an internal investigation of the likelihood of 'inappropriate access' of records was started in February, and now points to a corrupted ex-employee working with professional crooks. 2018 April 23: Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and his wife Catherine 'Kate' Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge produced a boy, fifth in line to the British crown (his father is second); the name was announced a few days later: Louis Arthur Charles. 2018 Thursday April 26: Save Our Schools Arizona organized a statewide walkout because the legislation by Gov. Ducey to raise teacher pay over three years adds no new funding, it takes away spending from other education functions. The 50,000 Arizona teachers and allies continued their strike on Friday and Monday. 2018 Thursday April 26: Entertainer Bill Cosby was convicted on three counts of sexual assault; he was released on a million dollars bail until he is sentenced. 2018 May 3: Data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica shut down all operations because it had lost many customers; the company said that it did nothing wrong, blaming a 'siege of media coverage' for their decision. 2018 May 3: Battling declining participation, the Boy Scouts of America announced that it will drop 'Boy' from the name of its scouting program for kids AND will soon admit girls for the first time; the Boy Scouts will become Scouts BSA in February {sic}, and start offering programs for girls in October. 2018 May 4: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index leapt above $24,000 with a rise of 332.36 points (up 1.39%, closing at $24,262.51; the NASDAQ Index rose $121.47 (up 1.71%) to close at $7,209.62; the S&P 500 Index rose $33.69 (up 1.28%) to close at $2,663.42. 2018 May 4: Volcanic activity on Hawai'i's Big Island escalated suddeenly with a magnitude 6.9 earthquake, the largest since 1975. 2018 May 11: North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) reported that two U.S. Air Force F-22 stealth fighter jets intercepted and visually identified a pair of Russian TU-95 'Bear' long-range bomber aircraft about 200 miles off the western coast of Alaska and north of the Aleutian Islands on Friday morning. The Russian planes never entered U.S. air space; the last time Russian military planes flew this close to the United States was in May 2017. 2018 May 14: Facebook, Inc. suspended 200 apps following an internal audit started in March, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal; Facebook had promised a 'thorough investigation' into whether guest apps had misused user data; more restrictive data rules took effect in 2015 for third-party developers and apps that could access or collect large amounts of users' personal information, but enforcement has been weak. 2018 May 16: About 19,000 North Carolina teachers protested in the streets of Raleigh, the state capital, calling for better pay and increased funding for public schools. 2018 May 17: Hawaii's Kilauea volcano erupted, sending ash and debris 30,000 feet into the sky in its biggest recent blast. The steam-fueled explosion occurred in the Halema'uma'u Crater at Kilauea's summit after two weeks of volcanic activity that has sent molten lava into the Puna district near the volcano, forcing nearly 2,000 people to evacuate and destroying at least 26 homes. Authorities warned that an even bigger eruption could be building. Over the next week, the lava covered 2,200 acres, destroyed 82 structures, and made another 37 structures inaccessible; there were 90 earthquakes near the summit just on Friday the 25th. 2018 May 17: Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was released from a hospital in southern England, more than two months after he and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent. 2018 May 18: Nine students and a teacher were killed and others injured in a shooting Friday morning at the high school in Santa Fe (near Galveston), Texas; the shooter was a secretly pro-Nazi student who was quickly detained. A second 'person of interest' showed up a bit later wearing a red 'MAGA' golf cap and carrying a U.S. flag and a handgun. 2018 May 19: England's Prince Harry and America's Meghan Markle were married in St. George's Chapel at Windsor. 2018 May 21: Truck drivers went on strike and threw Brazil into chaos, with protesters blocking traffic on hundreds of highways, supermarkets rationing fruit, and gas station pumps running dry. Uber drivers joined the strike in northern Brazil and blocked trucks from leaving an oil refinery. The strike was sparked by a 50-percent rise in fuel prices over the past year; truckers are demanding lower gas prices, as well as reductions in taxes and tolls. The nationwide strike has so far continued into mid-June . . . 2018 May 25: The General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union went into effect; the law was adopted in April 2016 with a two-year transition period. The new rules on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union give control over their personal data to citizens and residents and are being adopted by major and minor internet businesses in America and elsewhere so that they can continue to operate in European countries. 2018 May 28: Subtropical Storm Alberto made landfall in parts of the Florida Panhandle with its maximum winds dropping to 45 mph in the hours before it hit; after heavy rainfall and flash flooding, Alberto weakened further as it continued north, pushing more heavy rains into Alabama, Georgia, and North & South Carolina early Tuesday. 2018 May 29: Starbucks Corp. closed more than 8,000 stores across the United States for four hours to conduct 'racial bias training' for employees; the corporation promised to do so in response to a viral video that sparked outrage over the inappropriate arrest of two Afro-American men at a Philadelphia Starbucks store last month because they wanted to use the restroom. 2018 May 29: Following the highly successful "Roseanne" sitcom [1988-97] season 10 revival, star Roseanne Barr tweeted racist remarks that led to cancellation by ABC-TV of the season 11 order. Paramount Network, TV Land, C.M.T., and Laff all announced that they are pulling all 'Roseanne’ reruns from syndication. Roseanne tried to blame taking the sleep drug Ambien, but the manufacturer issued an official tweet that 'Racism is not a known side effect of any of our medications'. 2018 May 31: A wilderness wildfire north of Santa Fe, New Mexico doubled in size next day to cover 16,000 acres; some residents of Cimarron, New Mexico, were forced to evacuate their homes; the Ute Park Fire destroyed 14 outbuildings at a Boy Scout camp, but so far has not destroyed any homes or caused any casualties. 2018 June 3: The Volcán de Fuego ('volcano of fire') in Guatemala erupted for the second time this year, blanketing nearby villages with heavy ash and killing at least 69 people; at least 20 others were injured, and authorities said that an undetermined number of people are still unaccounted for; about 3,100 people were evacuated from communities around the volcano. 2018 Tuesday June 5: Primary elections in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, and New Mexico - solid Democratic candidates won in almost every race. 2018 June 13: A force ER-2 tornado touched down around 10 pm in northeastern Pennsylvania, ravaging businesses in Wilkes-Barre Township (Luzerne County), flipping rental trucks, and downing trees & power lines, with only six people receiving minor injuries. 2018 June 18: A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck Osaka, Japan; the temblor's center was shallow, and it caused the heaviest shaking registered in Osaka since the start of record keeping in 1923; authorities shut down trains & factories as experts looked for damage, and schools were evacuated as a precaution. At least three people were killed and more than 200 others were injured; the Meteorological Agency warned that strong aftershocks could hit over the next two or three days. 2018 June 19: Canada's Senate passed a bill on a 52-29 vote legalizing recreational marijuana use, making Canada the second country in the world to approve the creation of a legal marijuana market. (Uruguay legalized the production, sale, and use of marijuana in 2013.) 2018 June 19: Failing industrial giant G.E. was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average and replaced with drug-store chain Walgreens; General Electric was one of the 30 original stocks in the index in 1896, and it had been on the list continuously since 1907. 2018 June 21: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, effective July 31st; Emperor Trump chose from a list supplied by the Federalist Society and nominated the very-unqualified former law clerk Brett Kavanaugh on July 9th. 2018 June 26: Former Air Force linguist Reality L. Winner, jailed a year prior for leaking a secret government report about Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of leaking classified information; the deal with prosecutors calls for a 63-month prison sentence. 2018 June 26: Voters in seven states participated in primary elections: former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney easily won his Senate primary in Utah; South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, an early backer of President Trump, beat self-made multi-millionaire John Warren in a primary runoff; in New York's 14th congressional district, candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took down the darling of the New York corporate Democratic machine, seven term Rep. Joe Crowley, by a jaw-dropping double-digit margin; in New York's 24th congressional district, progressive Dana Balter defeated an anti-choice conservative Democrat; Ben Jealous won his hotly-contested primary, moving him one step closer to becoming the first Afro-American governor of Maryland. 2018 June 26: Oklahoma voters approved State Question 788 which legalizes medical marijuana with little regulation. 2018 June-July: Unprecedented rainfall caused widespread flooding and landslides in Japan's Hiroshima prefecture that killed 204 people; people were caught off guard because the region seldom gets such heavy rains. In one area, 10.4 inches fell in three hours, the highest such total since record-keeping started in 1976, making the events Japan’s worst weather disaster in decades. 2018 Sunday July 1: Leftist populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador {nicknamed 'AMLO'} won Mexico's presidential election in a landslide; voters also decided thousands of federal, state, and local offices in what authorities called the biggest election in Mexican history. 2018 July 13: U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned of impending, potentially devastating cyberattacks on U.S. systems that could affect the upcoming midterm elections; he said that the country's digital infrastructure 'is literally under attack' and warned that among state actors, Russia is the 'worst offender'. 2018 July 13: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced criminal charges from the Mueller investigation against 12 Russian intelligence officers in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. 2018 July 11-16: Emperor Trump's disastrous week in Europe: After offending our allies at the NATO Summit in Brussels, Belgium on Wednesday & Thursday, he hid out at a golf resort in Scotland, while British and Scottish and Irish protestors expressed their views in often-hilarious ways, including massive marches and the Trump Baby blimp; his meeting with Queen Elizabeth was a disgrace; then he went to Helsinki, Finland on Monday for a one-on-one meeting with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin that concluded with the embarrassing press conference on worldwide live television; these latter events have been named the Helsinki Surrender Summit. 2018 July 15: F.B.I. agents arrested Mariya Butina on Justice Department charges of being an unregistered agent of Russia, taking orders from Russian politician Alexandr Torshin while lobbying the N.R.A. and members of Congress; F.B.I. agents raided her home in April as part of an investigation of Russian intelligence operations that is separate from Mueller's team. 2018 July 27-Aug: California's Carr Fire grew to 80,000 acres and has claimed the lives of six people; more than 27,000 people remained evacuated but 10,000 had been allowed to return to their homes; California is dealing with a total of 17 large wildfires across the state. 2018 July 31: Trial began in Virginia for RussiaGate figure Paul Manafort; first day included jury selection - 6 men, 6 women, plus four alternatives - and opening arguments. Prosecutors had former accountants testify for 3 days, then business partner Rick Gates testified for three days; Manafort's lawyers declined to call any witnesses or put their client on the stand, resting their defense; closing arguments on August 15th and four days of jury deliberation ended with the jury finding Manafort guilty on 8 of the 18 counts, including five counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failing to disclose a foreign bank account (just one juror prevented conviction on all 18 counts); Judge Ellis declared a mistrial on the remaining 10 charges. 2018 August: Unusually catastrophic monsoon rains in the southern Indian state of Kerala caused deadly floods; more than 800,000 people evacuated their homes to escape rising floodwaters; another 10,000 are thought to be trapped on their roofs awaiting rescue, and over 350 people have died in connection to the floods; 82,000 rescues were completed in one day alone. 2018 Aug 2: Apple, Inc. [est. 1975] became the first company in history to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion; the once-unthinkable milestone was accomplished after the company climbed back over 21 years from being a near-bankrupt computer maker to the creator of groundbreaking and enormously popular consumer tech products, from the iMac to the iPod to the iPhone. 2018 Aug 4: Fights broke out at two competing protest rallies in Portland, Oregon; while alt-right groups Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys claimed that their intention was peaceful, police collected weapons including baseball bats and shields decorated with Confederate/KKK flags; the self-described anti-fascist ('anti-fa') demonstrators were protesting the rally by the white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups; Portland police used 'less lethal impact munitions', pepper spray, and flashbang grenades to disperse the crowd; police made four arrests. 2018 Aug 14: Utility crews in the southern Puerto Rico city of Ponce reconnected the last neighborhood left without electricity after last year's Hurricane Maria, marking the first time power had been restored to the entire island in 11 months. 2018 Aug 14: The Royal Bank of Scotland agreed to pay $4.9B to settle allegations concerning mortgages that it sold to investors during the housing bubble that led to the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown of 2008; the fine is the largest imposed on a single company for misconduct during the 2008 financial crisis, although the Justice Department also has hit Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other banks with billions of dollars in penalties to settle similar allegations. 2018 Aug 21: First day of the National Prison Strike with prisoners across 17 states conducting work stoppages, hunger strikes, and spending boycotts to demand basic human rights and an end to prison slavery; the protest is planned to continue to September 9th, the anniversary of the riots at Attica Prison in 1971. 2018 Aug 21: President Trump's former personal attorney Michael D. Cohen pled guilty to eight counts of tax evasion and campaign finance violations filed by New York prosecutors; Cohen implicated Trump in that plea. 2018 Aug 23-26: Hurricane Lane developed off the coast of Mexico on August 11th and moved across the Pacific Ocean toward Hawai'i, moving up and down as Category 4 & 5; without direct landfall on the islands, the storm drenched Hawaii in up to 46 inches of rain over the weekend; the heavy rains caused dangerous flash flooding, with the Big Island port of Hilo dealing with waist-high water; firefighters rescued 39 people from the floods, and no deaths or injuries have been reported, but landslides are still a potential problem. 2018 Aug 28: Statewide primary elections in Florida, Arizona, and Oklahoma In Arizona, Mitch McConnell's favorite U.S. Senate candidate Martha McSally (54.6%) beat Kelli Ward, DO (27.6%) and the disgraced former sheriff Joe Arpaio (18%) and will be taking on Democratic primary winner Kyrsten Sinema (79.3%) in November. (Sinema is expected to win.) Republicans have the plurality in the Arizona primary, so incumbent Gov. Ducey is likely to win another term. In Florida, former Governor Rick Scott (88% of GOP primary 1.64 plurality) will be trying to unseat Senator Bill Nelson [since 2015; Dem]. Tallahasse Mayor Andrew Gillum won the Democratic primary for Florida Governor (plurality 1.5M) and Ron DeSantis won the Republican primary (56.5% of the 1.62M plurality); there is likely to be a squeaker election in November. In Oklahoma, Drew Edmondson won the June Democratic primary (395K plurality) for Governor and must now beat Kevin Stitt, who won the Republican primary runoff in August (June plurality 452k). 2018 September 4: Shares of e-commerce giant Amazon, Inc. [est. 1994] gained briefly during the day, making it the second publicly-listed U.S. company to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion. (Apple, Inc. was the first company to reach the landmark, on August 2nd.) Progressive challenger Ayanna Pressley beat 10-term incumbent Cong. Mike Capuano in the Demo-cratic primary in Massachusetts; Pressley became the first Afro-American woman elected to the Boston City Council (in 2009) and she will be the first Afro-American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress - there is no Republican on the ballot. Tropical Storm Gordon came ashore just west of the Alabama-Mississippi border late Tuesday with top sustained winds of 70 miles per hour, just below hurricane strength; authorities closed schools and issued state-of-emergency declarations along the Gulf Coast, where residents braced for heavy rains, high winds, and storm surge. 2018 Sept 5: British authorities charged two Russian men in absentia for the March 4 nerve gas attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, saying that there was ample evidence "to provide a realistic prospect of conviction" of the two men, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov; a European arrest warrant has been issued (since Russia does not extradite its citizens, the result is only that the two G.R.U. agents cannot travel outside Russia). 2018 Sept 5: The New York Times published a rare anonymous op-ed in which a 'senior official in the Trump administration' said that many of President Trump's top aides "are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations" and that Trump "does not fully grasp" the extent to which top advisers are trying to counter his "impetuous, adversarial, petty, and ineffective" leadership style. The newspaper said that it vetted the official but kept the piece anonymous to avoid reprisals. 2018 September 6: A 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido around 3 am local time, causing some buildings to collapse and triggering landslides the quake knocked out power to 3 million households (5.3 million residents) and the island's nuclear power plant had to rely on its backup generator; at least seven people were immediately confirmed dead in and around Tomakomai, near the epicenter, and dozens more were feared buried. In a few days, the death toll reached 39, with 640 people listed as injured, and one person still missing. Micro-blogging site Twitter announced that it had permanently banned conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars site after he live-streamed himself verbally attacking a C.N.N. reporter outside a congressional hearing where Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying; the company said in a statement that Jones's conduct violated its rules against 'abusive behavior'. Twitter recently had suspended Jones for a week but resisted banning him outright as other social media companies had done. Two weeks later, PayPal banned Alex Jones, saying that Infowars 'promoted hate or discrimi-natory intolerance’. Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles, California said that they have charged Park Jin Hyok, a computer programmer working for the North Korean government, with cyberattacks that infected computers in 150 countries with the WannaCry ransomware virus; the hacking targeted Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014 and spread from there; Park also was charged with conspiring to launch attacks that resulted in the theft of $81 million from a Bangladesh bank; the charges were unsealed in a Los Angeles court after a years-long investigation; Park is believed to be in North Korea. 2018 early September: HURRICANE WATCH - Slow-moving Tropical Storm Florence is expected to increase in intensity and slam the East Coast as a hurricane; the storm's anticipated path will take it south of Bermuda but north of Florida and the Caribbean, likely making landfall in Georgia or the Carolinas. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster on Monday September 10 ordered more than a million people to evacuate eight coastal counties and head inland. 2018 Sept 12: Apple, Inc. presented three new smartphone models at its annual fall product event in Cupertino, California. The new iPhone XS {5.8" screen, list price $999} and XS Max {6½" display, list price $1,099-1,449} and XR {6.1" display, less expensive screen, list price $749} will be in U.S. stores on September 21. The new models of the iPhone mean that list prices drop on older models: the iPhone 7 will now start at $449 and the iPhone 8 at $599. 2018 Sept 13: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo easily beat actor/activist Cynthia Nixon in the state's Democratic primary; Cuomo is seeking re-election to a third term, and had 65 percent of the vote to Nixon's 35 percent; Cuomo faces Republican Marcus Molinaro in November. 2018 Friday Sept 14: Hurricane Florence was downgraded to a tropical storm; as of Saturday, the storm was churning slowly inland in North Carolina at 5mph with top sustained winds of 75 mph; power companies reported more than 950,000 outages, and Charlotte-based Duke Energy was expecting 1 to 3 million of its customers to lose power; at its peak, Florence was a Category 4 hurricane. Florence hit some areas with more than 30 inches of rain. The Cape Fear River in Fayetteville was at 60 feet, 25 feet above flood stage, and was expected to crest on Wednesday at 62 feet. 2018 Sunday Sept 16: After sweeping through the Philippines, leaving at least 40 people dead, Typhoon Mangkhut hit Hong Kong with 11-foot storm surges and sustained winds up to 170 mph, the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane; Hong Kong remained on highest alert with rain falling as quickly as 4 inches per hour; the strongest storm on the planet so far this year, Mangkhut then headed toward the Pearl River Delta on China's southern coast, which includes the city of Macau, the most densely populated area in the world. Then Typhoon Mangkhut slammed into China's Guangdong Province with top winds of 100 miles per hour, killing at least four people. 2018 Monday Sept 17: Hurricane Florence's toll reached 32 confirmed deaths in the Carolinas as the storm headed north; about 413,000 people remained without power across North Carolina. 2018 Sept 17: Emperor Trump imposed more tariffs, targeting $200 billion in Chinese goods; China quickly retaliated with tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. exports. 2018 Sept 21: The Trump administration imposed sanctions on China's military for buying Russian fighter jets and missile systems in violation of U.S. sanctions imposed to punish Moscow for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election; the State Department said the sanctions targeted China's military branch responsible for weapons and equipment, and its director, for making 'significant transactions' with Rosoboronexport, Russia's main arms exporter (China purchased ten SU-35 combat jets in 2017, and equipment for the S-400 surface-to-air missile system in 2018); China's government expressed outrage and demanded that the U.S. drop the sanctions; later on Friday, China cancelled a scheduled trade meeting, saying that the U.S. was 'not acting with sincerity or goodwill'. 2018 Sunday Sept 23 UPDATE: At least 44 people have died from Hurricane Florence since it made landfall in the Carolinas more than a week ago; the catastrophic rains have finally ceased but flooding continues to hit North Carolina especially hard; officials say that 3.4 million chickens drowned from the hurricane. Flooding from the swollen Cape Fear River overtopped the earthen dike of a coal ash residue pond at the L.V. Sutton Power Station near Wilmington, NC; the rising waters also swamped a 625-megawatt natural gas plant at the site, forcing it to shut down; the water at the plant was at least six inches deep. Farther inland, the H.F. Lee Power Plant near Goldsboro, NC has three landfills containing coal ash residue covered with earth and trees; heavy rains washed contaminants and debris from those sites into the nearby Neuse River. Monday 2018 Sept 24: At 1:00 pm in each time zone across the nation, supporters of the women who have accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault walked out of their homes and work-places, wearing black clothing for solidarity; the national walkout included big cities and small towns and schools - such as in New York City's Washington Square Park; at Yale Law School, where students staged a sit-in in the hallways; and in Washington, DC where protesters filled the Hart Senate Office Building’s atrium and hallways inside several buildings on Capitol Hill; U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that 128 people were arrested and charged with unlawful demonstration. 2018 Sept 24: The scheduled trial of lobbyist Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates in Washington, DC became moot because Manafort pled guilty in a rather sweet plea bargain deal (2 counts out of seven) with the restriction that he will go to trial on the five counts if he accepts any pardon or commu-tation from President Trump. 2018 Sept 27: Dr. Christine Blasey Ford gave courageous testimony before a hostile Senate Judiciary Committee, followed by the hysterical, crocodile-tears meltdown of Brett Cavanaugh, which demonstrated that he is unfit for any public office. 2018 Sept 28: The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to recommend now-disgraced Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court vacancy, with a party line tally of 11-10. 2018 September 29: A 7.5-magnitude earthquake triggered a 10-foot-tall tsunami off the Indonesian island of Sulawesi early Friday morning, killing at least 384 people and injuring hundreds more. The following Monday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo declared a national emergency and announced that the death toll had risen to more than 1,200 people. President Trump signed an $855B spending bill, averting a government shutdown until at least December 7th; the bill includes $606.5B for the Pentagon. Social network Facebook, Inc. revealed a network attack that exposed the stored data of about 50 million users; the vulnerability has been patched; Facebook is investigating the extent of the damage, has notified law enforcement about the breach, and on Friday logged 90 million users out of their accounts as a security measure. 2018 Oct 3: The F.B.I. failed its duty to the Constitution and delivered the secret cover-up report on the fake investigation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Senate Judiciary Committee; Senators were allowed to read the document in a locked basement room and were ordered not to discuss the contents with the public. 2018 Oct 4: Netherlands officials announced that they had expelled four Russian military officers from the country for hacking attempts into various government and non-government organizations. Dutch security police captured the four men while they were inside a car next to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague - they were trying to hack into the building's wi-fi network. The Dutch also captured laptops and other equipment that led to evidence of hacking by the Russian military in Malaysia and Switzerland. The British independent open source research group Bell¿ngcat researched various databases and then revealed the identities of 305 more Russian secret agents around the world similarly connected to Russia's G.R.U. military intelligence agency. 2018 Oct 5: The full U.S. Senate agreed to vote on the Kavanaugh appointment the next day; the cloture vote was along strict party lines, 51-49. 2018 Oct 6: The full U.S. Senate voted on the Kavanaugh appointment, the vote was along strict party lines, 50-48 (one abstained, one not present); within hours, Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Why the hurry by Republicans? The Gamble v. US case goes to SCOTUS next week – without Kavanaugh, the 4 to 4 vote would let the matter hang; WITH flunky Kavanaugh on the court, the law will be changed so that anyone that Emperor Trump pardons for federal crimes cannot be charged for state crimes – THAT is why the hurry-up and the cover-up: Kavanaugh is the Trump Crime Family's get-out-of-jail-free card !! 2018 Oct 6: A deadly 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti on Saturday night; at least 12 people were killed and more than 180 injured, mainly in the far north; northern Haiti was also rattled by a magnitude 5.2 aftershock on Sunday. By Monday, the stats were at least 15 people dead and 333 people reported injured. 2018 early October: HURRICANE WATCH in HAWAI'I - Hurricane Walaka struck islands northwest of Hawaii's main island group as a Category 5 storm; almost nobody lives out there, except a few scientists, who were evacuated; East Island was the second largest island (about half a mile long and 400 feet wide) in the French Frigate Shoals, and it vanished because of the storm; the 11-acre island was a nesting site for green sea turtles and other endangered species. 2018 early October: HURRICANE WATCH - Hurricane Michael was classified as a hurricane on October 7th and continued intensifying; Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered thousands of coastal residents to head inland and others to prepare to evacuate as forecasters issued a hurricane warning for the northeastern Gulf Coast from the Alabama-Florida border to Suwanee River, Florida - a distance of 350 miles. The storm made landfall late October 10th as the strongest storm to hit the continental U.S. since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and the strongest ever recorded in the Florida Panhandle. The storm then moved north thru Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, and into the North Atlantic Ocean. 2018 Oct 7: Rock star Taylor Swift broke with her previous non-political stance and endorsed candidates in her native Tennessee on Instagram, where she has 112 million followers (worldwide); her post included a link to vote.org that within a week had produced an impressive spike in voter registration numbers: the site registered 364,000 new voters, with 231,000 of them under 30 years old. 2018 Wednesday Oct 10: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index plunged by 832 points, or 3.2 percent, its worst drop since February and its third worst point drop ever; the Standard & Poor 500 Index dropped by 3.1 percent, its fifth straight daily loss and its biggest since February; the NASDAQ Composite Index did even worse, falling by 4.1 percent as technology stocks led the declines. U.S. stock futures fell further early Thursday as global stocks dropped. 2018 Thursday Oct 11: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index plunged AGAIN by a further 545.91 points, or 2.13 percent to $25,052.83; the Standard & Poor 500 Index dropped by 57.31 points or 2.06 percent to $2,728.37; the NASDAQ Composite Index fell by 92.99 points, or 1.25 percent to $7,329.06. 2018 Oct 11: Social network Facebook, Inc. announced that it had purged more than 559 pages and 251 accounts for flooding other users with political content. 2018 Oct 12: Five people are dead, 1,200 roads closed, and half-a-million people are without power after Hurricane Michael ravaged southern and western Virginia; the known death toll from the hurricane rose to at least 17 people – eight in Florida, one in Georgia, three in North Carolina, and five in Virginia – as rescuers moved into the devastated areas to search for survivors; more than 1 million homes and businesses are without power. 2018 Oct 12: Facebook, Inc. clarified its announcement about the September data breach. Only some 30 million users were affected; of those, 14 million had detailed personal information stolen; an additional 15 million users had their name & contact information accessed; and 1 million users were affected but did not have any information stolen; Facebook says that the F.B.I. is investigating the breach. 2018 Oct 15: Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced the closing of 142 more Sears and Kmart stores by the end of the year; while the announcement blamed plunging sales and massive debt, the true cause was looting of assets by vulture capitalist Edward S. Lampert. 2018 Sunday Oct 21: HURRICANE WATCH - Newly formed Hurricane Willa rapidly strengthened off Mexico's Pacific coast, reaching major Category 4 status with maximum sustained winds near 155 miles per hour; the National Hurricane Center warned that the 'extremely dangerous' storm could make landfall by Tuesday between San Blas and Mazatlan, with 'life-threatening storm surge' and up to 12 inches of rain in parts of western Jalisco, western Nayarit, and southern Sinaloa states. 2018 Oct 23: All three major U.S. indexes slipped to three-month lows in morning trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index dropped more than 350 points, or 1.4 percent; the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was down 1.5 percent, its fourth decline in as many days; the tech-heavy NASDAQ Index (which has been whacked in recent weeks from sell-offs of the so-called FAANG shares - Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet/Google) was down 1.7 percent. 2018 Oct 23: HURRICANE WATCH in MEXICO - Hurricane Willa softened and made landfall south of Mazatlán as a Category 3 storm; several cruise ships that had been headed to Mazatlán were diverted and more than 4,000 people along the coast were evacuated; the storm left 96,200 people without power in the states of Sinaloa, Nayarit, Durango, and Michoacán; the remnants of Hurricane Willa brought rainfall and thunderstorms to already-saturated Texas, especially around Galveston County. 2018 Oct 24: All three major U.S. indexes closed sharply lower Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index was down 608.01 points (2.4%) to $24,583.42; the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was down 84.59 points (3.1%) to $2,656.10, now off about 9.4% from its September peak (the worst month for the S&P since May 2010); the tech-heavy NASDAQ Index sank 329.14 points (4.4%) to $7,108.40 – more than 10% below its August peak and its biggest drop since August 2011. 2018 Oct 24-25: HURRICANE WATCH - Super Typhoon Yutu slammed into U.S. island territories in the North Pacific Ocean with 180 mph winds; the storm was the most powerful ever to hit the islands and was the equivalent of a strong Category 5 hurricane; it lashed Saipan, Tinian, and Rota in the Northern Mariana Islands near Guam, which have a combined population of 55,000; islanders reported severe damage and power outages but no deaths; officials expect that power and water could be out for weeks. 2018 Oct 27: An anti-Semitic neo-Nazi hate-monger attacked a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA wielding an AR-15 assault weapon and 3 Glock pistols; the domestic terrorist killed 11 morning worshipers and wounded nine people; a S.W.A.T. team arrived and the wounded shooter was taken into custody (and treated by Jewish doctors) and charged with 44 federal crimes and 36 state charges. Pittsburgh's mayor requested that President not visit the city, out of security and safety concerns, but Trump & Melania went anyway; many protesters along Trump's motorcade route turned their backs on him and knelt on the sidewalk. 2018 Tuesday Nov 6: Elections for 33 U.S. Senate seats, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 39 state and territorial governorships, and numerous state and local offices. Lost ballots and re-counts stretched on for several weeks, but the basic result was that Democrats took back the House of Representatives and the Republicans kept the Senate. Democratic voters in New Mexico staged a statewide Blue Tsunami, including governor and all three members of Congress. Nationally, the voter turnout was 50 percent higher than in the last midterm election and, importantly, millions more young people voted. 2018 Nov 12: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index took a 600-point nosedive led by an Apple stock selloff approaching 25%, seen as a reaction both to U.S. election results and to reports that Apple is cutting back production oreders for the iPhone. 2018 Nov 27: Mississippi runoff election for U.S. Senate; after a surprise very close second (neither receiving 50% of the vote) in the November 6th special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Thad Cochran, Democrat Mike Espy was defeated by racist Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, 53% to 46%. Espy immediately filed for the 2020 race for the regular full term in the Senate. 2018 Nov 28: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index jumped by 2½ percent; the S&P 500 Index rose by 2.3 percent and the NASDAQ Composite Index surged by nearly 3 percent. 2018 Nov 29: Former Trump attorney Michael D. Cohen pled guilty to lying to Congress about Trump's business dealings with Russia. 2018 Dec 7: The neo-nazi fool who drove his car into counter-protesters at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Heather Heyer as well as nine other counts. 2018 Dec 19: Former Blackwater Worldwide employee Nicholas Slatten was found guilty of first-degree murder as the first shooter in the September 2007 'Nasur Square Incident' in Baghdad, Iraq in which Blackwater mercenaries shot 17 unarmed civilians to death without cause. 2018 Dec 22: Trump Shutdown #3 at Midnight on the morning of Saturday after the Senate adjourned Friday without passing a stopgap funding measure that Trump would sign; closures to unfunded departments include Homeland Security, Transportation, Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Housing & Urban Development, and Justice – as well as some independent agencies like N.A.S.A. and the I.R.S. 2018 Dec 22: A deadly tsunami struck the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra Saturday evening, killing at least 222 people and injuring at least 800 more; the wall of water swept in without warning and is thought to have been caused by undetected sea floor landslides from an eruption of the Krakatoa/Anak Krakatau volcano, located in the strait between the islands. Indonesia lacks a comprehensive tsunami warning system; rescue efforts are ongoing Sunday; the death toll is expected to rise. 2018 Dec 25: Tropical Depression Usman made landfall in the Philippine Islands and then weakened into a low-pressure system, depositing heavy rain for several days; a week later, the death toll from landslides and floods rose to 85 as rescuers slowly reached isolated communities; another 20 people were still unaccounted for in the flooding. 2018 Dec 28 UPDATE: Indonesia's Anak Krakatau volcano has lost two thirds of its height and volume above the water line since the volcanic activity last Saturday that caused a tsunami that killed more than 400 people and displaced about 40,000; the missing 158-acre section of rock is thought to have sheared into the ocean, possibly in a single event that produced the deadly waves; the volcano is now spewing ash a mile into the air and ejecting hot magma into the ocean; the steam & ash have created a 'volcano thunderstorm' above the island, and scientists are monitoring the ongoing volcanic activity closely. 2018 Dec 28: House Majority Leader Elect Steny Hoyer officially stated that Republican Mark Harris [NC-09] will NOT be seated in the U.S. Congress next January. (The state of North Carolina will not certify the election until investigations of blatant election fraud by Republicans are completed.) 2018 Dec 31: Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren launched an exploratory committee for a 2020 presidential bid; her remarks emphasized the economic populism that has propelled her to two Senate victories. Spirit of America Bookstore's U.S. History Timeline Pages Ancient Times - 3500 B.C.E to 1490 C.E.    •    1491-1800    •    1801-1900    •    1901-1930    •    1931-1950 •    1951-1968    •    1969-2000    •    2001-2010    •    2011-2016    •    2017-2018 { top of this page } •    2019-2020    •    2021 to present    •    The Looming Future?    Spirit of America's U.S.A. Timeline of the COVID-19 Epidemic    Spirit of America's New Mexico Timeline of the COVID-19 Epidemic

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