21st Century: Terrorism, Recession & COVID-19

The 9/11 Survivor Tree

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, a callery pear tree emerged from the rubble.

COVID-19 Pandemic

The 2020 outbreak of the infectious respiratory disease known as COVID-19 triggered one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history.

Arab American Heritage Month 2023

Arab Immigration to the United States In the late 1800s, Arab immigration to the United States began, according to the Migration Policy Institute, with Arab Christians fleeing the Ottoman Empire—which now includes Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel—from religious persecution and conscription, as well as economic reasons. The U.S. Department of State reports that the immigrants […]

A nurse prepares the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine a public housing project pop-up site targeting vulnerable communities in Los Angeles, California on March 10, 2021.

2021 Events

COVID-19’s Continued Toll As the year began, the nation was still firmly in the grip of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that first emerged in late December 2019 and spread around the world in 2020, prompting lockdowns, a global recession and upheaval on an unprecedented scale. In what became a record for the fastest vaccine development […]

U.S. Army soldiers from the 101st Airborne division off load during a combat mission from a Chinook 47 helicopter March 5, 2002 in Eastern Afghanistan. The soldiers were participating in the largest American offensive since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan War

War on Terror Begins Investigators determined the 9/11 attacks—in which terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, one at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and one in a Pennsylvania field—were orchestrated by terrorists working from Afghanistan, which was under the control of the Taliban, an […]

2020 Events

COVID-19 Changed the World Forever On January 9, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that a cluster of mysterious pneumonia-like cases in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 might have been caused by a previously unidentified coronavirus. By the end of that month, cases of the new virus were confirmed in Thailand, Japan and the United […]

2019 Events

Protesters in Hong Kong clashed with police, fire consumed an 850-year-old cathedral in Paris, the U.S. women’s soccer team won the World Cup and President Donald Trump became the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. These are only a few of the most prominent events of 2019. Politics Robert Mueller submitted his report: In […]

Irish Republican Army: Timeline

Bloody Sunday Leads to New IRA Recruits; Lord Mountbatten Is Assassinated Dec. 28, 1969: Aiming to protect the Catholic minority from discrimination from loyalist militants and the Protestant-Majority police force, the Provisional Army Council, officially splinters off from the IRA. The Provisional IRA soon becomes known as simply the IRA, while the other faction, known as […]

A Timeline of the U.S.-Led War on Terror

America Responds to 9/11 • Sept. 11, 2001: Terrorists hijack four U.S. planes, crashing two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, while a third hits the U.S. Pentagon minutes later. The fourth plane, targeted to hit the White House, crashes in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attacked the […]

2018 Events

There was a government shutdown, a super blue blood moon, historic midterm elections and a very American addition to the British royal family. Take a look back at the eventful year of 2018 with a review of the most important events in politics, culture, science and the environment. Politics Immigration crisis: In President Donald Trump’s […]

Al Qaeda

Bin Laden and the Origins of al Qaeda During the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War in Afghanistan, in which the Soviet Union gave support to the communist Afghan government, Muslim insurgents, known as the mujahideen, rallied to fight a jihad (or holy war) against the invaders. Among them was a Saudi Arabian—the 17th child (of 52) of […]

5:35 minTV-PG

Here’s What ISIS Believes and How It Came to Be

Learn about the origins of ISIS and its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who terrorized Iraq’s Shia Muslims with suicide bombers. Discover how successor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi used social media to spread international terrorism before the group weakened.

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