RETURN TO INDEX
Top Song(s)
• Usher - Yeah!
Britney Spea• rs - Toxic
• Destiny's Child - Lose My Breath
• Eminem - Just Lose It
• D12 - My Band
Top Film(s)
• Shaun of the Dead
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• The Incredibles
• Kill Bill Vol. 2
• The Bourne Supremacy
Best Selling Book(s)
• My Sister’s Keeper - Jodi Picoult
• Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
• Dead to the World - Charlaine Harris
• The Girl Who Played with Fire - Stieg Larsson
• The Truth About Forever - Sarah Dessen
Famous Deaths
• January 6 - Pierre Charles, 5th Prime Minister of Dominica
• February 12 - Robert A. Bruce, American cardiologist and pioneer (exercise cardiology)
• March 8 - Abu Abbas [Muhammad Zaidan], Palestinian founder of the Palestine Liberation Front
• April 19 - Norris McWhirter, Scottish co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records
• May 9 - Akhmad Kadyrov, 1st President of Chechnya
• June 5 -Ronald Reagan, 40th US President (Republican: 1981-89) and actor (Bedtime for Bonzo), dies at 93
• July 3 - Andrian Nikolayev, Soviet cosmonaut (Vostok 3)
• August 12 - Godfrey Hounsfield, English electrical engineer and inventor (CT scan, 1979 Nobel Prize)
• October 4 - Gordon Cooper, American aerospace engineer, test pilot and astronaut
• November 15 - Elmer L. Andersen, 30th Governor of Minnesota (1961-63)
Medical/Science/Technology
• Scientists announced their findings that supports the notion that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.
• Launch of the Swift satellite to investigate gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and perform an X-ray all sky survey.
• Facebook launches.
• A long-awaited earthquake strikes Parkfield, California.
• Michael Aschbacher and Stephen D. Smith publish their work on quasithin groups.
• A 428 million-year-old fossil Pneumodesmus found in Scotland is identified as the world's oldest known creature to have lived on land.
• Gmail launches.
• Physicists from Pennsylvania State University produce the first solid Bose–Einstein condensate.
• A 20-minute HIV test that is 99.6 percent effective and uses a finger-stick was developed.
• A promising new drug was developed to treat multiple sclerosis.
Political
• January 19 - U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) wins the Iowa Democratic caucus.
• January 20 – State of the Union Address.
• February 3 – The CIA admits that there was no imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
• March 2 - John Kerry effectively clinches the 2004 Democratic Party presidential nomination.
• June 5 – Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, dies at his home in Bel-Air, California.
• July 26–29 – The Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, nominates John Kerry for U.S. president.
• August 30–September 2 – President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are re-nominated at the Republican National Convention.
• September 13 – The U.S. Federal Assault Weapons Ban expires.
• October 5 – Vice presidential debate between candidates Dick Cheney and John Edwards.
• November 2 - The United States re-elects George W. Bush of the Republican Party to a second term as President of the United States.
National
• January 24 – NASA's MER-B (Opportunity) lands on Mars at 05:05 UTC.
• February 12 – The City and County of San Francisco begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples as an act of civil disobedience.
• February 26 – The United States lifts a ban on travel to Libya, ending travel restrictions to the nation that had lasted for 23 years.
• March 12 – Marcus Wesson is arrested in Fresno, California, after killing nine family members.
• April 29 – The last Oldsmobile rolls off of the assembly line.
• May 14 – Lynn Turner is convicted of the 1995 murder of her husband Glenn Turner by poisoning him with anti-freeze.
• June 3 – Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet tenders his resignation, citing "personal reasons".
• August 3 - The Statue of Liberty reopens after security improvements.
• September 28 – A redesigned $50 bill is released, containing many of the same security features as the $20 counterpart.
• October 25 – Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King receive the Congressional Gold Medal.
Worldwide
• January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 604 crashes into the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt, killing all 148 aboard.
• February 29 – Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is overthrown in a coup.
• March 2 – A series of bombings occur in Karbala, Iraq, killing over 140 Shia Muslims commemorating the Day of Ashura.
• April 4 – The First Battle of Fallujah starts.
• May 9 – A stadium bombing in Grozny, Chechnya, Russia kills ten people.
• June 1 – A United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti begins, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.
• August 12 – Lee Hsien Loong is sworn in as the third Prime Minister of Singapore.
• September 22 – West Sulawesi is established as the 33rd province of Indonesia.
• October 8 – Suicide bombers detonate two bombs at the Red Sea resort of Taba, Egypt, killing 34 people and injuring 171.
• December 21 – Iraqi insurgents attack a U.S. military base in the city of Mosul, killing 22 people.