Events
Bush, the 41st U.S. president, was a two-term Republican governor of Texas. Bush worked in the Texas oil industry and was an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team before becoming governor. In 2000, he won the presidency after narrowly defeating Democratic challenger Al Gore. Bush’s time in office was shaped by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against America. In response to the attacks, he declared a global “war on terrorism,” established the Department of Homeland Security and authorized U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States. When the storm made landfall, it brought sustained winds of 100–140 miles per hour and stretched some 400 miles across. The storm itself did a great deal of damage, but its aftermath was catastrophic. Levee breaches led to massive flooding, and many people charged that the federal government was slow to meet the needs of the people affected by the storm. Hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were displaced from their homes, and experts estimate that Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damage. New Orleans was at particular risk. Though about half the city actually lies above sea level, its average elevation is about six feet below sea level and it is completely surrounded by water. Over the course of the 20th century, the Army Corps of Engineers had built a system of levees and seawalls to keep the city from flooding. The levees along the Mississippi River were strong but the ones built to hold back Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne and the waterlogged swamps were much less reliable. Even before the storm, officials worried that those levees, jerry-built atop sandy, porous, erodible soil, might not withstand a massive storm surge. Neighborhoods that sat below sea level, many of which housed the city’s poorest and most vulnerable people, were at great risk of flooding.
On May 1, 2011, American soldiers killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden at his compound near Islamabad, Pakistan. Intelligence officials believe bin Laden was responsible for many deadly acts of terrorism, including the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. He had been on the FBI’s “most wanted” list for more than a decade.
Barack Obama of Illinois was elected president of the United States. Obama became the 44th president, and the first African American to be elected to that office. He was subsequently elected to a second term.