Britney Spears breaks sales records with her debut album ... Baby One More Time – with fame comes sexualization. In 2017, the #MeToo movement exposes such power structures within the industry.

More than 2,500 people die in the attack on the World Trade Center. 

Facebook is founded just six years after Google (1998).

The first Apple iPhone is released. Without this breakthrough, a global phenomenon like Pokémon GO in 2016 would have been unthinkable.

The sea ice area in the Arctic is the smallest it has been since satellite measurements began. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 to warn about such dramatic consequences of climate change.

The worldwide financial crisis rocks the global economy. A sign of this appeared as early as 1987 with the stock market crash on "Black Monday," when the Dow Jones recorded its largest percentage loss.

The launch of the SpaceX Falcon 1 marks the beginning of commercial spaceflight, 39 years after the first man landed on the Moon in 1969.

Usain Bolt sets a new 100m world record of 9.58 seconds at the World Championships in Berlin.

Michael Jackson dies, almost 26 years after the legendary moment in 1983 when he first performed the moonwalk on stage.