As we’re about to welcome a new year, let’s take a look back at the Top 10 Events in 2009.  Some of these events will end up in a Trivial Pursuit game, others helped shape history.  Here is my Top 10:   

1. January 15^th – Both engines on a US Airways A320 jet fail after colliding with geese when taking off from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport.  Captain Chesley Sullenberger sets down the plane in the Hudson River, saving all 155 passengers and crew. 
2. January 20^th – Barack Obama is sworn in today as this country’s 44^th president, but he is our first African-American President.
3. January 26^th – A single mom gives birth to octuplets.  Nadya Denise Doud-Suleman Gutierrez was impregnated by in-vitro fertilization before these births and those of six siblings already at home.  She received a lot of public scorn for this irresponsible behavior.
4. June 25^th – The death of Farrah Fawcett, an actress best known for her role in the Charlie’s Angels TV series, is overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson on the same day.  The King of Pop was only 50 years old. 
5. July 17^th – Walter Cronkite called the “most trusted man in America” dies today.  He broke the story on the President Kennedy assassination back in 1963. 
6. August 4^th – Ellen DeGeneres is ultimately chosen to replace Paula Abdul as a judge on American Idol after Paula announces on Twitter today that she is leaving the show.
7. August 25^th – Ted Kennedy dies.  For years he has been known as the “Lion of the Senate”.
8. August 26^th – Jaycee Lee Dugard is found alive in California, 18 years after being kidnapped on the way to her school bus stop. 
9. September 13^th – Kanye West interrupts Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMAs for Best Female Video.  Beyonce and all other audience members were stunned when he announces the award should have gone to Beyonce.  He apologizes in the days after the awards program and finally decides he needs to take some time off to figure some things out.   
10.  November 14^th – An influenza outbreak, first identified in April as the swine flu, is spreading world-wide.  From April through November 14^th, approximately 9820 deaths are related to what was re-named H1N1.     

Do you remember what you were doing when these occurred?  Please feel free to comment on any of these or add to the list.  I am putting together a Year in Review for Milwaukee as well.  Check back tomorrow for those highlights.

Many Milwaukee area newspapers and other publications have also been compiling Year in Review lists.