• April 30 - David Blaine set a new Guinness World Record for holding his breath underwater for 17 minutes 4-1/2 seconds.
  

• June 27 - Bill Gates stepped down as Chairman of Microsoft to work full time for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
  

• July 13 - Brewing company InBev announced a deal to buy American brewer Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion.
  

• July 21 - Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadžić is arrested in Serbia and indicted by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia tribunal for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
  

• August 10 - British cyclist Nicole Cooke wins the Olympic Road Race in Beijing. It was Great Britain's 200th gold in the modern Olympics.
  

• August 16 - Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt set a new world record of 9.69 seconds to win the coveted 100m gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
  

• September 21 - The FINAL home game was played at the original Yankee Stadium (1923-2008). The Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles 7-3!
  

• * September 29 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.
  

• * October 3 - Emergency Economic Stabilization Act: the $700 billion bailout bill for the US financial system was signed by President George W. Bush.
  

• * October 24 - In a "Bloody Friday" many of the World's stock exchanges experience the worst decline in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.
  

• November 4 - Barack Obama became the first African-American to be elected President of the United States. He defeated Republican candidate John McCain.
  

• * November 20 - After critical failures in the US financial system began to build up after mid-September, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level since 1997.
  

• December 5 - Former NFL star O.J. Simpson is sentenced to 33 years in prison for kidnapping and armed robbery.
  

• December 11 - Bernie Madoff arrested and charged with securities fraud in $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Notable Deaths -

Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) New Zealand explorer and mountaineer, who was the first to scale Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay, died from a heart attack at 88.

Bobby Fischer (1943-2008) American chess player (world champion 1972-75), died of renal failure at 64.

Heath Ledger (1979-2008) Australian-American actor (Brokeback Mountain, The Dark Knight), died of a drug overdose at the age of 28!

Bo Diddley (1928-2008) American rock `n' roll pioneer guitarist, died of heart failure at 79.

Paul Newman (1925-2008) Superstar American actor (Hud; Hombre; The Hustler), auto racer and team owner (Newman/Haas Racing) and charity food company founder (Newman's Own), died of lung cancer at 83.

2007

2009

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