2009 Year In Review

Here are a few of the headlines you may have seen in the past year.

January 2009
Obama becomes President
As Barack Obama is sworn in as President today, Change.gov will come to the White House.
As he takes the oath of office, the White House website – occupied by President George. W. Bush for the past 8 years – will also pass over to the young, tech-savvy Obama team.

January 15, 2009
Miracle on the Hudson
Passengers wait to be rescued on the wings of a US Airways Airbus A320 jetliner that safely ditched in the frigid waters of the Hudson River in New York City. Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger was the hero pilot who safely guided the powerless jet into the river after a flock of birds knocked out both its engines. All 155 aboard survived.

June 25, 2009
King of Pop dies
Pop singing icon Michael Jackson died a month before embarking on a sold-out tour of 50 shows and after a legendary four-decade career in show business. The Los Angeles County coroner ruled that the 50-year-old Jackson, shown in Bangkok during his Dangerous tour in 1993, died from a combination of the anesthetic propofol and other drugs.

July 13, 2009
Fears of a pandemic
Hailey Morris, 2, of Middletown, Pa., is given the H1N1 nasal spray vaccine as she is held by her mother Brandi Nissley at the Dauphin County State Health Center. By year's end, early predictions of a national pandemic eased. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that about 1 American in 6 — about 15% — has been infected, relatively mild as far as what had been feared.

August 27, 2009
The end of Camelot
The family of Sen. Edward Kennedy watch as his casket is carried by an honor guard to a hearse at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. Kennedy, 77, died at his home on Cape Cod after a year-long struggle with brain cancer. After a funeral in Boston, and a last visit to the U.S. Capitol, Kennedy was buried in Arlington National Cemetery near his brothers, John and Robert.

October 15, 2009
A lot of hot air
A stunned nation watched as television beamed images of a saucer-shaped, homemade helium balloon, believed to be carrying a 6-year-old boy named Falcon, soaring across the skies of Colorado. Turned out it was a hoax perpetrated by the boy's parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, who later pleaded guilty to several charges of reporting a false incident.

November 5, 2009
Fort Hood rampage
Soldiers honor the victims of a mass shooting at Fort Hood at a memorial service in Texas. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was charged in the deaths of 12 soldiers and a civilian on the eve of being deployed to Afghanistan. In the eulogy, President Obama said the massacre stands as an incomprehensible military tragedy — one that happened "in the comfort of home."

November 20, 2009
'25 years feels right'
Holding back tears, Oprah Winfrey tells her studio audience that she will end her show in 2011 after a quarter-century on the air. She says "prayer and careful thought" led to her decision. "Twenty-five years feels right in my bones and it feels right in my spirit. It's the perfect number — the exact right time," the host explains.

November 27, 2009
Tiger's world collapses
Starting with a car wreck in the early hours after Thanksgiving, Tiger Woods' storied career began to unravel at a startling pace. One after another, women claiming to be current or former mistresses emerged after an expose in the National Enquirer. Within a few weeks, his $100 million a year endorsement empire started to crumble and the world's best golfer took an indefinite hiatus from the sport. Shown here six days earlier at a college football game with his daughter Sam and wife Elin.