Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
An outbreak of tornadoes kills more than sixty people in Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and
Alabama.
Hurricane Ike kills one hundred people along the Texas coast.
The global financial crisis strikes.
2010
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, resulting in the worst oil spill in
U.S. history.
2011
The “Arab Spring,” a wave of political upheaval, sweeps across North Africa and the Middle East,
bringing new government to at least four countries, including Libya and Egypt.
The United States joins a UN military intervention in Libya's civil war.
2012
“Superstorm Sandy,” a hurricane that formed in late October, devastated communities in the Carib-
bean and in several Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states and crippled much of the New York City
metropolitan area for weeks. At least 253 people were killed in seven countries along the path of the
storm, which was estimated to be the second-most costly Atlantic hurricane after Katrina; damage
to property in the United States was estimated at more than $63 billion.
Geographic Voices
Joel Kotkin, from
The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050
The addition of a hundred million more residents also will place new stresses on the environ-
ment, challenging the country to build homes, communities, and businesses that can sustain an ex-
panding and ever-more-diverse society. America will inevitably become a more complex, crowded,
and competitive place, highly dependent, as it has been throughout its history, on its people's innov-
ative and entrepreneurial spirit.
