The World in 2009 the year a jet landed on a river
1.8BInternet users
4.6BMobile phones
350MFacebook users by December
$2.35Gallon of gas (US)
$7.50Movie ticket (US)
10%US unemployment at its peak
$100TFace value of a Zimbabwe note
12.7%Greece's real deficit
9.58sBolt's new 100m record
Zimbabwe's money lost value so fast that the bank printed a 100 trillion dollar note. It could not buy a week of groceries.
Life back then

Smartphones were still the exception, and office life ran on BlackBerry. Twitter went mainstream as celebrities raced each other to a million followers. A Swedish programmer put the first rough version of Minecraft online, a Finnish studio released Angry Birds in December, and two former Yahoo engineers began work on WhatsApp. At Christmas, cinemas were handing out 3D glasses for Avatar.
The year in 8 events
- โ๏ธJan 15 Captain Sully Sullenberger lands US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River after birds knock out both engines. All 155 aboard survive.
- ๐๏ธJan 20 Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th US president before a record crowd in Washington.
- ๐ฏ๏ธApr 6 An earthquake hits L'Aquila in central Italy before dawn. About 300 people die and the old town is left empty.
- ๐๏ธMay 18 Sri Lanka's government declares the civil war over after 26 years of fighting.
- ๐ทJun 11 The WHO declares swine flu a pandemic, the first in 41 years. The new flu was spotted in Mexico in the spring.
- ๐ฏ๏ธJun 25 Michael Jackson dies at age 50. The news is so big it slows down large parts of the internet.
- ๐งฑNov 9 Berlin marks 20 years since the Wall opened. A line of giant foam dominoes is pushed over along its old route.
- ๐Dec 1 The EU's Lisbon Treaty takes effect, giving the bloc a standing president and one foreign policy chief.