A Decade of Search

A lot of news happens in a decade, and as we prepare to close this one, there will be plenty of lists about the top stories from the last 10 years. This is not one of those lists. These are the stories you told us you were interested in … by searching for them. From the gravely serious to the supremely silly, we present a decade of news you couldn’t get enough of.

The terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001, left a nation stunned, mourning and looking for answers. No one will ever forget the horrific images of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center’s North and South towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. In the days and weeks that followed, people turned to the Web to find timelines of what happened, photos and videos of the attacks and information about who was responsible. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida became household names.

Eventually, people began looking for sources of inspiration and healing. Images of the twin towers falling were replaced with one of ground zero’s “Tribute in Light.” Online memorials and dedications to the 2,976 victims became places of remembrance while people the world over searched for ways to help victims and their families. Iconic moments from “Saturday Night Live” (Lorne Michaels: “Can we be funny?” NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani: “Why start now?”), David Letterman and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” gave people a reason to smile again.

On March 19, 2003, President George Bush announced that the U.S. war against Iraq had begun. Searches for Iraq, its leader Saddam Hussein, and the previous Gulf War had been growing as the war’s build-up progressed, but the initial air strikes, the search for weapons of mass destruction and anti-war protests soon became the focus.

In April, the dramatic rescue of Private Jessica Lynch captivated Search … as did the shocking revelation that the alleged heroic event was actually staged. Iraq remained a top search throughout the decade, including the toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad; the deaths of Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay; the beheading of American contractor Nicholas Berg; the capture, trial and hanging of Saddam Hussein; battles in Fallujah; the Abu Ghraib prison controversy; and the injury and recovery of ABC newsman Bob Woodruff.

There are some searches that just won’t go away. We’re talking to you, Britney Spears. The pop star’s seemingly endless roller coaster of highs and lows — an onstage kiss with Madonna, a wedding to a backup dancer, two cute kids, one shaved head, a stint in rehab, the requisite comeback tour — have made Spears one of the top searches at Yahoo! almost every year this decade.

But Britney’s not alone: Harry Potter, Paris Hilton, “American Idol,” Anna Kournikova, “The Lord of the Rings,” the WWE, all things “Twilight” and the UFC have all made multiple-year appearances in our top 10. And while they don’t appear in Search quite as much, media megastars Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern take home honorable mentions as influencers: What they say, do, like and dislike always has an impact.

The Super Bowl may be the biggest sporting event of the year, but in 2004, it wasn’t the game or the pricey ads that everyone was interested in. For once, the half-time show stole, well, the show. Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, who were rumored to once have dated, performed together. In a clip now searched the world over, Justin ripped off Janet’s top, and the “wardrobe malfunction” excuse was born.

While sporting events of all kinds can bring huge Search spikes, it’s often the stories around its athletes that garner more interest. It was amazing watching Michael Phelps break world records at the Beijing Olympics, but searchers were also obsessed with how many calories the swimmer consumed each day. Bad behavior on the field is always rewarded in Search: Soccer may not be America’s most watched sport, but people flocked to the Web to see Zinedine Zidane head butt a player at the World Cup and, more recently, a female college athlete’s pony-tail take down.

Few things spike faster in Search than a good old-fashioned celebrity crisis. The past decade offered some doozies. Homemaking queen Martha Stewart, better known for hospital corners and complicated cake decorations, headed off to federal prison after she was convicted of lying about a stock sale. As celebs do, she rebounded quickly from her time in the slammer, and the Web was abuzz after she was released looking a few pounds thinner and sporting a fashionable, handmade poncho.

Other shocking celeb moments that kept us glued to our computers were Dave Chappelle’s disappearance, Michael Richards’ on-stage rant, Mel Gibson’s shocking DUI, Alec Baldwin’s voicemail to his daughter and Joaquin Phoenix’s chewing-gum incident on “Letterman.”

The earthquake and tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004, ravaged the region, killing nearly 300,000. As with any natural disaster, people wanted to know why they happen, how they can be predicted and how to stay safe. Needless to say, there was little good news available, but Yahoo! users were drawn to stories of peoples’ heroic efforts to stay alive and rescue loved ones.

The story of the unlikeliest of friendships also turned heads. Owen, a baby hippopotamus who was orphaned off the coast of Kenya, was rescued and released in a park, where he befriended a 130-year-old giant tortoise named Mzee. The adorable pair soon found themselves much photographed and the subject of a documentary and two books.

In 2005, the case of 41-year-old Terri Schiavo, diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, became the focus of a nationwide debate, involving everyone from President George Bush to the U.S. Supreme Court. Michael Schiavo, her husband and guardian, had been in a legal battle with her parents to take her off life support. Americans turned to Search to find out more about right-to-life issues, Terri’s alleged bulimia and the heart failure that led to her brain damage. Schiavo died two weeks after her feeding tube was removed.

There are too many notable deaths in the last 10 years to include any kind of comprehensive list, but some who had huge impacts in Search were President Ronald Reagan and President Gerald Ford, Daniel Pearl, Michael Jackson, Christopher Reeve, Senator Ted Kennedy, Steve Irwin, Anna Nicole Smith, Patrick Swayze, Steve Fossett, Heath Ledger, Cory Lidle, James Brown and Farrah Fawcett.

And in a nod to some of man’s best friends, we also salute one last time: Barbaro, Eight Belles, Bart the bear, Keiko the orca, Dolly the (cloned) sheep, Alex the parrot, Ling Ling the panda and Gidget the Taco Bell chihuahua.

When a rare $1 million Enzo Ferrari going about 199 miles per hour crashes on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, people are going to pay attention. When that car is split into two pieces and no one is seriously injured, it’s going to own Search. Especially if the driver was a former Gizmondo executive who allegedly had ties to a Swedish organized crime ring.

In less destructive news, the safe landing of a US Airways plane in the Hudson River also peaked interest, especially for the heroic pilot, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. What other photos did Yahoo! users make sure they saw? Harry Wittington, who was accidentally shot by then-Vice President Dick Cheney on a hunting trip and the belly of pregnant “octomom” Nadya Suleman.

It was a story straight from the pages of a spy novel. Alexander Litvinenko was a Russian former KGB agent who fled to the U.K., where he hurled accusations at the Kremlin. In 2006, he was poisoned with a radioactive isotope and died three weeks later. As the murder mystery deepened, searches focused in on polonium 210 and Vladmir Putin, whom Litvinenko accused of orchestrating his death.

Of course there were plenty of other deaths that captivated the world, and the most notable in Search range from one of the most influential people in the world to an ordinary citizen who died in an extraordinary moment. At the age of 84, Pope John Paul II died peacefully at the Vatican; Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, 75, died in a French military hospital; at 54, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan; and Neda Soltani, 26, was shot and killed on the street while attending an election protest in Iran.

When photos of Thomas Beatie popped on to our radar — with his beard and baby bump — it was, quite simply, beyond belief. “Pregnant man” searches spiked immediately as people tried to figure out if Photoshop or nature was behind the image. The explanation, it turns out, was pretty simple. Beatie was born a woman but decided to live life as a man (without removing his female sex organs). Beatie toured the media circuit before giving birth to Susan Juliette on June 29, 2008, who was joined a year later by a little brother.

What else stunned the world? Financial giant Lehman Brothers’ collapse; the revelation that Pluto, bless its little soul, isn’t a planet after all; that it’s possible (gulp) for a baby to weigh 19.2 pounds at birth; that it’s also possible to give birth to one black and one white twin (twice!); and, that if you drink too much colloidal silver, you may turn blue. No, really.

The most honorable of mentions go to unbelievable animals: A furry lobster, the mysterious chupacabra, a little cyclops kitten, a really giant squid and, of course, the elusive Montauk Monster.

There’s nothing like the promise of a massive hoax to sending people searching for evidence. In July 2008, the Web went nuts when two Georgia men posted YouTube videos and held an, ahem, press conference about a frozen Bigfoot corpse they had kept in — what else? — a portable cooler. When the frost came off the remains, it turned out to be a deluxe Sasquatch costume.

Hoaxes come in all shapes and sizes, though. Some people do it for the money: A finger found in a bowl of Wendy’s chili. Some people do it to avoid the law: a businessman who faked his own death with a plane crash. And some people do it for the fame: “Balloon boy’s” reality-show-loving dad, Richard Heene.

Throughout the decade, hurricanes wreaked havoc in America and beyond: Katrina, Andrew, Rita and Ike, to name a few. In 2005, Katrina destroyed parts of New Orleans, killing scores of people, flooding huge swaths of the city and poking holes in the faith many had in the government’s response to emergency. The devastating event dominated Search for months as we watched the storm grow stronger, the levees break, the Superdome fill with survivors and the controversy over FEMA’s struggle to help.

Hurricane Ike developed in the Atlantic in 2008, eventually making final landfall in Galveston, Texas. Dozens died, and the search and rescue effort was massive. But a small yellow house gave us something to cheer for: the last house standing. Propped up on 19-foot-high columns, it was the only house on the Gulf side of the town of Gilchrist that had not been completely destroyed.

Operation Enduring Freedom began on Oct. 7, 2001, just weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11. The war in Iraq, which officially started in 2003, initially overshadowed Afghanistan in Search, but as the focus shifted both politically and militarily, so have the searches.

People turned to the Web to learn why NFL athlete Pat Tillman left a promising career with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army in 2002. The controversy surrounding his 2004 death from friendly fire in the mountains of Afghanistan had people looking for more information about Silver Stars, then-Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the U.S. Army Rangers.

– Sarah Parsons

Another soldier who grabbed our attention did so by rushing to defend his post in little more than a pair of pink boxers and a T-shift. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage.”

Remember the millennium bug? We entered this decade worried about the end of the world, and we’re leaving it the same way. In 1999, computer programmers scrambled to update systems while Henny-Pennys the world over said we were doomed. The result? We were fine, but searches have remained peppered with a little fear.

The Doomsday Clock, which was created in 1947 and represents mankind’s “minutes to midnight” (that is, our ultimate demise), was reset to 11:55pm on January 17, 2007, just five minutes away from the end. And just as we see the end of 2009 approaching, the movie “2012″ premieres, sparking searches for everything from Mayan calendar end-dates to aliens to Nostradamus. So if you’ve been looking for a reason to dig a backyard well or stock-pile your own personal Costco, this prophecy’s for you.

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