This is a list of events that occurred in 21st Century:
2001
February 26
On Earth, NASA scientists announce that the microbiotic fossils found in a Martian meteorite in 1996 were the remains of organic life that once lived on Mars, though the results are disputed.[1]
March 23
The Russian Mir space station is deorbited and crashes into the Pacific ocean after 15 years of service.
2011
A Near Earth Asteroid narrowly avoids a collision with Earth, despite a chronically underfunded search program.[2]
2013
On Earth, the Communist Party are elected to power in Russia, lead by Kolishnikov. Later, following a civil war, Russia again turns to the West for aid only to find itself stuck as an "economic colony" for the next twenty years.[3][4]
2018
The foundation for the first lunar colony is laid this year.[5]
2025
On Earth, the Jihad Party are elected to power in Iraq.[3]
2029
On Centauri Prime, the Emperor's daughter spots the first flower of spring poking up through the snow in the Royal Gardens. She orders that a Guard is to stand over the spot to protect it. The Princess soon forgets about it and the order is not countermanded until 200 years later.[6]
2035
On Earth, the last gasoline-powered motorcycle is manufactured.[7]
Having completed experiments on Human DNA to create telepaths, two Vorlons come to Earth and hide in the Gamburtsev mountains in Antarctica and quietly begin abducting humans and implanting them with the telepath gene. Some of the subject's half remembered accounts cause a resurgence in the "ancient astronaut/angel" cults that first gripped earth in the 1950s. The father of Desa Alexander is a member of one such cult.[8]
2057
July 4
Earth's first manned interplanetary vessel, Ares 3, lands on Mars carrying an international crew of four.
2059
A civil war on Gromahk results in the release of a genetic plague. Though the Grome overcome the plague's lethal effects, it will cause each generation of females to grow less and less fertile and give succeeding generation's skin a pitted, somewhat diseased look.[9]
The Styx Hotel is built as a tourist attraction in a series of caverns beneath Tennessee on Earth.[8]
2062
On Brakir, the arrival of the Brakiri system's only comet heralds the Day of the Dead. Many strange stories are told of that night and the comet doesn't return for another 200 years.[10]
2064
On Earth, an antebellum revival in the US prompts the construction of a large period style mansion outside of Natchez, Mississippi. Several local children from a tenement block just over the hill—including the house's future owner Lee Crawford—would often sneak into the grounds.[11]
2067
A civil war ravaged race in the Eridani Sector begins picking up transmissions from other worlds. The local government covers up the transmissions and decides to use the idea of alien infiltrators as fictional scapegoats to divert resentment away from the government.[12]
2072
August 13
Ares 13's breaking system fails during Mars entry, killing all seven crew members. Mars missions are halted until 2101.
Allies of the Shadows discover the Vorlon activity on Earth and track them to Antarctica. One Vorlon is killed while the other escapes, hiding on Venus. Across Earth, many of the first generation Telepaths "see" the death of the Vorlon and pass on an account to their cultist followers using a variation of the Mayan legend of the twin brothers Xbalanque and Hunahpu. Some of the cult members travel to Antarctica and recover some Vorlon Organic Technology, taking some of it to their Qahsah cave site in Yucatán.[13]
A Russian satellite detects a magnetic anomaly and a hole in the Antarctic ice cap where the Vorlon ships were hiding.[8]
Hostilities erupt between India, Pakistan and their allies, The United Islamic Nations and the Indonesian Consortium, after an attempted annexation of several Pacific Rim nation states. Other nation states begin to take sides in the growing conflict and Earth is dragged into a Third World War.
2084
On Earth, World War III comes to an end, at the cost of countless lives.
2085
On Earth, following the dissolution of the United Nations, the Earth Alliance is founded. The new Earth Senate is located in Geneva, Switzerland.
Earth Alliance scientists prove the existence of Tachyon particles.[8]
2092
On Earth, the city of New Orleans is hit by a terrible flood, destroying much of the city including the old French Quarter. So much of the city is destroyed that after the rebuilding many want to call it "New New Orleans", though the suggestion wasn't a very popular one.[15]
2095
On Earth, the DeepProbe Network is activated in a renewed effort to detect extraterrestrial intelligence.[16]