August 15, 2003

A Big Mac cost $2.71 that summer of 2003, and the Dow Jones sat at 10,454 — American troops were navigating an increasingly hostile occupation in Iraq, facing guerrilla-style attacks in cities like Baghdad and Mosul. On television, "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" dominated the ratings, while Beyonce and Jay-Z's "Crazy In Love" played out of nearly every radio and open car window across the country. That July, NASA launched the Opportunity rover toward Mars, the second of two rovers sent that summer as part of a mission designed to search for signs of past water activity on the planet's surface.