May 20, 2004

Gas cost $1.88 a gallon in the spring of 2004, and the Dow Jones stood at 10,783 — the United States was in the middle of the Iraq War, with troop deployments ongoing and debate over the mission intensifying across the country, even as everyday American life continued at its usual pace. At the movies, "The Passion of the Christ" was drawing massive crowds and breaking box office records, while readers were snapping up Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" from bookstore shelves as fast as stores could stock it. The Detroit Pistons defeated the Los Angeles Lakers to win the NBA championship that June, and earlier that spring, on April 1, Google launched Gmail, introducing the public to free email with one gigabyte of storage at a time when most services offered a fraction of that.