March 23, 2008

Gas cost $3.27 a gallon in the spring of 2008, and the Dow Jones stood at 8,776 — the United States was managing two wars abroad while a presidential primary race unlike any in modern history was unfolding at home. On the cultural front, Mariah Carey held the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Touch My Body," and Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture" was sitting atop the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, drawing millions of readers to a Carnegie Mellon professor's account of facing terminal cancer with clarity and purpose. The Boston Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers to claim the NBA championship that year, and on May 25, NASA's Phoenix spacecraft made history by becoming the first probe to successfully land on the northern polar region of Mars.