June 27, 2009

A Big Mac cost $3.54 that summer of 2009, and the Dow Jones sat at 10,428 — recovery was underway after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, with unemployment hovering near 9.5 percent and the government's stimulus package still working its way through the economy. On television, "Mad Men" was the prestige drama everyone was talking about, while The Black Eyed Peas held the top spot on the charts for weeks with "I Gotta Feeling," a song that seemed to soundtrack backyard barbecues and late-night gatherings across the country. On June 18, NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter toward the Moon, marking the first American lunar mission in over a decade and beginning a new effort to map the lunar surface in preparation for a possible return of astronauts.