September 8, 2009

That fall of 2009, gas ran $2.35 a gallon and Obama was in the White House — he had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a decision that drew both widespread praise and immediate debate about whether the honor was premature. On television, "Mad Men" was taking home the Emmy for drama while "Modern Family" was winning for comedy, and readers were working through Dan Brown's thriller "The Lost Symbol," which sat at the top of the New York Times fiction list. In sports, the New York Yankees defeated the Philadelphia Phillies to win the World Series, while scientists made headlines of a different kind when paleontologists announced the discovery of an Ardipithecus ramidus skeleton estimated to be 4.4 million years old, making it the oldest known remains of a human ancestor.