• The United States saw an historic changing of the guard in January when its first black president took up residence in the White House. Two weeks before the inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama made a triumphant entry into Washington, D.C., riding an ass while an exultant crowd waved palm branches in his path.

• Political commentators lauded President Obama's inaugural address for not producing any memorable lines, as well as for the absence of eloquence, form, structure and cohesiveness. One presidential rhetoric expert hailed the speech as a landmark: "In its absence of meaning, President Obama's speech gave meaning to absence."

• The inaugural festivities were marred by the seizure suffered by Sen. Ted Kennedy during the dignitaries' luncheon in the Capitol Building. Mr. Kennedy was rushed to a hospital, but fortunately, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was available to finish off Mr. Kennedy's meal.

• President Obama convened a "beer summit" with Cambridge, Mass., Police Sgt. James Crowley and the man he arrested, Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr., in a racially charged altercation. Mr. Crowley and Mr. Gates soon hit it off when they checked into a detoxification unit, blaming the beer summit.

• On Halloween, Linus and President Obama waited in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin and change, respectively.

• The economy dominated the news throughout the year. China foreclosed on the United States and seized the Statue of Liberty as collateral. A Chinese official lamented that the statue is not worth enough to substantially pay down the U.S. debt. "After all, it was made in France."

• Amelia Earhart stunned the world when, after 72 years, she emerged from the same box where 6-year-old Falcon Heene hid while his family falsely claimed he was flying in a helium balloon over Colorado.

• The GOP was shocked when Ronald Reagan's long-lost birth certificate was found and it showed he was born in Kenya.

• On March 28, America turned off its lights in observance of Earth Hour, but it ended badly for the Cooper family of Exton, Pa. Harry and Helen Cooper and their teenage daughter Karen were brutally dismembered by marauding zombies after Mrs. Cooper shut off the floodlights atop their farmhouse. Police said the floodlights were the only thing that kept the zombies at bay at night.

• Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska and announced that she would replace the late Billy Mays as the OxiClean spokesperson.

• NASA revealed a satellite photo showing that the Lunar Rover, abandoned on the moon's surface in 1972 by Apollo 17 astronauts, is now covered with parking tickets.

• Somalian Pirates seized the Love Boat.

• French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered a uniquely French solution to the Mideast crisis: both sides should surrender.

• President Obama told Europeans to stop blaming America for the world's ills -- "that's my shtick," he said.

• The Baghdad Chapter of NOW lauded a female suicide bomber for shattering the glass ceiling, the glass windows, the glass doors -- and pretty much everything else in sight. NOW bemoaned the fact that when the suicide bomber entered Paradise, she was greeted by only 55 virgins instead of 72 because of the gender wage gap.

• In September, President Obama revealed that the joke was on Pittsburgh, which thought it had been selected to host the G-20 Summit. Mr. Obama revealed that the former U.S. steel capital was actually getting the WD-40 summit, not the G-20.

• MSNBC executives determined that the swine flu outbreak wasn't nearly as serious as they initially expected, so they huddled in an emergency meeting to pick the nation's next panic.

• President Obama announced that the centerpiece of his health-care reform was that physician waiting rooms get new magazines.

• President Obama said the headquarters for the new health-care death panels would be completed by 2011. He added that the headquarters' resemblance to Star Wars' "death star" was purely coincidental and that "people shouldn't read anything into it."

• The GOP offered its alternative to the Obama health plan: first aid kits in every company cafeteria.

• Sonia Sotomayor made history when she became the first Latina selected to the U.S. Supreme Court. President Obama said that Judge Sotomayor's comment calling for all white males to be castrated until they are no longer dominant was "taken out of context."

• Angelina Jolie sent two of her adopted children to Madonna in a blockbuster deal consummated just hours before the trading deadline.

• Michael Moore unveiled his latest film about his quest to track down the head of General Motors, "Barack & Me."

• Kanye West interrupted the ceremony for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry by declaring: "This award belongs to Beyonce."

• Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey played the sleep double of the boyfriend in "Paranormal Activity."

• The Pittsburgh Pirates announced their 2010 promotions and said they expect to fill PNC Park on Tiger Woods Mistress Day when the first 20,000 of Tiger's bedmates will be admitted free of charge.

• The Pittsburgh Steelers signed the woman who knocked down the pope at the start of midnight Mass on Christmas Eve to plug the team's pass defense.

• The Pittsburgh Pirates traded their fans to Buffalo. "For a long time, we were focusing on the wrong thing -- getting better players," said team general manager Neal Huntington. "Our current thinking is that the problem has been the fans all along."

• A U.S. Airways flight was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River after a flock of birds got sucked into the engine. Alfred Hitchcock was named a person of interest.

• A pilot died of a heart attack while flying from Brussels to Newark and Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger, the hero of U.S. Airways' dramatic Hudson River landing, chided him for dying: "A good pilot waits until he has the plane safely on the ground before he drops dead. That's what I would have done."

• President Obama and theologians at Notre Dame proved they share common ground on abortion by hammering out a consensus statement: "The fetus is a human being; no it isn't."

• The University of Notre Dame defended its selection of Count Dracula as this year's principal commencement speaker. The Count met his critics head-on in his commencement speech and defended his centuries-long practices of Satanic rituals, brutal murders and other acts of unfathomable evil by imploring the graduating class to "stop reducing those whose conduct you disagree with to mere caricatures -- both sides must stop demonizing each other."

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.