2008 was a leap year that started on Tuesday in the Gregorian calendar. 2008 was designated the: International Year of Languages. In January the price of petroleum hit $100 per barrel for the first time. The MESSENGER space probe was at its closest approach during its first flyby of the planet Mercury. Stock markets around the world plunged amid growing fears of a U.S. recession, fueled by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis. Iran opened its first space center and launched a rocket into space. In February, a tornado outbreak, the deadliest in 23 years, killed 58 in the Southern United States. Fidel Castro announced his resignation as President of Cuba, effectively. In March, an exploding star halfway across the visible universe became the farthest known object ever visible to the naked eye. A 414 square kilometer chunk of Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf disintegrated, leaving the entire shelf at risk. In April, Surgeons at London's Moorefield Eye Hospital performed the first operations using bionic eyes, implanting them into 2 blind patients. An earthquake in Sichuan, China killed nearly 80,000 people. In May, over 69,000 are killed in central south-west China by the Wenchuan quake, an earthquake measuring 7.9 Moment magnitude scale. After three decades as the Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates stepped down from daily duties to concentrate on philanthropy. In August, the 2008 Summer Olympics took place in Beijing, China. Michael Phelps surpassed Mark Spitz in Gold Medals won at a single Olympics, winning eight. In September, Hurricane Ike made landfall on Texas as Category 2 and killed 27 in the United States, after killing four in Cuba, one in the Dominican Republic, and 75 in Haiti. In October, President George W. Bush signed the revised Emergency Economic Stabilization Act into law, creating a 700 billion dollar Treasury fund to purchase failing bank assets. The meteoroid 2008 TC3 impacted the Earth, becoming the first such object to be discovered prior to impact. In November, Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. Barack Obama became the first African-American President-elect. Heath Ledger, Bobby Fischer, Edmund Hillary, and Suzanne Pleshette all passed away in 2008. The world was going thru so many changes. I kept writing on pieces of paper and paper pads lying on the patio. I had written five books, but sales were low. I had a small following and the last book had done better than the rest. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be in this world. Maybe it was all written for an Alternate Universe.