Year 2004 ended up being a very bad year for our own planet. With war, George W. Bush being re-elected and the destructive Tsunami right before the end of the year, we can be assured the new year won’t be worst. For once, medias did a great job covering the event and pushing populations worldwide to support the victims of the tsunami. Was it the Christmas spirit? By now, over two billions have been unlocked for various purposes. The question is: how long will it last? Everyone’s favorite collective encyclopedia has a great coverage of the tragedy (took he animation there, complete one also available).
Satelite images of the disaster have been taken (before, after, sometimes during). Seeing those images, it’s easy to understand why there are so many missing and dead people. According to BBC, America is not safe from such disasters. Note that this source has been refuted multiple times afterwards, even by themselves.
On a non-human point of view, the earthquake that caused the tsunami was so strong that it actually changed Earth’s rotation axis. The difference should not make any difference since the planet usually has greater variations over a year (whew!). Still, we lost around 3 microseconds in the process.