59) Lance Armstrong's comeback!

58–57) JANUARY and FEBRUARY combined for one of the greatest periods ever in North American skiing. After a frighteningly dry autumn, a decent December led to a two-month onslaught of above-average snowfall throughout the West, with some resorts reporting more than 200 percent of normal totals. Season saved.

56) Introducing the new OC. OKLAHOMA CITY grabbed headlines by stealing the SuperSonics from Seattle, hosted the U.S. Olympic trials for sprint canoe and kayaking at its revitalized riverfront, and—our favorite—launched a citywide weight-loss campaign. So far, the city of half a million has collectively shed more than 220,000 pounds. Hear that, Milwaukee?

55) Proof that sustainable air travel might be feasible: British defense firm QinetiQ's solar-powered ZEPHYR—an ultralightweight UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)—stayed aloft for a record 82 hours and 37 minutes in a demonstration for the U.S. Department of Defense.

54) Guy named Lance got cancer. Fought it. Beat it. Won his sport's most prestigious race. Story inspired others. Dogsledder and cancer survivor LANCE MACKEY, first person ever to win the 1,150-mile Iditarod and the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest in the same year (2007), repeated the feat this year.

53) The retro facial hair, the seething outrage over China's underage "half-people" gymnasts, the Romanian accent that gets thicker as time goes on, and the rough hugging. BELA?KAROLYI was a well of unpredictability at the most scripted Games ever.

52–51) Sustainable materials? Muy bueno. The BAMBOO CRAZE? Let's do the math:
Dell's bamboo-encased COMPUTER is pretty cool.

But it turns out that making bamboo BASE LAYERS isn't very, um, sustainable (often involves toxic chemicals).

Bamboo TENT POLES, like the ones Nemo is launching in the spring, sound promising enough.

Bamboo SUNGLASSES? We'll pass.

Nothing casts like an old Tonkin-cane FLY ROD from Winston. Plus custom-bike guru Craig Calfee has upped his race-worthy bamboo offerings with a 29er mountain bike and has begun growing his own bamboo. Try that with carbon fiber.

50) "The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk." So said AL GORE in a July 17 speech on energy. Alarmist? You betcha. But it's a style that's worked for him before (see Truth, An Inconvenient), and his goals are worthy: All our electricity from "carbon-free resources" by 2018 and an end to "borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf."