Literary

The World According to Garp (one of my favorite books, works for almost everything)
A Widow for One Year
All the King's Men
Crime and Punishment
Great Expectations
Frankenstein
To Kill a Mockingbird
Of Mice and Men
The Scarlet Letter
The Great Gatsby
1984
Brave New World
The Odyssey/The Illiad/The Aeneid
Any Shakespearean tragedy, esp. Hamlet and Macbeth
And if you're truly a kick-ass writer and want to have some fun... Harry Potter (yes, it can be
done)
Historical
French Revolution
American Revolution
Civil War: 54th Regiment (Subject of the film Glory)
Gandhi
Civil Rights Movement: Rosa Parks, Malcolm X (not MLK!)
Mother Teresa
Harvey Milk
Nixon/Watergate Scandal
Cuban Missile Crisis
Roosevelt/New Deal
Johnson/Great Society
Abraham Lincoln
Harriet Tubman
WEB DuBois
Napoleon's Invasion of Russia /Hitler's Invasion of Russia
Peter the Great/Modernization of Russia
Scientific
Copernicus
Galileo
Newton
Thomas Edison

The rise of the Internet/Cell Phones

Alexander Fleming/Discovery of Penicillin
Genetic Testing (another example that works for tons of questions)
Genetically Modified Food
Grigori Perelman (recently proved the Poincar Conjecture) -- really interesting story, great if
you're interested in math
Current Events
Obama
Hillary Clinton
Stock Market Crash/Madoff
Japan Nuclear Disaster
Revolution in Egypt
Hurricane Katrina
War in Afghanistan/Iraq (no, you will not be penalized for your political views)
AIDS Epidemic
And of course...Reality Television