Operation: Get Back the Moon

Operation: Get Back the Moon (O:GBM) was an attempt to reclaim Earth's moon in 2909 after a group of intergalactic outlaws pulled it to twice its orbit (relative to the sun, not Earth). O:GBM was successful but had the side effect that now Earth's years were twice as long, thus leading to the International Calendar Extension.

The Plan
The plan of O:GBM was to use dark-energy-powered rockets strapped to the side of Earth closest to the sun and launch the planet to twice its orbit from the sun. This would reclaim Earth's moon through gravity, but would also make the Earth cooler, helping (but not solving) Earth's global warming problem at the time (corn fields were literally starting on fire during this year).

Scientists theorized that launching Earth so far out like that was going to take a year itself, but in the effort to try and launch the Earth, a wormhole was accidentally opened and sent the Earth to twice its orbit almost instantaneously. So now Earth's inhabitants knew how to create wormholes.

After the Event
After the plan had succeeded, there were unforeseen consequences that were not too big of a problem. One of which, however, was very interesting, as now the Earth had a celestial neighbor, Mars, and it was now easier than ever to explore its surface.

This led to the colonization of Mars, which, in turn, led to the United States of Mars (USM) breaking off from its mother country, the United States of America, in 2975.

Once Mars was colonized, we found that there were actually simple forms of life already living on the planet. These life forms were worm-like green creatures burrowing within Mars' crust, breathing in Mars' air and digesting copper and releasing oil and oxygen. This made the worm-like extra-terrestrials (called Marsworms) very valuable to the USM, as they used the oil for energy and the oxygen to breathe.

What the humans of this time didn't notice, however, was that the wormhole had actually brought them forward one million years. Mars was able to develop its own atmosphere again because one of its moons had actually crash-landed into it, adding to its gravity and enabling an atmosphere. After the one million years, life had developed on this newly-stable Mars from single-celled organisms to the Marsworms the humans found. By skipping over a million years, Earth's humans were missing an opportunity to see evolution in action.

Trivia

 * O:GBM is the reason why the USM and the International Calendar Extension exist
 * If Earth had stayed in its place, we would have been able to witness the actual formation of a planet's atmosphere and its lifeforms
 * Perhaps if we had not interfered with Mars' life for another couple million to billion years, Mars would have developed intelligent, sentient life