This past Friday, April 20th wasn't just a day to sit around, pluck an out-of-tune guitar and get stoned. It also marked the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and the beginning of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. One of the worst spills in U.S. history, its impacts are still felt today as fishermen haul in mutated fish and workers continue to clean up tourist beaches.

Here at Jalopnik we love all things cars, but we'd be remiss in our duties as journalists if we didn't discuss the behind the scenes issues attached liked oily barnacles to our beloved petroleum-burning toys. So let's walk through this timeline of the disaster and its aftermath — by way of Getty and Associated Press photos.

Although the 5,000-foot-deep gusher was plugged just shy of four months after British Petroleum's rig failed, biologists, fishermen and tourism businesses are still grappling with the effects of the 180 million gallon spill. (For reference, the largest American spill was the Lakeview Gusher in Kern County, Calif. in 1910. It dumped 378 million gallons of oil on arid land.) Locales in the five Gulf Coast states coated by BP's American petroleum have been dealt a crippling blow.

Dead marshes have led to wildlife habitat problems and more erosion along Louisiana's rapidly eroding coastline and a third of all the oil spilled hasn't yet been accounted for by recovery efforts. Although BP recently agreed to a $7.8 billion settlement with 100,000 or so fishermen whose livelihoods were affected by the spill, the company has yet to agree with the U.S. government on a projected value for all of the ecological harm caused by the spill. General consensus is that it will be in the billions — or enough to complete all of the restoration projects the region will need in the coming years.

Photo credit: Getty Images News