This document discusses the history and impact of the discovery of the Higgs boson particle. Key points include: - The Higgs boson is an elementary particle that is important to the Standard Model of particle physics. It was theorized in the 1960s to help explain why some fundamental particles have mass. - After decades of experiments at particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider, scientists finally announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. - This discovery confirmed the last missing piece of the Standard Model and helped validate the theory of electroweak symmetry breaking that gives mass to elementary particles. It marked a major achievement in our understanding of physics.