On August 17, 2017, a new era of astronomy began with the joint detection of merging neutron stars in gravitational waves as GW170817 and in gamma-rays as GRB 170817A. In my talk I will tell the story of the gamma-ray burst discovery with Fermi GBM, illustrating the exciting physics that we have learned from this single event, along with the many open questions that still remain. I will discuss similar events that we have uncovered in the GBM data and will describe our plans to find more of these events in the new era. In the second part of my talk, I will demonstrate that GBM’s science is not confined to gamma-ray bursts. GBM observes many other rapid flaring events such as solar flares, magnetar flares, terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, and flares from X-ray binaries in our galaxy. On longer timescales, GBM monitors outbursts from galactic X-ray binaries, including the first known Galactic Ultraluminous X-ray pulsar, variations in the Crab Nebula, and active galactic nuclei.
