Lost all my Events in '09

Question

This will be difficult to explain I think, but hopefully someone can make sense of my problem.
I was transferring some newly imported images into a different Events folder of a similar topic, and all of a sudden the window opened up to all the individual Photos on file, but the Events folder with all my chronologically sorted Events had consolidated ALL images into ONE file with all the images unsorted as you see in the Photos folder.
There used to be over 50 sorted Events, now, there's one with every image in it. Where all my Events have gone, I have no idea ????
Is there any way of resurrecting my original Events folder ?
I had several years of sorted Events, now unsorted and almost impossible for me to remember what they were as most involve orchid shows, ie, the images are much of a muchness, but each Event is a different show.
I am desperate to get my sorted Events back.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Anton

Answer 1

Definitely not in Photo view.
The Events folder shows only one Event, but when you run the mouse over it in the view window it shows all the images that were in separate Events, but as you would normally see in the PHOTOS view as individual images.
I hadn't backed up as I only recently upgraded to '09 and still going through the organisation of my images. Generally I only back up 2 weekly. :o|
I have never experienced anything like this in all the years I have used iPhoto, it just happened in the blink of an eye. I thought I had inadvertently gone into Photo view, but when I sae the Events folder only had #1 next to it instead of 80 or so, that's when alarm bells rang.
I tried a  Z command to no effect, I thought that may reverse it.
Anton