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2002
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Year 2002 (MMII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar.
The year 2002 was designated the:
See also: the almanac of events for this year.
The year number was a palindrome (next palindrome year will be 2112).
Events of 2002
February
- February 19 - NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.
- February 20 - In Reqa Al-Gharbiya, Egypt, a fire on a train injures over 65 and kills at least 370.
- February 22 - Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi is killed in a military ambush.
- February 22 - A Norwegian-facilitated ceasefire begins in Sri Lanka.
- February 23 - FARC kidnaps Ingrid Betancourt in Colombia while she campaigns for the presidency.
- February 27 - A series of riots leaves hundreds dead, after 59 Hindu pilgrims die aboard a train burned by a Muslim mob in Godhra, India.
- February 28 - The ex-currencies of all euro-using nations cease to be legal tender in the European Union.
March
- March 1 - U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: In eastern Afghanistan, Operation Anaconda begins.
- March 1 - Continuing violence in Ahmedabad kills 28; police shoot and kill 5 rioters.
- March 1 - The Envisat environmental satellite successfully reaches an orbit 800 km above the Earth using an Ariane 5 on its 11th launch, carrying the heaviest payload to date at 8500kg.
- March 1 - STS-109: Space Shuttle Columbia flies the Hubble Space Telescope service mission, its last before STS-107.
- March 1 - The Peseta is discontinued as the official currency of Spain and is replaced with the euro (€).
- March 3 - São Tomé and Príncipe hold legislative elections.
- March 4 - Ansett Australia, One of the oldest airlines in the world and the second largest in Australia ceases operation after collapsing Financially. This day and event also marked the largest job loss in Australian history.
- March 6 - France agrees to return the remains of Saartjie Baartman to South Africa.
- March 10 - Colombia holds legislative elections.
- March 10 - Togo holds parliamentary elections.
- March 12 - In Houston, Texas, Andrea Yates is found guilty of drowning her 5 children on June 20, 2001. She is later sentenced to life in prison.
- March 14 - 125 vehicles are involved in a massive pile up on Interstate 75 in Ringgold, Georgia
- March 17 - Portugal holds parliamentary elections.
- March 17 - In Islamabad, Pakistan, the International Protestant Church attack occurs.
- March 19 - US Attack on Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda ends (started on March 1) after killing 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, with 11 allied troop fatalities.
- March 21 - In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three others are charged with the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
- March 24 - The 74th Academy Awards, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, are held at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California with the film A Beautiful Mind winning Best Picture.
- March 27 - A suicide bomber kills 28 in Netanya, Israel.
- March 30 - Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother dies in her sleep at the Royal lodge, aged 101
- March 31 - Ukraine holds parliamentary elections.
April- April 1 - Maryland defeats Indiana 64-52 to win the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia.
- April 2 - Israeli forces besiege the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, when militants take shelter there.
- April 9 - The funeral of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother takes place in Westminster Abbey, London.
- April 11 - April 14 - A military coup d'état against the leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez fails.
- April 15 - An Air China Boeing 767-200 crashes into a hillside during heavy rain and fog near Pusan, South Korea, killing 128.
- April 17 - Four Canadian infantrymen are killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire from 2 US F-16s.
- April 18 - The discovery of a new insect order, Mantophasmatodea, is announced.
- April 21 - French presidential election, 2002: The first round results in a runoff between Jacques Chirac and the leader of the main French far-right party, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
- April 22 - At a special session of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Director-General Jose Bustani is fired.
- April 25 - Soyuz TM-34: South African Mark Shuttleworth blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; he had paid £15 million for the trip.
- April 26 - Robert Steinhäuser opens fire on his former teachers and other students in Erfurt, Germany and then kills himself; 16 are killed.
- April 27 - The Laughlin, Nevada River Run Riot kills three.
- April 30 - Pakistani voters approve a referendum granting a 5-year term for Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.
May
- May 5 - In the second round of the French presidential election, Jacques Chirac is reelected.
- May 6 - In the Netherlands, politician Pim Fortuyn is killed by Volkert van der Graaf.
- May 6 - A press release announced the official name change from World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. to World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., or WWE, and the change was publicized later that day during a telecast of Monday Night Raw, which emanated from the Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut.
- May 7 - China Northern Airlines Flight 6136 crashes into the bay near Dalian, killing all 103 passengers and 9 crew members.
- May 7 - Gay Canadian teenager Marc Hall is granted a court injunction ordering that he be allowed to attend his high school prom with his boyfriend.
- May 9 - A 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem ends when the Palestinians inside agree to have 13 suspected militants among them deported to several different countries.
- May 9 - In Kaspiysk, Russia, a remote-control bomb explodes during a holiday parade, killing 43 and injuring at least 130.
- May 10 - FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for selling American secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.
- May 12 - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a 5-day visit with Fidel Castro, becoming the first U.S. President, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro's 1959 revolution.
- May 12 - The Russian Shuttle Buran is destroyed when the roof of the hangar collapses, killing 8 workers.
- May 15 - The Netherlands holds elections for the Lower House.
- May 20 - East Timor regains its independence.
- May 21 - The US State Department releases a report naming 7 state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.
- May 22 - 16th Street Baptist Church bombing: A jury in Birmingham, Alabama convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of 4 girls.
- May 23 - Estonia hosts the first Eurovision Song Contest in a former Soviet republic.
- May 25 - China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrates near the Penghu Islands at Taiwan Strait, killing all 225 people on board.
- May 26 - The Mars Odyssey finds signs of large water ice deposits on the planet Mars.
- May 26 - A barge collides with the Interstate 40 bridge across the Arkansas River in eastern Oklahoma, killing 14.
- May 30 - The final piece of debris from The World Trade Center is removed from Ground Zero.
- May 31 - The 2002 FIFA World Cup begins, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan.
June
- June 3 - The "Party in the Palace" takes place at Buckingham Palace, London for Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee celebrations.
- June 4 - The planetoid Quaoar is discovered orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper belt.
- June 6 - Eastern Mediterranean Event: An object with an estimated diameter of 10 metres collides with Earth. The collision occurs over the Mediterranean Sea, and the object detonates in mid-air.
- June 8 - Serena Williams defeats her sister Venus Williams in straight sets to win the 2002 French Open.
- June 10 - An annular solar eclipse occurs.
- June 10 - First direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom.
- June 11 - Antonio Meucci is recognized as the first inventor of the telephone by the United States Congress.
- June 14 - In Karachi, Pakistan, a car bomb in front of the U.S. Consulate kills 12 Pakistanis and injures 50.
- June 15 - Near Earth Asteroid 2002 MN misses the planet by 75,000 miles (120,000 km) about one third the distance to the moon.
- June 18 - Arizona experiences its worst forest fire, burning 462,606 acres (1,872 km²) near the Mogollon Rim.
- June 24 - The Igandu train disaster in Dodoma Region, Tanzania, kills 281 people in the worst rail accident in African history.
- June 29 - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney serves as Acting President while President George W. Bush undergoes a colonoscopy.
- June 30 - Brazil defeats Germany in the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
July- July 1 - The International Criminal Court is established to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Crimes committed on or after this date may be prosecuted by the court.
- July 1 - A Russian passenger jet and a cargo plane collide over the town of Überlingen in Southern Germany; 72 are dead (see Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937).
- July 9 - The Organization of African Unity is disbanded and replaced by the African Union.
- July 10 - At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting "The Massacre of the Innocents" is sold for £49.5million (US$76.2 million) to Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet.
- July 13 - A lighting strike sets off the Sour Biscuit Fire in Oregon and northern California, which burns 499,570 acres (2,022 km²).
- July 14 - During Bastille Day celebrations, Jacques Chirac escapes an assassination attempt.
- July 15 - In Washington, DC, "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to aiding the enemy and possession of explosives during the commission of a felony. Lindh agrees to serve 10 years in prison for each charge.
- July 19 - Hail kills 25 and injures hundreds in the Chinese province of Henan.
- July 21 - Telecommunications giant WorldCom files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (the largest such filing in United States history).
- July 27 - Helen Clark, leader of the New Zealand Labour Party, is re-elected in a landslide victory.
- July 27 - A Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashes at an air show in Ukraine, killing 78 and injuring more than 100 (the largest air show disaster in history).
August- The 2002 European floods ravage Central Europe.
- August 6 - Cambridgeshire Police make an appeal for the safe return of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who vanished in Soham 2 days prior.
- August 7 - Tama-chan, a bearded seal native to the Arctic, is discovered in Tama River in Tokyo.
- August 10 - Turkmenistan adopts a law to rename all the months and most of the days of the week according to Ruhnama, a book written by Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov.
- August 12 - In Arlington, Virginia, US Airways declares bankruptcy.
- August 21 - Forensic experts confirm that bodies found days earlier are those of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr are charged in relation to their deaths.
September
- September 2 - The United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, successor of the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment, 1983 World Commission on Environment and Development, and the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development, opens.
- September 5 - A car bomb kills at least 30 people in Afghanistan, and an apparent assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai fails the same day.
- September 5 - The Sour Biscuit Fire in Oregon and northern California, which burned 499,570 acres (2,022 km²), is contained.
- September 8 - Typhoon Sinlaku causes huge waves on the Qiantangjiang River in Sheijang Province, China.
- September 10 - Switzerland joins the United Nations.
- September 11 - The World Summit on Sustainable Development comes to a close.
- September 12 - U.S. President George W. Bush addresses the U.N., and challenges its members to confront the "grave and gathering danger" of Iraq, or stand aside as the United States and likeminded nations act.
- September 15 - The Swedish parliamentary election, 2002 leaves Prime Minister Göran Persson and the Social Democrats in power.
- September 18 - The body of missing school girl Amanda Dowler is found in Hampshire.
- September 19 - Civil war starts in Côte d'Ivoire.
- September 20 - The Kolka-Karmadon rock ice slide occurs.
- September 22 - The German federal election leaves Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, his Social Democrats and the Greens in power.
- September 25 - The Vitim event, a possible bolide impact, occurs in Siberia, Russia.
- September 26 - 1863 are killed when the Senegalese passenger ferry Joola capsizes in a storm off the coast of Gambia.
October- October 2 - The Congress of the United States passes a joint resolution, which authorizes the President to use the United States Armed Forces as he deems necessary and appropriate, against Iraq.
- October 2 - The Beltway sniper attacks begin with 5 shootings in Montgomery County, Maryland.
- October 7 - The discovery of Quaoar is announced.
- October 11 - Myyrmanni bombing: A lone bomber explodes a home-made bomb in the Myyrmanni shopping mall north of Helsinki, Finland; the casualties include himself.
- October 12 - Terrorists detonate bombs in 2 nightclubs in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and injuring over 300.
- October 22 - 25 - Chechen Rebels take control over a theatre in Moscow and hold the audience hostage.
- October 24 - The Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, are arrested.
- October 25 - U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, his family, and his staff are killed in a plane accident at Eveleth, Minnesota.
- October 27 - The Anaheim Angels defeat the San Francisco Giants in Game 7 of the 2002 World Series to win the title.
- October
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