2001 (
MMI) was a
common year that
started on Monday according
to the
Gregorian calendar.
In the
Gregorian Calendar, 2001
was also the first year of the
21st
century and the
3rd millennium.
Popular culture, however, confusedly views the year
2000 as holding this distinction.
Events
January
- January 1 – A black
monolith measuring
approximately 9 feet tall appears in Seattle
, Washington
's Magnuson Park
, placed by an anonymous artist in reference to the
movie 2001: A Space
Odyssey.
- January 8 – Noah, a gaur, is born, the first individual of an endangered
species to be cloned.
- January 11 – The U.S. Federal Trade Commission approves
the merger of America Online and Time Warner to form AOL Time Warner.
- January 13 – A
7.6 magnitude
earthquake
hits all of El Salvador
, killing at least 800 people and leaving thousands
homeless.
- January 15 – Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, launches on
the internet.
- January 16 – US President Bill
Clinton awards former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service during the
Spanish-American War; 11 of
Roosevelt's descendants accept on his behalf.
- January 17 – Impeachment proceedings against Philippine
President Joseph Estrada, accused of
committing plunder, end prematurely and
trigger the second EDSA People Power
Revolution or People Power
II.
- January 20 – Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is sworn in
as the 14th President of the Philippines after the Armed Forces of the
Philippines and several cabinet members withdraw support for
Joseph Estrada.
- January 20 – George W. Bush
succeeds Bill Clinton, becoming the
43rd President of the
United States.
- January 22 – Four
of the "Texas 7" are caught at a convenience
store in Woodland
Park, Colorado
, and a fifth kills himself inside a motor
home.
- January 23–25 – United Nations
war crimes prosecutor Del Ponte demands
that Serbia
hand over
Slobodan
Milošević.
- January 23 – The Tiananmen Square
self-immolation incident occurs.
- January 24 – The
last 2 of the "Texas 7" are taken into
custody in Colorado Springs, Colorado
.
- January 24 –
Secretary of
State for Northern Ireland Peter
Mandelson resigns from the British
cabinet for
the second time.
- January 25 – A
50-year-old Douglas DC-3 crashes near
Ciudad
Bolivar
, Venezuela
, killing 24.
- January 26 – An
earthquake
hits Gujarat
, India
, killing
more than 12,000.
- January 28 – Super Bowl XXXV: The Baltimore Ravens defeat the New York Giants 34–7, winning their first
Super Bowl title.
- January 29 – Thousands of student
protesters in Indonesia storm parliament and demand that President
Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption
scandals.
February
March
April
- April 1 – Hainan Island incident: A Chinese
fighter jet bumps into a U.S. EP-3E surveillance
aircraft, which is forced to make an emergency landing in Hainan
, China
. The U.S. crew is detained for 10 days and
the F-8 Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, goes
missing and is presumed dead.
- April 1 – Former
Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia
President Slobodan Milošević surrenders
to police special forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes.
- April 1 – In the
Netherlands
, the Act on the Opening up of
Marriage goes into effect. The Act allows same-sex couples to marry legally for the
first time in the world since the reign of Nero.
- April 26 – Junichiro Koizumi becomes Prime Minister of Japan.
- April 28 –
Soyuz
TM-32
lifts off from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome, carrying the first space tourist, American Dennis Tito.
- April 30 – Blanche Barton, High Priestess of the
Church of Satan, steps down and
gives her position to Peter H.
Gilmore and Peggy Nadramia.
May
- May 1 – The Japanese
cities of Urawa, Omiya, and Yono merge to form the
city of Saitama.
- May 6 – Space tourist Dennis Tito returns to Earth aboard Soyuz TM-31. (Soyuz TM-32
is left docked at the International Space Station as a
new lifeboat.)
- May 7 – In Banja Luka
, Bosnia and Herzegovina
, an attempt is made to reconstruct the Ferhadija
mosque
. However, the ceremony results in mass riots
by Serb nationalists, who beat and stone 300
elderly Bosnian Muslims.
- May 13 – Silvio Berlusconi and the Italian
House of the Liberties coalition win the general
elections.
- May 22 – A large trans-Neptunian object (28978 Ixion) is found during the Deep Ecliptic Survey.
- May 22–23 – The Bahá'í Terraces officially open on Mount
Carmel
in Haifa
, Israel
(site of the Shrine of the Báb
and the Bahá'í World Centre
).
- May 23 – Bayern München wins the UEFA Champions League.
- May 24 – Sherpa
Temba Tsheri, 16, becomes the youngest
person to summit Mount
Everest
.
- May 24 – The Versailles wedding hall
disaster kills 23 in Jerusalem
, Israel
.
June
- June 1 – Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal kills his father, the
king, his mother and other members of the royal family with an
assault rifle and then shoots himself in the Nepalese royal massacre. Dipendra
dies June 4, as King of Nepal. His uncle
Gyanendra accedes to the throne.
- June 1 – A Hamas suicide bomber kills 21, mostly teenagers, in
the Dolphinarium disco in Tel Aviv
, Israel
.
- June 5–9 – Tropical Storm
Allison produces 36 inches (900 mm) of rain in Houston, Texas
, killing 22, damaging the Texas
Medical Center
, and causing more than 5 billion American dollars of damage
overall.
- June 7 – Tony
Blair's Labour Party wins the
United Kingdom
general election.
- June 11 – In Terre Haute
, Indiana
, Timothy McVeigh is
executed for the Oklahoma City bombing
.
- June 19 – An American
missile hits a soccer
field in northern Iraq
(Tel Afr
County), killing 23 and wounding 11. According to U.S.
officials, it was actually an Iraqi missile that
malfunctioned.
- June 20 – Pervez Musharraf becomes President of Pakistan after the
resignation of Muhammad Rafiq
Tarar.
- June 21 – The world's longest train is set up by BHP Iron Ore and
is recorded going between Newman and Port Headland in Western
Australia (a distance of 275 km, or 170 miles) and the train
consists of 682 loaded iron ore wagons and 8 GE AC6000CW locomotives, giving a gross weight
of almost 100,000 tonnes and moves 82,262 tonnes of ore; the train
is 7.353 km (4.568 miles) long.
- June 23 – An
earthquake (7.9 on the Richter
scale) hits the south of Peru
.
July
- July 2 – The world's first self-contained
artificial heart is implanted in
Robert Tools.
- July 3 – A
Vladivostokavia Tupolev Tu-154
jetliner crashes on approach to landing at Irkutsk,
Russia
, killing 145.
- July 13 – Beijing
wins the bid to host the 2008
Summer Olympics.
- July 16 – The
People's
Republic of China
and the Russian
Federation
sign the Treaty of
Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation.
- July 16 – The
FBI
arrests Dmitry
Sklyarov at a convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, for violating
a provision of the DMCA.
- July 17 – The
Altamira
caves
's replica (created by Manuel Franquelo and Sven Nebel) is
inaugurated.
- July 18 – In Baltimore,
Maryland
, a 60-car train derailment occurs in a tunnel,
sparking a fire that lasts days and virtually shuts down downtown
Baltimore.
- July 19 – UK
politician
and novelist Jeffrey Archer is
sentenced to 4 years in prison for perjury
and perverting the course of justice.
- July 20 – Vanessa Legget is found in
contempt by a Federal Court for refusing to release notes made for
her book on the Doris Angleton
murder.
- July 20–22 – The 27th G8
summit takes place in Genoa
, Italy
.
Massive demonstrations are held against the meeting by anti-globalisation groups. One
demonstrator, Carlo Giuliani, is shot dead by a carabiniere. Several others are badly injured
during a police attack on a school used by the protesters as their
headquarters.
- July 24 – Tamil Tigers attack Bandaranaika International
Airport in Sri
Lanka
, causing an estimated $500 million of
damages.
- July 28 – Alejandro Toledo is sworn in as the new
president of Peru
, 8 months
after a vote of no-confidence in former President Alberto Fujimori.
August
- August 1 – Alabama Supreme Court Chief
Justice Roy Moore has a 2½ ton monument of
the Ten Commandments installed in
the Rotunda of the Judiciary Building. He is later sued to have it removed, and eventually
removed from office.
- August 9 – U.S. President George W.
Bush announces his limited support for federal funding of research
on embryonic stem cells.
- August 9 – In the
Comoros
, the "Military Committee" of Major Mohamad Bacar
seizes power in the island of Anjouan
, which had declared independence. They plan
to rejoin the Comoros.
- August 24 – The
Heino murders in Finland
: 4 teenagers assassinate businessman Martti Heino
and his wife Elise.
September

September 11, 2001 attacks
- September 11 –
Almost 3,000 are killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks at the
World Trade
Center
in New York
City
; the Pentagon
in Arlington, Virginia
; and in rural Shanksville, Pennsylvania
after American Airlines Flight 11 and
United Airlines Flight
175 crash into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, American Airlines Flight 77
crashes into the
Pentagon
, and
United
Airlines Flight 93
crashes into a grassland in
Shanksville.
- September 12 –
Israel sends tanks into Jericho, West Bank
, starting a new military operation.
- September 15 –
The Queen Isabella Causeway
in Texas
collapses
after being hit by a tugboat, killing 8.
- September 18 –
The 2001 anthrax attacks
commence as letters containing anthrax spores are mailed from
Princeton,
New Jersey
to ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, the
New York Post, and the
National Enquirer.
22 in total are exposed; 5 of them die.
- September 21 –
The AZote
Fertilisant
chemical factory in Toulouse
, France
explodes,
killing 29 and seriously wounding over 2,500.
October
November

Soldiers board a Chinook
helicopter.
- November – The Doha Declaration relaxes the grip
of international intellectual
property law.
- November 2 – The Glocal Forum, leading international
organization in the field of city-to-city cooperation, is
established by Ambassador Uri Savir.
- November 4 –
Hurricane Michelle hits Cuba
,
destroying crops and thousands of homes.
- November 4 – The Police Service of Northern
Ireland is established, replacing the controversial Royal Ulster Constabulary.
- November 10 – The
People's
Republic of China
is admitted to the World Trade Organization after 15
years of negotiations.
- November 10 – Australian Prime Minister John Howard is elected to a third term.
- November 10 –
Heavy rains and mudslides in Algeria
kill more than 900.
- November 12 – In
New York
City
, American Airlines Flight 587
, headed to the Dominican Republic
, crashes in Queens
minutes after takeoff from John F.
Kennedy International Airport
, killing all 260 on board.
- November 13 –
Doha Round: The World Trade Organization ends a
4-day ministerial conference in Doha
, Qatar
.
- November 13 – Symbionese Liberation Army member
Kathleen Soliah (Sara Jane Olsen)
withdraws her previous guilty plea.
- November 13 – In the first such act
since World War II, U.S. President
George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing
military tribunals against any
foreigners suspected of having connections to terrorist acts or
planned acts against the United States
.
December
Births
Deaths
January
February
March
April
May
June
- June 1 – King Birendra of Nepal (b. 1945)
- June 3 – Anthony
Quinn, Mexican-American actor (b. 1915)
- June 4 – King Dipendra of Nepal (b. 1971)
- June 7 – Víctor Paz Estenssoro, President
of Bolivia (b. 1907)
- June 11 – Timothy McVeigh, American convicted murderer
(b. 1968)
- June 17 – Donald J. Cram,
American chemist, Nobel
Prize laureate (b. 1919)
- June 21 – John Lee Hooker, American musician (b.
1917)
- June 27 – Tove
Jansson, Finnish author (b. 1914)
- June 27 – Jack
Lemmon, American actor and director (b. 1925)
- June 28 – Joan
Sims, English actress (b. 1930)
- June 28 – Mortimer Adler, American philosopher (b.
1902)
- June 30 – Chet
Atkins, American guitarist and record producer (b. 1924)
July
August
September
October
November
December
Nobel Prizes
Templeton Prize
References
- ASN Aircraft accident Douglas C-47A-65-DL (DC-3C)
YV-224C Ciudad Bolívar
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/21/world/23-iraqis-reported-killed.html?scp=8&sq=Iraq&st=nyt
External links