Important Historical Events of the year 2002, Year 2002 in History
List of 2002 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 2002
What happened in the year 2002?
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 3, 2002 | Israeli–Palestinian conflict: Israeli forces seize the Palestinian freighter Karine A in the Red Sea, finding 50 tons of weapons. |
| January 8, 2002 | President of the United States George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act. |
| January 16, 2002 | War in Afghanistan: The UN Security Council unanimously establishes an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the remaining members of the Taliban. |
| January 17, 2002 | Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people. |
| January 18, 2002 | The Sierra Leone Civil War is declared over. |
| January 22, 2002 | Kmart becomes the largest retailer in United States history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. |
| January 23, 2002 | U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered. |
| January 27, 2002 | An explosion at a military storage facility in Lagos, Nigeria, kills at least 1,100 people and displaces over 20,000 others. |
| January 28, 2002 | TAME Flight 120, a Boeing 727-100, crashes in the Andes mountains in southern Colombia, killing 94. |
| January 29, 2002 | In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea. |
| February 1, 2002 | Daniel Pearl, American journalist and South Asia Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal, kidnapped January 23, 2002, is beheaded and mutilated by his captors. |
| February 12, 2002 | The trial of Slobodan Milošević, the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, begins at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. He dies four years later before its conclusion. |
| February 12, 2002 | An Iran Airtour Tupolev Tu-154 crashes in the mountains outside Khorramabad, Iran while descending for a landing at Khorramabad Airport, killing 119. |
| February 19, 2002 | NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system. |
| February 22, 2002 | Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi is killed in a military ambush. |
| February 27, 2002 | Ryanair Flight 296 catches fire at London Stansted Airport. Subsequent investigations criticize Ryanair's handling of the evacuation. |
| February 27, 2002 | Godhra train burning: A Muslim mob torches a train returning from Ayodhya, killing 59 Hindu pilgrims. |
| February 28, 2002 | During the religious violence in Gujarat, 97 people are killed in the Naroda Patiya massacre and 69 in the Gulbarg Society massacre. |
| March 1, 2002 | U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins in eastern Afghanistan. |
| March 1, 2002 | The Envisat environmental satellite successfully launches aboard an Ariane 5 rocket to reach an orbit of 800 km (500 mi) above the Earth, which was the then-largest payload at 10.5 m long and with a diameter of 4.57 m. |
| March 2, 2002 | U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins, (ending on March 19 after killing 500 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, with 11 Western troop fatalities). |
| March 4, 2002 | Afghanistan: Seven American Special Operations Forces soldiers and 200 Al-Qaeda Fighters are killed as American forces attempt to infiltrate the Shah-i-Kot Valley on a low-flying helicopter reconnaissance mission. |
| March 19, 2002 | Zimbabwe is suspended from the Commonwealth on charges of human rights abuses and of electoral fraud, following a turbulent presidential election. |
| March 27, 2002 | Passover massacre: A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 29 people at a Passover seder in Netanya, Israel. |
| March 27, 2002 | Nanterre massacre: In Nanterre, France, a gunman opens fire at the end of a town council meeting, resulting in the deaths of eight councilors; 19 other people are injured. |
| March 29, 2002 | In reaction to the Passover massacre two days prior, Israel launches Operation Defensive Shield against Palestinian militants, its largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. |
| March 30, 2002 | The 2002 Lyon car attack takes place.[8][9][10] |
| April 2, 2002 | Israeli forces surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, into which armed Palestinians had retreated. |
| April 4, 2002 | The MPLA government of Angola and UNITA rebels sign a peace treaty ending the Angolan Civil War. |
| April 11, 2002 | The Ghriba synagogue bombing by al-Qaeda kills 21 in Tunisia. |
| April 11, 2002 | Over two hundred thousand people march in Caracas towards the presidential palace to demand the resignation of President Hugo Chávez. Nineteen protesters are killed. |
| April 12, 2002 | A suicide bomber blows herself up at the entrance to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda Market, killing seven people and wounding 104. |
| April 14, 2002 | Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country's military. |
| April 15, 2002 | Air China Flight 129 crashes on approach to Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, killing 129 people. |
| April 26, 2002 | Robert Steinhäuser kills 16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot. |
| May 4, 2002 | One hundred three people are killed and 51 are injured in a plane crash near Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport in Kano, Nigeria. |
| May 6, 2002 | Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is assassinated following a radio-interview at the Mediapark in Hilversum. |
| May 6, 2002 | Founding of SpaceX. |
| May 7, 2002 | An EgyptAir Boeing 737-500 crashes on approach to Tunis–Carthage International Airport, killing 14 people. |
| May 7, 2002 | A China Northern Airlines MD-82 plunges into the Yellow Sea, killing 112 people. |
| May 9, 2002 | The 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem comes to an end when the Palestinians inside agree to have 13 suspected terrorists among them deported to several different countries. |
| May 10, 2002 | FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for selling United States secrets to Russia for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds. |
| May 12, 2002 | Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro, becoming the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since the Cuban Revolution. |
| May 20, 2002 | The independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and three years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976). |
| May 22, 2002 | Civil rights movement: A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murder of four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. |
| May 23, 2002 | The "55 parties" clause of the Kyoto Protocol is reached after its ratification by Iceland. |
| May 24, 2002 | Russia and the United States sign the Moscow Treaty. |
| May 25, 2002 | China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrates in mid-air and crashes into the Taiwan Strait, with the loss of all 225 people on board. |
| May 26, 2002 | The tugboat Robert Y. Love collides with a support pier of Interstate 40 on the Arkansas River near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, resulting in 14 deaths and 11 others injured. |
| May 28, 2002 | The last steel girder is removed from the original World Trade Center site. Cleanup duties officially end with closing ceremonies at Ground Zero in Manhattan, New York City. |
| June 6, 2002 | Eastern Mediterranean event. A near-Earth asteroid estimated at ten meters in diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya. The explosion is estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb. |
| June 10, 2002 | The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom. |
| June 11, 2002 | Antonio Meucci is acknowledged as the first inventor of the telephone by the United States Congress. |
| June 13, 2002 | The United States withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. |
| June 14, 2002 | Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75,000 miles (121,000 km), about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. |
| June 16, 2002 | Padre Pio is canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. |
| June 22, 2002 | An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw strikes a region of northwestern Iran killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slow official response. |
| June 24, 2002 | The Igandu train disaster in Tanzania kills 281, the worst train accident in African history. |
| June 29, 2002 | Naval clashes between South Korea and North Korea lead to the death of six South Korean sailors and sinking of a North Korean vessel. |
| July 1, 2002 | The International Criminal Court is established to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. |
| July 1, 2002 | Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154, and DHL Flight 611, a Boeing 757, collide in mid-air over Überlingen, southern Germany, killing all 71 on board both planes. |
| July 2, 2002 | Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon. |
| July 4, 2002 | A Boeing 707 crashes near Bangui M'Poko International Airport in Bangui, Central African Republic, killing 28. |
| July 9, 2002 | The African Union is established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, replacing the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The organization's first chairman is Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa. |
| July 10, 2002 | At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens's painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson. |
| July 14, 2002 | French president Jacques Chirac escapes an assassination attempt from Maxime Brunerie during a Bastille Day parade at Champs-Élysées. |
| July 15, 2002 | "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and possession of explosives during the commission of a felony. |
| July 15, 2002 | The Anti-Terrorism Court of Pakistan sentences British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to death, and three others suspected of murdering The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl to life. |
| July 18, 2002 | A Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer crashes near Estes Park, Colorado, killing both crew members. |
| July 27, 2002 | Ukraine airshow disaster: A Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashes during an air show at Lviv, Ukraine killing 77 and injuring more than 500 others, making it the deadliest air show disaster in history. |
| July 28, 2002 | Nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, are rescued after 77 hours underground. |
| July 28, 2002 | Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise Flight 9560 crashes after takeoff from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, killing 14 of the 16 people on board. |
| August 19, 2002 | Khankala Mi-26 crash: A Russian Mil Mi-26 helicopter carrying troops is hit by a Chechen missile outside Grozny, killing 118 soldiers. |
| August 20, 2002 | A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein take over the Iraqi embassy in Berlin, Germany for five hours before releasing their hostages and surrendering. |
| August 30, 2002 | Rico Linhas Aéreas Flight 4823 crashes on approach to Rio Branco International Airport, killing 23 of the 31 people on board. |
| August 31, 2002 | Typhoon Rusa, the most powerful typhoon to hit South Korea in 43 years, made landfall, killing at least 236 people.[8] |
| September 4, 2002 | The Oakland Athletics win their 20th consecutive game, an American League record. |
| September 10, 2002 | Switzerland, traditionally a neutral country, becomes a full member of the United Nations. |
| September 14, 2002 | Total Linhas Aéreas Flight 5561 crashes near Paranapanema, Brazil, killing both pilots on board. |
| September 26, 2002 | The overcrowded Senegalese ferry, MV Le Joola, capsizes off the coast of the Gambia killing more than 1,000. |
| October 2, 2002 | The Beltway sniper attacks begin in Washington, D.C., extending over three weeks and killing 10 people. |
| October 7, 2002 | The Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on STS-112 to continue assembly of the International Space Station. |
| October 10, 2002 | Iraq War: The United States Congress approves the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. |
| October 11, 2002 | A bomb attack in a Myyrmanni shopping mall in Vantaa, Finland kills seven. |
| October 12, 2002 | Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300. |
| October 16, 2002 | The Bibliotheca Alexandrina opens in Egypt, commemorating the ancient library of Alexandria. |
| October 23, 2002 | Second Chechen War: Chechen separatist terrorists seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 700 theater-goers hostage. |
| October 26, 2002 | Approximately 50 Chechen terrorists and 150 hostages die when Russian special forces troops storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the terrorists during a musical performance three days before. |
| October 29, 2002 | A fire destroys a luxurious department store in Ho Chi Minh City, where 1,500 people are shopping. More than 60 people die and over 100 are unaccounted for in the deadliest peacetime disaster in Vietnam. |
| October 31, 2002 | A federal grand jury in Houston, Texas indicts former Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice related to the collapse of his ex-employer. |
| November 4, 2002 | Chinese authorities arrest cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress. |
| November 6, 2002 | Jiang Lijun is detained by Chinese police for signing the Open Letter to the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. |
| November 6, 2002 | A Fokker 50 crashes near Luxembourg Airport, killing 20 and injuring three. |
| November 8, 2002 | Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441: The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face "serious consequences". |
| November 10, 2002 | Veteran's Day Weekend Tornado Outbreak: A tornado outbreak stretching from Northern Ohio to the Gulf Coast, one of the largest outbreaks recorded in November. The strongest tornado, an F4, hits Van Wert, Ohio, during the early to mid afternoon and destroys a movie theater, which had been evacuated. |
| November 11, 2002 | A Fokker F27 Friendship operating as Laoag International Airlines Flight 585 crashes into Manila Bay shortly after takeoff from Ninoy Aquino International Airport, killing 19 people. |
| November 13, 2002 | Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq agrees to the terms of the UN Security Council Resolution 1441. |
| November 13, 2002 | During the Prestige oil spill, a storm bursts a tank of the oil tanker MV Prestige, which was not allowed to dock and sank on November 19, 2002, off the coast of Galicia, spilling 63,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil, more than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. |
| November 15, 2002 | Hu Jintao becomes General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and a new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated. |
| November 16, 2002 | The first cases of the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak are traced to Foshan, Guangdong Province, China. |
| November 18, 2002 | Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq. |
| November 19, 2002 | The Greek oil tanker Prestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galicia, releasing over 76,000 m3 (20 million US gal) of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history. |
| November 21, 2002 | NATO invites Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members. |
| November 21, 2002 | Arturo Guzmán Decena, founder of Los Zetas and high-member of the Gulf Cartel, is killed in a shoot-out with the Mexican Army and the police. |
| November 22, 2002 | In Nigeria, more than 100 people are killed at an attack aimed at the contestants of the Miss World contest. |
| November 28, 2002 | Suicide bombers blow up an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya; their colleagues fail in their attempt to bring down Arkia Israel Airlines Flight 582 with surface-to-air missiles. |
| December 13, 2002 | European Union enlargement: The EU announces that Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia will become members on May 1, 2004. |
| December 17, 2002 | Second Congo War: The Congolese parties of the Inter Congolese Dialogue sign a peace accord which makes provision for transitional governance and legislative and presidential elections within two years. |
| December 18, 2002 | California gubernatorial recall: Then Governor of California Gray Davis announces that the state would face a record budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier. |
| December 23, 2002 | A U.S. MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25 in the first combat engagement between a drone and conventional aircraft. |
| December 27, 2002 | Two truck bombs kill 72 and wound 200 at the pro-Moscow headquarters of the Chechen government in Grozny, Chechnya, Russia. |