Timeline of International Events

## 2000

**January 2 –** *Kosheh massacres: Massacre of twenty Coptic Christians by Muslim villagers in Kosheh, Egypt.*

**January 6 –** *The last natural Pyrenean ibex is found dead, apparently killed by a falling tree.*

**January 10 –** *America Online announces an agreement to purchase Time Warner for $162 billion (the largest-ever corporate merger).*

**January 14 –** *The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 11,722.98 (at the peak of the Dot-com bubble).*

**January 14 –** *The United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentences five Bosnian Croats to up to 25 years in prison for the 1993 killing of more than 100 Bosnian Muslims.*

**January 18 –** *The Tagish Lake meteorite impacts the Earth in Canada.*

**January 30 –** *Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashes off the coast of Ivory Coast into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169.*

**January 31 –** *Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashes off the California coast into the Pacific Ocean, killing 88.*

**January 31 –** *Dr. Harold Shipman is found guilty of murdering 15 patients between 1995 and 1998 at Hyde, Greater Manchester, England, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The subsequent enquiry considers him to have killed at least 215.*

**February 4 –** *German extortionist Klaus-Peter Sabotta is jailed for life for attempted murder and extortion in connection with the sabotage of German railway lines.*

**February 5 –** *Second Chechen War: Novye Aldi massacre – Russian forces summarily execute at least 60 civilians in a suburb of Grozny.*

**February 6 –** *Second Chechen War: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000) ends with Russian forces conclude capture of the Chechen capital Grozny.*

**February 9 –** *Torrential rains in Africa lead to the worst flooding in Mozambique in 50 years, which lasts until March and kills 800 people.*

**February 13 –** *The final original Peanuts comic strip is published, following the death of its creator, Charles M. Schulz the day prior.*

**February 21 –** *UNESCO holds the inaugural celebration of International Mother Language Day.*

**February 29 –** *A rare century leap year date occurs. Usually, century years are common years due to not being exactly divisible by 400. 2000 is the first such year to have a February 29 since the year 1600, making it only the second such occasion since the Gregorian Calendar was introduced in the late 16th century. The next such leap year will occur in 2400.*

**March 4 –** *The PlayStation 2 is released in Japan, followed by other releases in western markets in late 2000.*

**March 8 –** *Naka-Meguro derailment: A sideswipe collision of two Tokyo Metro trains kills five people.*

**March 10 –** *The NASDAQ Composite Index reaches an all-time high of 5,048. Two weeks later, the NASDAQ-100, S&P 500, and Wilshire 5000 reach their peaks prior to the Dot-com bubble, ending a bull market run that has lasted over 17 years.*

**March 12 –** *Pope John Paul II apologizes for the wrongdoings by members of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the ages.*

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**March 12 –** *A Zenit-3SL sea launch fails due to a software bug.*

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**March 13 –** *The United States dollar becomes the official currency of Ecuador, replacing the Ecuadorian sucre.*

May 19, 2020

**April 3 –** *United States v. Microsoft: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors.*

**April 22 –** *In a predawn raid, federal agents seize 6-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami and fly him to his Cuban father in Washington, D.C., ending one of the most publicized custody battles in U.S. history.*

**April 30 –** *Canonization of Faustina Kowalska in the presence of 200,000 people and the first Divine Mercy Sunday celebrated worldwide.*

**May 1 –** *A new class of composite material is fabricated, which has a combination of physical properties never before seen in a natural or man-made material.*

May 20, 2020

**June 4 –** *The 7.9 Mw  Enggano earthquake shakes southwestern Sumatra with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VI (Strong), killing 103 people and injuring 2,174–2,585.* **June 5 –** *405 The Movie, the first short film widely distributed on the Internet, is released.* **June 10 – July 2 –** *Belgium and the Netherlands jointly host the UEFA Euro 2000 football tournament, which is won by France.*

**June 17 –** *A centennial earthquake (6.5 on the Richter scale) hits Iceland on its national day.*

May 21, 2020

**June 26 –** *A preliminary draft of genomes, as part of the Human Genome Project, is finished. It is announced at the White House by President Clinton.* **June 28 –** *Elián González returns to Cuba with his father, Juan Miguel González, ending a protracted custody battle.*

**June 30 –** *At the Roskilde Festival near Copenhagen, Denmark, nine die and 26 are injured on a set while the rock group Pearl Jam performs.*

**July 1 –** *The Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden is officially opened for traffic.*

**July 2 –** *France defeats Italy 2–1 after extra time in the final of the European Championship, becoming the first team to win the World Cup and European Championship consecutively.*

**July 7 –** *The draft assembly of Human Genome Project announced at the White House by President Bill Clinton, Francis Collins, and Craig Venter.*

**July 10 –** *In southern Nigeria, a leaking petroleum pipeline explodes, killing about 250 villagers who were scavenging gasoline.* **July 14 –** *A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth.*

May 23, 2020

**July 25 –** *Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde aircraft, crashes into a hotel in Gonesse just after takeoff from Paris, killing all 109 aboard and 4 in the hotel.*

**August 3 –** *Rioting erupts on the Paulsgrove estate in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, after more than 100 people besiege a block of flats allegedly housing a convicted paedophile. This is the latest vigilante violence against suspected sex offenders since the beginning of the "naming and shaming" anti-pedophile campaign by the tabloid newspaper News of the World.*

**August 7 –** *DeviantART is launched.*

**August 8 –** *The Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor.*

**August 12 –** *The Russian submarine Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea during one of the largest Russian naval exercises since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, resulting in the deaths of all 118 men on board.*

**August 14 –** *Tsar Nicholas II and his family are canonized by the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.*

**August 23 –** *John Anthony Kaiser, a Roman Catholic priest, is murdered in Morendat, Kenya.*

**August 24 –** *The Nintendo GameCube is revealed.*

**September 6 –** *The last wholly Swedish-owned arms manufacturer, Bofors, is sold to American arms manufacturer United Defense.*

**September 6–8 –** *World leaders attend the Millennium Summit at U.N. Headquarters.*

**September 7–14 –** *Fuel protests take place in the United Kingdom, with refineries blockaded, and supply to the country's network of petrol stations halted.*

**September 10 –** *Operation Barras: A British military operation to free five soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment that were held captive for over two weeks during the Sierra Leone Civil War, all of which were rescued.*

**September 13 –** *Steve Jobs introduces the public beta of Mac OS X for US$29.95.*

**September 15 – October 1 –** *The 2000 Summer Olympics, held in Sydney, Australia, is the last Olympic Games of the 20th century.*

May 24, 2020

**September 16 –** *Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze is last seen alive; this day is taken as the commemoration date of his death.*

**September 26 –** *The Greek ferry Express Samina sinks off the coast of the island of Paros; 80 out of a total of over 500 passengers perish in one of Greece's worst sea disasters.*

**September 29 –** *The HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland is closed.*

**October 3 –** *Approximate start of Autumn 2000 Western Europe floods (particularly affecting England) precipitated by days of heavy rain.*

**October 5 –** *Mass demonstrations in Belgrade lead to resignation of Yugoslavia's president Slobodan Milošević.* **October 6 –** *The last Mini is produced in Longbridge.*

**October 11 –** *250 million US gallons (950,000 m3) of coal sludge spill in Martin County, Kentucky (considered a greater environmental disaster than the Exxon Valdez oil spill).*

**October 12 –** *In Aden, Yemen, USS Cole is badly damaged by two Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, who place a small boat laden with explosives alongside the United States Navy destroyer, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.*

**October 22 –** *The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper exposes Japanese archeologist Shinichi Fujimura as a fraud; Japanese archaeologists had based their treatises on his findings.*

**October 26 –** *Pakistani authorities announce that their police have found an apparently ancient mummy of a Persian Princess in the province of Balochistan. Iran, Pakistan and the Taliban all claim the mummy until Pakistan announces it is a modern-day fake on April 17, 2001.*

**October 26 –** *The New York Yankees defeat the New York Mets 4–2 in the fifth game of the World Series to win the first "Subway Series" since 1956 by 4 games to 1. The series win was the Yankees third in a row and 26th overall.*

**October 30 –** *This is the final date during which there is no human presence in space; on October 31, Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station. The ISS has been continuously crewed since.*

**October 31 –** *Singapore Airlines Flight 006 collides with construction equipment in the Chiang Kai Shek International Airport, resulting in 83 deaths.*

May 25, 2020

**November 2 –** *The first resident crew enters the International Space Station.*

**November 7 –** *In London, a criminal gang raids the Millennium Dome to steal the Millennium Star diamond, but police surveillance catches them in the act.*

**November 11 –** *Kaprun disaster, Austria: A funicular fire in an Alpine tunnel kills 155 skiers and snowboarders.*

**November 17 –** *A catastrophic landslide in Log pod Mangartom, Slovenia, kills 7, and causes millions of SIT of damage. It is one of the worst catastrophes in Slovenia in the past 100 years.*

**December 7 –** *Kadisoka temple is discovered in Sleman, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.*

**December 15 –** *The third and final reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is shut down and the station is shut down completely.*

**December 25 –** *The Luoyang Christmas fire at a shopping center in China kills 309 people.*