2002 Calendar
What Happened In Year 2002?
- January 1, 2002 – Euro banknotes and coins become legal tender in twelve of the European Union’s member states.
- 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 12, 2002 – New Year’s Day in Chinese calendar. Start of the year of the Water Horse in Chinese astrology.
- February 27, 2002 – Ryanair Flight 296 catches fire at London Stansted Airport. Subsequent investigations criticize Ryanair’s handling of the evacuation.
- 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 Castro’s 1959 revolution.
- May 20, 2002 – The independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and 3 years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976).
- June 15, 2002 – Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75000 mi, about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
- 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 – A Bashkirian Airlines (flight 2937) Tupolev TU-154 and a DHL (German cargo) Boeing 757 collide in mid-air over Ueberlingen, southern Germany, killing 71.
- July 15, 2002 – “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and to possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.
- July 22, 2002 – Israel kills Salah Shahade, the Commander-in-Chief of Hamas’s military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
- August 19, 2002 – A Russian Mi-26 helicopter carrying troops is hit by a Chechen missile outside of Grozny, killing 118 soldiers.
- October 12, 2002 – Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
- October 29, 2002 – Ho Chi Minh City ITC Inferno, a fire destroys a luxurious department store where 1500 people are shopping. Over 60 people die and over 100 are unaccounted for. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.
- October 31, 2002 – A federal grand jury in Houston, Texas indicts former Enron Corp. 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 13, 2002 – The oil tanker Prestige sinks off the Galician coast and causes a huge oil spill.
- November 21, 2002 – NATO invites Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.
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