world history part 2
1998 : Myanmar celebrates its 50th anniversaryof independence. Pope John Paul II visitsCuba.: Sri Lanka celebrates its 50th anniversaryof independence. Communist Manifestocompletes 150 years of publication. USscientists produce the world’s first clonedCalf named Mr. Jefferson.: James Cameron’s Titanic wins 11 Oscarawards.: India conducts five nuclear tests (three on11th May and two on 13th May 1998).Pakistan conducts six nuclear test (5 on28th May and one on 30th May 1998).: France win World Cup Football.: Jose Saramago, the Portuguese novelistwin 1998 Nobel prize for literature.Amartya Sen of India wins 1998 NobelPrize for Economics. John Glenn, 77, theoldest man in space.1999 : Twelve European countries launch single
currency, the Euro.
: The South African Parliament elects
Thabo Mbeki, the country’s new President.
: The US space shuttle, Columbia, blasts
off under the first woman commander
Eileen Collins, after two failed attempts.
: The former New Zealand Prime Minister,
Mike Moore, takes over as the head of the
World Trade Organisation.
: S.R. Nathan, sworn in as Singapore’s sixth
president.
: The 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature goes to
the German Novelist, Günter Grass.
: China celebrates the 50th anniversary of
Communist rule
: Army takes over in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif
sacked and confined to House.
: World population turns 6 billion.
: The US formally transfers the control over
the Panama Canal to Panama.
2000 : Ananova, the world’s first virtual newsreader, makes her debut on the internet at
www.ananova.com.
: At the NPT conference in the United Nations, USA, Russia, France, Britain and
China pledge to eliminate atomic weapons, without setting a time table.
: An e-mail virus I Love You created by a
Filipino creates wide spread damage to
computer systems across the world.
: Fiji’s President declares a state of emergency after a group of gunmen led by
George Speight seize the nation’s first ethnic Indian Prime Minister, Mahendra Pal
Chaudhry and his Cabinet colleagues and
MPs as hostages.
: The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il and
the South Korean President, Kim Dae
Jung meet at the North Korean capital
Pyongyang. They decide to work for the
unification of the Korean Peninsula.
: The two-day G-15 summit begins in Cairo
(Egypt). It has now 19 members with the
inclusion of Columbia and Iran.
: The International Space Station linked up
smoothly with the Russian-made Zvezda
control module. Zvezda is the first module built solely by Russians.
: George Speight, the leader of the coup
in Fiji, is arrested.
: The US astronomers announce that they
have detected 10 new planets outside the
solar system. It brings the total number of
planets circling other stars, so-called
exoplanets, to 50.
: British Airways suspends Concorde
operations.
: Carl Banks, the Disney Illustrator and creator of Donald Duck passes away.
: Tuvalu, a Pacific island state admitted to
the United Nations as its 189th member in
its first session of the New Millennium in
New York (USA).
: French voters approve a referendum on
shortening the Presidential term to five
years.
: Russia recognises Yugoslav opposition
leader, Vojislav Kostunica’s, historic presidential election victory over Slobodan
Milosevic.
: Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the world’s first
elected woman Prime Minister, passes
away.
: Gao Xingjian, a dissident Chinese novelist and playwright settled in France who
left China in 1987 to settle in France, wins
the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2000 for
his work that has opened new paths for
the Chinese novel and drama.
: Kim Dae Jung, South Korean President,
selected for the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize
for his work towards peace and reconciliation with North Korea that led to a
ground breaking summit with his North
Korean counterpart.
: The Guinness Book of World Records,
sets a new record of its own selling seven
million copies of its first edition of the
new century.
: Hillary Clinton, wife of US President Bill
Clinton, wins the US Senate seat from New
York. Thus, she becomes the first wife of
a President in American history to be
elected to the Senate.
: Margaret Atwood of Canada wins the
coveted Booker Prize 2000 for her novel,
The Blind Assassin.
: Netherlands becomes the first country to
legalise euthanasia, (the mercy killing).
: Nawaz Sharif pardoned off and exiled to
Saudi Arabia.
: George W. Bush declared elected as the 43rd
President of United States.
2001 : The 15-year-old Mir Space Station abandoned
: ANDi the world’s first genetically modified monkey, created.
: The radical Islamic Taliban regime in Afghanistan demolishes two huge statues
of the Buddha at Bamiyan.
: Dennis Tito of the United States becomes
the first person to tour the space.
: Denise Quinones August chosen as the
50th Miss Universe at a function in
Bayamon in Puerto Rico.
: The Organisation of African Union (OAU)
becomes African Union (AU).
: Gen. Pervez Musharraf takes over as the
President of Pakistan.
: United Nations (UN) Secretary General
and V.S. Naipaul win the Nobel Prize For
peace and Literature respectively for 2001.
2002 : Euthanasia or mercy killing comes into
force in Netherlands.
: Robert Mugabe elected President of
Zimbabwe.
: Xanana Gusmao, the independence leader
of East Timor, elected President of the island nation.
: Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa becomes the second space tourist.
: Switzerland becomes the 190th member
of UNO.
: Hamid Karzai elected President of Afghanistan.
: The International criminal Court (ICC)
starts functioning in the Hague (Netherlands)
: The UN Earth Summit held in Johannesburg (South Africa)
: East Timor joins as the 191st member of
the United Nations.
: The 17th Commonwealth Games held in
Manchester (U.K)
: The 14th Asian Games held in Busan
(South Korea)
: Miss Asra Akin crowned as Miss World.
: SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome) outbreak in China and spreads
all over world killing thousands.
2003 : The space shuttle Columbia perished in
space. Seven astronauts including
Dr. Kalpana Chawla died (February).
: The USA and Britain jointly launch
Operation Iraqi Freedom to liberate Iraq
from Sadam Hussain, who build up weapons of mass destruction.
2004 : Spirit and Opportunity land on Mars.
: 28th Summer Olympics was held in Athens in Greece. The USA secured first
place, China stood at second. India won
only one silver.
: Bomb attacks on four Madrid commuter
trains kill 191 and injure hundreds more
: Photos of US soldiers allegedly abusing
Iraqi detainees in Abu Gharaib prison
emerge.
: A team of Russian scientists and another
of US scientists report the discovery of
two new chemical elements. These are elements 113, given the temporary name
Ununtrium (Uut) and element 115 designated Ununpentium (Uup)
: The Iraqi special Tribunal holds the first
hearing in the trial of Saddham Hussian.
: Afghanistan holds its first ever presidential election.
: Scientists discover a new tiny species of
human that lived in Indonesia.
: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dies in
Paris.
2005 : NASA’s unmanned. Probe Deep Impact
collided with the comet Tempel-1 on June
3, 2005.
G-8 Summit was held at Gleneagles, Resort, Scotland on July 6-8, 2005
: Muhammed Abbas is sworn in as Palestinian Authority President.
: Taiwan and China agree Temporarily lift
Taipe’s five - decade ban on direct flights
between the two rivals.
: Former Lebanese Prime Minister RafikalHariri is assassinated in a car bombing in
central Beirut close to the harbour.
: The trial of pop star Michael Joseph
Jackson gets underway in Santa Maria
over a year since his arrest on charges of
child molestation.
: American aviator Steve Fosset completes
the first solo fight around the world without refuelling and lands his jet plane in
Salina Kansas.
: Israel open the world’s largest Holocast
museum on Mount Herzi in Jerusalem to
commemorate the six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis.
: Jalal Talabani is sworn in Iraqi President
making him the first non-Arab head of an
Arab nation. Shia leader Irabhim Jaafari
is nominated as the Prime Minister.
: Pope John Paul II, the ‘‘Peoples Pope’’ or
the ‘‘Travelling Pope’’ is laid to rest in
the cryst of St. Peters Baslica in Vatican.
: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany is
elected 265 th Pope and is to be known as
Benedict XVI.
: Albanian poet and novelist Ismail Kadareis named the winner of the Man BookerInternational Prize, a brand new laurel forthe world’s finest writers.: Kuwaits first woman Prime MinisterMaasuma al Mubarak, takes out in Parliament.: Junichiro Koizumi is re-elected as Japanese Primier by the new House of Representatives at a special session in Tokyo.: The IAEA and its chief Muhammed ElBaradei get the Nobel Peace Prize for theirwork in Stopping the spread of nuclearweapons.: The Dhaka Declaration decides to set upa SAARC Poverty Alleviation Fund andto declare 2006 - 2015 the SAARC decadeof Poverty Alleviation.: The world’s first facial transplantation isdone on a French woman Isabella Dinoirein Amiens.2006 : US space probe ‘Stardust’ returns toearth carrying precious samples of dustfrom stars and comets.: Chile elects Michaelle Bachelet to be its
first woman President.
: NASA launches the first space mission
to Pluto, as the New Horizons spacecraft
is hurled on a 9-year 4.5 b - KM journey.
: 35th summit of World Economic Forum
opens, in Davos, Switzerland.
: French actress Eva Green chosen as the
new James Bond girl.
: Jamaica to have Portia Simpson Miller as
Prime Minister, the first woman head of
the state.
: Oscar award announced : ‘Crush’ is the
best film, Philip Seymour Hoffman - best
actor, Reese Witherspoon - best actress
and Ang Lee - Best Director.
: Lakshmi Mittal’s 18.6 billion euro takeover bid for Arcelor is blocked by a change
in Luxemburg corporate law.
: Solar eclipse observe in Turkey.
: Kavya Vishwanathan’s novel ‘How Opal
Mehta Got kissed, Got wild and got a Life’
being recalled from store shelves, after
she admits copying passages fr om
another book.
: Britain replaces US as the publisher of
most new books in English.
: Earthquake measuring 6.2 rocks
Yogyakarta in Java killing about three
thousand as per first reports.
: J.K. Rowling voted the greatest living
British writer in a survey, followed by
Terry Pratchett, Ian Mcewan, Salman
Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro and Philip Pullman.