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Italy wins the World Cup in Germany (1-1, 6-4 on penalties against France)

The Netherlands revokes Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Dutch citizenship.

The United States forces Syria to withdraw from Lebanon because of its support for jihadists in Iraq. As a result, the Syrians no longer contain the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is then free to carry out attacks against Israel.

Goa, India. Father Eusebio Ferraro, parish priest of Goa, is assassinated. The most extreme Hindus advocate de-Christianization of the city, a former Portuguese colony.

Slobodan Milosevic dies in prison in The Hague, a few months before his scheduled sentencing for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

During the attack on the Italian consulate in Libya in Benghazi, armed guards opened fire, killing at least 11 people. The clash occurred after Italian Minister Calderoli showed a T-shirt featuring a satirical cartoon of Muhammad on TV.

Satirical cartoons against the Prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper provoked violent reactions in several Muslim countries, in the following days European embassies and consulates in Arab countries were repeatedly targeted.

Hamas extremists win by a wide margin over Fatah in the first Palestinian elections.

The Pluto Express mission to Pluto, which will later be renamed New Horizons, departs.

Al Qaeda, through Al Zarqawi, strikes in Amman, Jordan, with three suicide bombers in three hotels: SAS Radisson, Hyatt, Days Inn, leaving 59 dead; in the following days there are popular demonstrations against terrorism.

A 7.6 earthquake on the Richter scale devastates Kashmir, killing over 40,000 people in Pakistan and around 1,500 on the Indian side of the border.

In Hong Kong, aNobii (named after the Anobium punctatum, the “paper beetle”) was created: an Internet social network dedicated to books. It is considered an example of Web 2.0, and by 2009 it had spread to 15 different languages, including Italian, classifying over 16 million

The Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego discovered 2003-UB313 “Xena,” a Kuiper Belt object larger than Pluto.

The G8 summit in Scotland cancels €40 billion of debts of poor countries, mostly in Africa, and allocates €3 billion in aid to the Palestinian state.

California. Steve Jobs accepts the invitation to deliver a commencement address at Stanford University, where he is awarded an honorary degree. He has already been diagnosed with cancer. It’s a spiritual testament to the guiding principle of the 1968 movement that has resonated for so

In 2005, when Apple was working on the first-generation iPhone, scheduled for release in 2007, Steve Jobs invited Intel to propose a CPU business for the planned smartphone. Disbelieving Apple’s sales projections and seeing no way to profit from them, Intel turned him down.

Referendums in France and the Netherlands reject the European constitution (55% no in France, 65% in the Netherlands), while in the Eastern European nations that had recently joined the Union the constitution was approved with an avalanche of yes votes.

Al Qaeda leader Haithem al-Yemeni is killed by a missile fired from a CIA Predator drone on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri was assassinated in a massive suicide attack in central Beirut, with Syrian intelligence services casting a shadow over the murder; Syria is under pressure to abandon its military occupation of Lebanon, which has lasted since 1990.

Abu Omar Al Kurdi, Al Zarqawi’s lieutenant and responsible for 32 car bomb attacks, is arrested in Iraq

Ali’ Hassan Al Majid, better known as “Chemical Ali”, is among the first defendants to appear in the trial for war crimes in Iraq.

The trans-Neptunian body 90482 Orcus, slightly smaller than Pluto, is discovered in the same orbit as, but opposite the Sun.

According to documents recovered by American soldiers from government buildings in Baghdad, the “Oil-For-Food” scandal has erupted: UN employees enriched themselves by doing business with Saddam Hussein by allowing him to sell oil during the UN embargo. The director of the Oil-For-Food program alone, Cypriot

Several hostages, including British engineer Ken Bigley and a Turkoman-Italian, were beheaded in Iraq.

DARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) selects 13 robots to compete in a race covering more than 200 kilometers in California’s Mojave Desert. The best ones cover only 6% of the course (and take several hours to do so).

Honda has created the first truly humanoid robot: it is 1.2m tall, has 29 degrees of freedom and the sense of balance of a human being.

Iraq: Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni is killed by his captors after the ultimatum expired, demanding that Italy immediately withdraw its soldiers.

Space-Ship-One, financed by Paul Allen (formerly Microsoft’s number two), with 62-year-old Mike Melvill aboard, reaches an altitude of 102 km; it is carried up to about 17 km by the White Knight Jet; the shuttle then remains in zero gravity for 3 minutes before falling

Ronald Reagan dies at his home in California after 10 years of Alzheimer’s disease; in Normandy, George W. Bush celebrates the D-Day landings with Western leaders.

Iraqi transitional government takes office: Al Yawar becomes prime minister

In southern Thailand, hundreds of Islamic rioters armed with machetes storm police stations: 5 police officers and 120 rioters remain on the ground.

The explosion and fire that followed the collision between two trains loaded with various hydrocarbons and explosives in North Korea caused 3,000 deaths and injuries.

Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadir Khan admits on Pakistani television that he sold nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea through a conduit in Malaysia.

Terrorist attack in Arbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, 56 dead, including important political leaders of the two main Kurdish parties

Gaddafi, after 9 months of negotiations with the English and Americans, accepts nuclear-bacteriological-chemical disarmament (the Libyan nuclear program will turn out to be at a rather advanced stage)

Mathematicians announce that RSA174 has also been made to capitulate.

Al Qaeda attacks on the British consulate and a British bank in Istanbul, killing 27 and wounding 450; British consul also dies.

In more than one hundred searches throughout Italy, several leading figures of the new Red Brigades were arrested.

Michael Schumacher wins the Formula 1 World Championship for the fourth consecutive time, his sixth world title, Ferrari wins the Constructors’ Title for the fifth consecutive time

Hasan Mahsum, first on China’s “most wanted” list, was killed in Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan.

Complete blackout throughout Italy for a period ranging from 3 hours (Northern Italy) to more than 24 hours (Sicily)

Attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad: more than 20 dead, including the UN Secretary General’s representative, De Mello, and more than 100 injured.

Chechnya; Al-Qaeda attack: 52 dead

The Hayabusa probe launches on an MV Nissan rocket. On September 11, 2005, it will reach the Apollo near-Earth asteroid Itokawa; the probe is ion-propelled.

The Soyuz re-entry lasts only 35 minutes. The re-entry burn lasts 3 minutes, head down over the South Atlantic. The exterior turns fiery red, and gravity takes its toll. You feel like you’re having an elephant sitting on you (5g). Then for 3 minutes, you

Coalition ground troops arrive on the outskirts of Basra (Al Basrah) and An Nasiriyah

At the beginning of the new millennium, there was a re-influx of capital towards the United States, the European Union, and China. It was a period of financial euphoria that affected the most important countries in the global financial system, and which would lead to

Tetra Pak acquires Sidel, a leader in blow-molding PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) plastic for packaging

Bitter taste receptor also discovered in the gastrointestinal tract

Two Arabs open fire on American soldiers in Kuwait, killing one; the response results in the deaths of both attackers.

First launch of the American Lockheed-Martin Atlas II rocket

The U.S. Congress recognizes Meucci as the inventor of the telephone.

Eastern Mediterranean event. A meteorite explodes in the atmosphere between Crete and Libya, threatening to trigger a nuclear conflict. The blast is 26 ktons. At the time of the event, tensions between Pakistan and India were at a peak over the Kashmir issue. If the

Mars Odyssey’s Gamma Ray Spectrometer finds enormous amounts of water ice just 30-60cm below the Martian surface; enough to fill Lake Michigan at least twice.

United States. LIGO, a two-unit gravitational wave detector, one in Washington State and one in Louisiana, is ready to take its first data. Kip Thorne of Caltech and Rainer Weiss of MIT are coordinated by Caltech’s capable manager Barry Barish. Virgo, in Italy, entirely supported

Terrorist attack in New Delhi: Dozens killed, all 15 Pakistani-Afghan attackers killed

Plane with 27 people on board crashes in Yaroslavl, Urals

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Breiman Invents the Random Forests Technique

A SAS plane crashes on takeoff at Linate Airport, killing 118.

The Ukrainian government, under Western pressure, completed the destruction or handed over to Russia the Soviet nuclear weapons still stationed on its territory and destroyed its nuclear-capable bombers. Had it not done so, would Russia have invaded Ukraine first in 2014 and then again in

Anthrax Cases in Florida

Zacarias Moussaoui, assigned by Al Qaeda to carry out the September 11 attacks, is arrested by the FBI following a tip-off from a flight instructor who was suspicious of Moussaoui’s insistence on learning to fly a 747 despite his lack of basic experience.

Launch of the American Genesis probe with the aim of collecting solar wind material using ultrapure wafers of gold, sapphire, silicon, diamond (carbon) and returning it to Earth in the summer of 2004

FIAT, through a takeover bid by Italenergia, acquires control of Montedison and Edison

Several microprocessors surpass the GHz threshold: Pentium III – Coppermine, Pentium III Xeon – Cascades, Pentium 4 – Willamette, Celeron – Coppermine, Xeon – Foster, Duron – Morgan, Pentium III – Tualatin, Celeron – Tualatin, Pentium 4 Northwood ‘A’ (all from Intel), and Athlon –

The deficit of approximately 50% of solar neutrinos has now been confirmed by four experiments (SAGE, GALLEX, Super-Kamiokande, SNO) as well as by the original Davis experiment several decades earlier. A brilliant idea in this regard was to use heavy water (deuterium) in the SNO

Launch of the Mars Odyssey Orbiter

6-million-year-old bones of Orrorin Tugenensis discovered

MIR successfully and safely conducts splashdown in the South Pacific

Turkey declares financial default (bankruptcy)

US Elections: Al Gore and George W. Bush are playing for the presidency by a few hundred votes in Florida.

New York. Rockefeller Center changes hands again: Tishman Speyer Properties, LP purchases the 14 original buildings for $1.85 billion.

The Second Ethiopian-Eritrean War ends; Eritrea maintains its independence.

Robert Bosch GmbH acquires Mannesmann Rexroth AG – Indramat

panel of experts, in the article “Review of Speculative Disaster Scenarios at RHIC” in Reviews of Modern Physics, rules out that the experiments being conducted at Brookhaven National Labs on Long Island could trigger the destruction of the planet (in fact, the creation of a

FermiLab, Chicago. First experimental evidence, via the DONUT (Direct Observation of NU-Tau) experiment.

Ferrari, with Mikael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, won the Formula 1 drivers’ and constructors’ championships.

Flooding in Val d’Aosta, Piedmont and Liguria and the Po reaches levels higher than the 1951 flood, without overflowing

The Russian nuclear submarine Kursk (Oscar-class) sank off the coast of Murmansk with 118 people on board. It was later discovered that a faulty gasket had caused a leak of hydrogen peroxide fuel (already abandoned by navies around the world due to its dangerousness) and

In Venezuela, the revolutionary left wins the elections; it is the second case on the continent (after Allende’s Chile).