Global Financial Crisis. The US government is taking control of the finances of the country’s largest banks. All told, it’s a $1 trillion intervention. We have to go back to 1932 to find an event of similar magnitude, during the Great Depression, when the federal
Malalai Kakar, who headed the Department of Crimes Against Women and was the country’s most famous policewoman, a symbol of President Hamid Karzai’s Afghanistan, was assassinated by the Taliban in front of her home in Kandahar. She had six children, one of whom was killed
Berlusconi dissolves Forza Italia and founds the Freedom Party.
Several fires in Southern California: at least six dead, 45 injured, one million displaced, 1,155 homes destroyed, 172,000 hectares of vegetation in ashes, one billion dollars in damages
From the Xichang base in Sichuan province, the Chinese Long March 3A rocket, carrying the Chang’e 1 satellite, takes off headed for the Moon; this is the first step in Beijing’s space program which plans to land some astronauts (taikonauts) on the lunar surface by
The Ferraris of Massa and Raikonnen win the constructors’ championship and the drivers’ championship (Kimi Raikonnen) at the end of a heart-stopping season that sees the reds overtake the McLarens only in the last grand prix and by just one point over the English rookie
University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Professor Ekaterina Dadachova studies specimens of Cladosporium sphaerospermum, Cryptococcus neoformans, and Wangiella dermatitidis, three species of fungi collected from reactor number 4 of the Lenin nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, discovering their ability to grow faster in radiation-rich environments than
Lebanese anti-Syrian activist Wahid Eido and his son were killed in a car bombing; the seventh anti-Syrian activist assassinated in two years.
At Virginia Tech University in the United States, a Korean student shoots and kills 32 people.
US midterm elections: Democrats win control of the Senate and House of Representatives
The Bell Boeing V22 Osprey vertical take-off aircraft makes its debut at the Farnborough International Air Show after 20 years of development.
John Pendry of Imperial College London, David Dschurig and David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina, have developed a relatively simple device that is invisible (“Cloak of Invisibility”) to 3.5cm microwaves polarized perpendicular to its plane.
Using data from NASA’s Aqua satellite, Duane Walizer (JPL), Baijun Tian (CalTech) discover the Madden-Julian Oscillation, a disturbance that covers half of the Earth’s equator mainly over the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific, with a period of 40-50 days.
A CIA Predator drone bombs Damadola, a Pakistani village on the Afghan border, where the presence of Al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s number two, has been reported, but he escapes the ambush; 18 people are killed.
Hamsa Rabia, a sort of foreign minister of Al Qaeda, is killed by a missile launched by Pakistani special forces on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea discovers a 270 km satellite of the Kuiper Belt body (KBO) 2003-UB313 “Xena” (discovered only a few months earlier and larger than Pluto at 2700 km)
The Hubble Space Telescope discovers two satellites of Pluto, which will be named (on June 23, 2006) Nix and Hydra
In The Hague, the Netherlands, an anti-terrorism operation leads to the arrest of seven members of the Islamic organization Hofstadt; the parliament is kept under siege by the police to prevent coups.
Israel, in accordance with the Road Map stages, and against the will of the local population, evacuates 23 settlements in the Gaza Strip and 4 settlements in the West Bank
Around 350 explosive charges were detonated simultaneously across Bangladesh by an Islamic extremist organisation.
While the constitution is being discussed in Baghdad, attacks continue: a car bomb explodes before 8:00 in the morning in a crowded bus station; then a second explodes after the arrival of rescuers, a third explodes in front of the hospital when the first wounded
Taiwan. Morris Chang is stepping down as CEO of TSMC, the world’s leading silicon foundry for cutting-edge chip technology. Morris Chang still represented the legendary generation of those who invented solid-state chips. He had worked late in the lab with Jack Kilby (co-inventor of solid-state
Il Manifesto journalist Giuliana Sgrena is freed (perhaps for a payment of €6-7 million) by the Italian military intelligence services (SISMI); officer Nicola Calipari is mistakenly killed at a mobile checkpoint by American National Guard soldiers. Terrorist Sheikh Hussein, leader of a cell responsible for
First U.S. court-martial convictions of service members who participated in torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; more convictions to follow January 16, 2005
The American Genesis spacecraft, after collecting solar wind samples, arrives on time for its rendezvous and releases its precious contents into the skies of Utah. The failure of the parachute to open leads to the crash of the probe, whose contents will still allow scientists
A group of scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China has managed to keep five photons entangled, a property that allows them to teleport the quantum state of one of the five photons to one of the other three using the fourth
An American hostage, a 49-year-old Lokheed engineer, is beheaded by an Al Qaeda group. The mutilated body, with the head propped up on its back and a knife stuck in one eye, is posted online by the Al Qaeda cell. A shootout while trying to
Paul Tibbets, commander and pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay, returns to Tinian Island, Saipan. He says he would do the same thing again today under similar circumstances.
Cassini’s flyby of Phoebe, which it takes (very close-up) photographs of Saturn’s moon Phoebe, the first target in the giant Saturnian system, which the mission has just reached.
After Yassin, the new leader of Hamas, Ramtisi, is also killed by a targeted missile attack from an Israeli helicopter.
A second extrasolar planet, 2M1207b, has been directly observed, 230 light-years away in the constellation Hydra; the planet is 8 billion km from its star with an orbit of 2500 years; it is being observed by a European-American team with the VLT (Very Large Telescope)
An extrasolar planet has been directly observed for the first time, thanks to a gravitational lens: it is one and a half times the mass of Jupiter, located 3 astronomical units from its star in Sagittarius, 17,000 light-years away from us; the discovery was made
Jackie Robinson Day was established on April 15, 1947, in honor of the first African-American professional athlete to play in Major League Baseball. He was prominently featured in the film “42.” In 1997, in his honor, his jersey number, 42, was retired by all teams:
Shiite leader Mugtada Sadr’s militias rise up against coalition soldiers across central and southern Iraq; the Ukrainians lose control of Kut, which is then retaken by the Americans; meanwhile, American troops conduct a heavy counteroffensive against Sunni insurgents in Fallujah after the brutal murder of
The Japanese Hayabusa probe is hit by the most violent solar storm in years. Its solar panels are damaged, and since the probe uses electric ion propulsion, it becomes problematic. One of its four engines even stops working. However, Japanese engineers manage to design an
Ali Hassan Al Majid, better known as “Chemical Ali”, was captured by the Americans in Iraq; he was responsible for the Kurdish genocide with chemical weapons perpetrated in 1988.
The Kurdish Peshmerga capture Ramadan, the former Iraqi vice-president, and hand him over to the Americans; he is the 35th on the list of 55 to be captured; the daily ambushes and sabotage against the allies continue.
Tobias Colding and William Minicozzi find an even simpler, more geometric proof of the Poincaré Conjecture than the one presented only a month earlier by Grigori “Grisha” Perelman in his third paper at ‘www.arXiv.org’
Accidental blackout due to overload in the northeastern United States: 50 million people without power for 29 hours; the population’s response, however, is orderly.
Grigori “Grisha” Perelman uploads his third paper to www.arXiv.org; in it, he presents a further analytical result that allows him to use the first, less difficult half of his second paper to directly prove the Poincaré Conjecture.
Partial solar eclipse at dawn in Italy (annular in Northern Europe and North America): the Sun rises eclipsed
Seventeen Western tourists held by an Al Qaeda-affiliated group have been freed in an Algerian army raid, nine of their captors have been killed.
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Two major attacks took place in residential complexes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 12, 2003. Thirty-nine people were killed and over 200 injured when bombs exploded in three complexes in Riyadh: Dorrat Al Jadawel, Al Hamra Oasis Village, and
George W. Bush announces, “We are redefining the war on our terms,” speaking of America’s operational management of the war. But in reality, the strategic objective set by politics (the creation of a democratic Iraqi state) will be unattainable by military force. Military force, however,
In Baghdad, the Marines capture Abu Abbas, the hijacker of the Achille Lauro.
Tikrit also occupied by the Marines: end of the pitched battles in Iraq
Approximately 2:30 p.m.: Four American armored columns from the four cardinal points meet in the square in the center of Baghdad amidst the cheering crowd.
American forces capture several buildings in central Baghdad, including three Presidential Palaces.
Iraq: First field use of JDAM bombs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions), or traditional bombs with a GPS and/or INS positioning system mounted via servo-driven fins to greatly improve target accuracy; their effectiveness was demonstrated live in the bombings in central Baghdad with subsequent explosions on
A diplomatic clash between the United States (George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice), the United Kingdom (Blair), Spain (Aznar), Australia, Japan, and Eastern European countries on one side, and France (Chirac), Russia (Putin), China, Germany (Schroeder), Belgium, and other countries on the
The MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs) is used in Afghanistan: 10 tons of explosives
Grigori “Grisha” Perelman sends the second paper to ‘www.arXiv.org’; in it he corrects the statement of two results reported in the first paper (in which he presented the proof of the Poincare Conjecture), but shows however that the corrections have no effect on the conclusions.
Wikipedia already has 100,000 articles. Created in January 2001, it has been a runaway success. It will reach 30 million by early 2014, 4.4 million of which are in English. The Encyclopedia Britannica has 80,000 entries, or 2% of Wikipedia’s English entries. It is probably
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda’s number 3, organizer of the September 11, 2001 attacks, is captured in Pakistan
First flights of the X47 Pegasus UAV (Automatic Unmanned Vehicle)
The Wilkinson MicroWave Anisotropy Probe creates an accurate map of the cosmic microwave background 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
Shamit Kachru, Renata Kallosh and Andrei Linde of Stanford, and Sandip Trivedi of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay, India, find strong evidence that the “landscape of string theory” (the multidimensional “landscape” created by the possible values assumed by the equations of string
The speed of gravity is measured for the first time: it turns out to be approximately the speed of light: 300,000 km/s (+/- 20%)