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The euro-dollar exchange rate is at an all-time high: 1.35, meaning the dollar is worth 1,430 lire.

The restoration of the Gospel of Judas is being completed in Switzerland: 1000 parchment fragments written in Coptic which constitute 85% of the original text.

Steve Fosset completes the round-the-world flight in 67 hours and 2 minutes, nonstop and without in-flight refueling; the aircraft’s design team is the same as that of SpaceShipOne.

Soudan, Minnesota (formerly a US Steel mine). The MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) experiment records two or three events per week. Its goal is to elucidate the oscillation of solar neutrinos between electron neutrinos (as emitted by the nucleus) and muon and tau neutrinos.

After days of unprecedented demonstrations in Beirut’s streets against the Syrian occupation, pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami resigns; a partial withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon will follow.

Psychologist Paul Bloom, writing in The Atlantic, presents a provocative thesis according to which our innate ability to recognize and separate physical and intentional causality everywhere explains the universality of religious beliefs.

Gillette, founded in 1901 and owner of the Gillette, Braun, Oral-B, and Duracell brands, is acquired by Procter & Gamble for $57 billion.

The rate of pedestrian deaths in traffic accidents in the United States is 2 deaths per 100,000 people per year (0.002%/year). It was 12 in 1937 (0.012%/year).

FIAT and General Motors finalize their divorce, with GM paying 1.5 billion euros.

The Second Intifada, which had begun five years earlier, on September 28, 2000, ended. It was sparked by Likud party leader Ariel Sharon’s twenty-minute walk through the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The outbreak of violence was immediate and led immediately to armed clashes. This second

Elections in Iraq: Despite al-Zarqawi’s death threats to anyone who goes to the polls, voter turnout is over 70%, reaching 95% in some regions; however, 51 people have died in a single day in various terrorist attacks across the country.

An article in Nature demonstrates that liquid water loses memory of its structural correlations in less than 50 femtoseconds (or 0.00000000000005 seconds): a truly short memory… In 1988, also in Nature, an article by French scientist Jacques Benveniste was published in which he believed that

16:19 UTC (17:21 Italy): The first data from the Huygens probe (transmitted 67 minutes earlier by the Cassini probe which in turn acts as a radio relay for Huygens) arrive on Earth: it will transmit the data collected for 2h 27′ 50″ during the descent

12:34 UTC (1:34 PM Italy): The Huygens module, after taking hundreds of photographs from various altitudes and collecting valuable scientific data, lands intact and fully functional on Titan. The surface is muddy, at a temperature of -179°C (-290°F). The air, at 1.5 bar, is composed

violent earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale off the western coast of Sumatra triggers tsunamis traveling at 800 km/h; upon reaching the coast, the wave slows down and rises for a good 10 meters, causing a catastrophe in the entire area: Indonesia (200,000 deaths),

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, 94 astronomical units from the Sun (93-95 from Earth), passes through the termination shock, or the boundary where solar wind particles pass at subsonic speeds.

A group of terrorists attacked the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Saudi special forces intervened and freed the hostages, 9 Saudis and Asian guards were killed, 3 terrorists were killed and 2 were wounded and captured

Awwad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai, later known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is freed by the Americans at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. He will become the founder of the Islamic State (ISIS) caliphate.

Victor Yushchencko, the opposition candidate in Ukraine, who was admitted to a hospital in Vienna due to serious health problems he had in recent months, has confirmation that he was poisoned with heavy doses of dioxin, probably at a dinner with a representative of the

Pitcairn Islands, a British territory in the South Pacific. A third of the island’s adult male population, including the mayor, have been convicted of child sexual abuse. The total population is several dozen.

Ukrainian elections: In the runoff, pro-Russian candidate Yanukovych narrowly defeats pro-Western candidate Yushchenko, backed by the Americans. Street protests erupt with accusations of fraud. The European Union rejects the election’s fairness. The protests continue for days, and parliament annuls the elections.

Stephen Hawking denies his own theory about information falling into black holes: the information they emit in the form of radiation contains traces of the information that fell into them. In fact, the particle-antiparticle pair that forms in the event horizon separates, and one falls

US Elections: George W. Bush is confirmed for a second term in the White House; record voter turnout allows him to break Ronald Reagan’s voter turnout record of 54 million.

Theo van Gogh is assassinated by an Islamic terrorist

SpaceShipOne wins the $10 million Ansari Prize for being able to go into space (suborbital flight) twice in one week with the same spacecraft and a crew of humans; the pilot of the first flight was Mike Melvill, the pilot of the second is Brian

With a violent offensive that causes over 100 deaths, Americans and Iraqis regain control of Samarra, north of Baghdad, within the Sunni triangle.

Al Zarqawi in Fallujah beheads the two American contractors captured a few days earlier, the videos of the beheadings are spread on the internet and partially shown on television networks

In Beslan, North Ossetia, Russian Federation, just a few kilometers from the border with Chechnya-Ingush, a terrorist commando took 1,127 adults and children and 59 teachers hostage during the school year-opening ceremony. The weapons and explosives had been brought in earlier during renovation work. After

In Beslan, North Ossetia, Russian Federation, it’s the first day of school, as in all the republics of the federation and its satellites. It’s the Day of Knowledge, Den’znanja, a kind of national holiday since the days of the USSR. Beslan School Number One is

The Arecibo Radio Telescope, 305m in diameter, in Puerto Rico, has received a signal of possible alien intelligent origin three times: the “SHGb02+ 14a”; it is a signal in the vicinity of the famous hydrogen frequency of 1420 MHz, with a Doppler component, therefore emitted

Google, founded with a $10,000 loan, goes public. Within a short time, it reaches a market value higher than General Motors and Ford combined.

The American spacecraft Messenger was launched to Mercury aboard a Boeing Delta II. The probe weighed just 1,100 kg, including 600 kg of propellant in titanium tanks only 0.5 mm to 1 mm thick. Thanks to its carefully designed orbit, it achieved the unprecedented feat

Three Italian and one Polish hostage were freed in a blitz by Delta Force and Polish forces.

Space-Ship-One financed by Paul Allen (Microsoft) with 62-year-old Mike Melvill on board, exceeds 70km in altitude

Amid a boom in the national economy (+8% of GDP), Sonia Gandhi of the Congress Party surprisingly wins the elections in India; Vajpayee resigns.

Photos of torture and abuse carried out by American soldiers in a prison run by the intelligence services: Abu Ghraib in Iraq are made public.

In Jordan, at the Syrian border, trucks coming from Syria carrying chemical substances were stopped; those arrested, when questioned, confessed that they wanted to carry out a chemical attack with the aim of killing 80,000 people.

Washington: 7 new countries join NATO: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria

NASA’s X-43A aircraft successfully exceeds Mach 7 at an altitude of 30 km; it uses revolutionary RamJet technology that uses oxygen in the air as a combustor; the X-43A is launched by a Pegasus rocket that reaches Mach 5 after being launched by a B-52

Israel kills Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, in a targeted missile attack.

Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle publish the book “Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines.” The concept is based on the ideas first of John von Neumann (von Neumann probes, 1960s) and then of Freeman Dyson (1970s), and finally on the ideas of Freitas himself (1980s), who, for example,

Apple registers patent D504889. It will be granted 14 months later. It concerns a rectangular electronic tablet with rounded corners. It is the patent for what will become the iPad.

Combined observations by the American Chandra X-ray space telescope, the European XMM-Newton telescope, and the German Roentgen telescope have detected a powerful jet of X-rays from the center of the galaxy RX J1242-11, home to a black hole with a mass equal to 100 million

Al Qaeda attacks on several trains in Madrid during rush hour: 200 dead and nearly 1,500 injured

Russia. Kholod Technology: Scramjet. First test carried out on February 18, 2004, during the Strela sub-orbital flight from Baikonur to Kamchatka, at Mach 14.

Doha, Qatar. The car carrying former Chechen President Zelimhan Yandarbiev, returning from Friday prayers, explodes. His two bodyguards are killed, while his son is seriously injured. The attack was ordered by Putin, who had been denied Yandarbiev’s extradition.

Awwad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai, later known as Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, was captured by the Americans in Fallujah. He was considered a low-ranking member of the Sunni resistance. He was imprisoned in Camp Bucca, where he kept a low profile. Released in December 2004,

Suicide bombing in Moscow metro kills 39

The pro-Western Saakashvili has won the presidential elections in Georgia by a landslide; months earlier, he had taken advantage of the popular protests against President Shevarnadze, forcing him to resign and calling new elections.

NASA’s Opportunity spacecraft successfully lands on Mars (Meridiani Planum) and transmits its first images.

NASA’s Spirit probe successfully lands on Mars (Gusev Crater) and transmits first images

NASA’s Stardust mission completes a flyby of comet Wild-2, photographing its nucleus from just 230 km away and collecting samples of cometary dust; it escapes unscathed from crossing two of the five jets active at the time.

Multiple terrorist attacks in Iraq: 18 dead: 4 Bulgarian soldiers, 2 Thais, 12 Iraqis

A 6.5 earthquake in Los Angeles leaves only two victims.

Jordanian Muhammad Khatib Shafiq blew himself up in his methane-powered car next to the Modena synagogue.

Earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale in Taiwan, no casualties

Saddam Hussein is captured in Tikrit, Iraq

A truck bomb carrying suicide bombers hits the Carabinieri base in Nassyria, killing 28 people, including 19 Italians.

Edward Teller, father of the American H-bomb, dies. Born in Hungary, he was a hawk under several administrations, a staunch anti-communist and a supporter of the use of the Bomb for various applications, in addition to the military one.

Kamal Morchidi, coming from Italy, specifically from Milan, blew himself up with his car bomb against the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad while the American Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was staying there, who came out unharmed.

Russia. Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is arrested for tax fraud. His company, Yukos, quickly loses much of its stock market value, until—a year after Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2005—it goes bankrupt, and its most important assets are acquired by the state-owned

China launches its first manned rocket into orbit: astronaut Yang Liwei completes 14 orbits aboard the Shenzhou 5 capsule launched by the Long March 2F (Change Zheng 2F) rocket.

Steve Jobs is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He’s lucky: it’s operable. But he doesn’t want to have it removed. For ten months, he deludes himself that he can get over it with natural remedies, a strict vegan diet, acupuncture, psychic sessions, fruit juices, purges, and

Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected Governor of the State of California

In an epic Formula 1 Grand Prix at Indianapolis, Michael Schumacher wins in the rain.

Islamic Jihad attack on an Israeli restaurant: 19 dead and 50 wounded; in retaliation, Israelis bomb a Jihad training camp in Syria, north of Damascus.

The Galileo probe is being plunged into Jupiter’s atmosphere to avoid a contaminating impact on Europa; it has made 7 close approaches to Io, 6 to Ganymede, 8 to Callisto, 11 to Europa, and 1 to Amalthea.

Iraq: A car bomb explodes outside a Shiite mosque after a religious service, killing more than a hundred people, including Ayatollah Mohammed Bager Al Hakim, who had returned from exile in Iran a few months earlier; he was collaborating with the Americans; investigations lead to

Multinational military intervention in Liberia

Al Qaeda attack on Jordanian embassy in Baghdad: 17 dead, all Middle Easterners

A dozen people, almost all Indonesians, were killed in a car bomb attack in front of an American hotel in Jakarta.

An Iraqi scientist unearths from his garden the parts of a centrifuge used to separate heavy from light uranium isotopes (with the apparent aim of making an atomic bomb).

Despite the succession of bloody attacks in Israel on the one hand, and the targeted executions of Hamas leaders on the other, the new Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen and the Israeli government managed to sign an agreement: the Road Map.

New Zealand farmers are blocking roads in Wellington to protest the Fart Tax, a per capita tax on greenhouse gas emissions from livestock.

Attacks against individual or small groups of American soldiers in Iraq are intensifying.

Cascina, Pisa, Italy. The Italian-French gravitational wave detector project is ready to take its first data. It comes a year later than its American counterpart due to the lengthy procedures required to expropriate all the land in an area like the Pisa countryside. It costs

A magnitude 6 earthquake in Algeria killed more than 2,000 people; a few days later, a magnitude 7 earthquake in northern Japan left no casualties.

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: Members of an al-Qaeda cell were captured while trying to board a passenger plane to crash it into a Jeddah bank skyscraper.

Double suicide attack in Jerusalem: 9 dead

Chechnya: Two Islamic suicide bombers, possibly from Al Qaeda, kill 14.