This day in history. Read about what happened today. A short and interesting account of historical events and facts about this day as well as any other day of the year. Find historical birthdays, deaths, tragedies, war events, disasters and sports events.

This year in history
In the year 2001

	January 12th	American businessman, William Hewlett, died at the age of 88. He was the co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company.
	January 13th	A strong earthquake hit San Salvador, El Salvador, killing more than 1000 people.
	January 15th	Wikipedia, the free (Wiki) online encyclopaedia went online.
	January 16th	Congo's president was shot by one of his own bodyguards. His death was announced two days later.
	January 20th	The president of the Philippines, Joseph Estrada, was ousted in a bloodless coup.
	January 26th	A massive earthquake struck Gujarat, India, and some portions of Pakistan resulting in the death of more than 25,000 people.
	February 9th	An American submarine struck and sank a Japanese training vessel resulting in the death of 9 people on board.
	February 13th	An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale struck in El Salvador, resulting in the death of 400 people.
	March 4th	A car bomb exploded in front of the BBC Television Centre in London. The bombing was was attributed to the terrorist organization, Real IRA.
	March 23th	The Russian space station, Mir, was forced off orbit and later broke up in the atmosphere before landing into the Pacific Ocean
	March 24th	Apple Computer releases Mac OS X operating system.
	April 1st	The first legal same-sex marriage in the world takes place in the Netherlands.
	April 13th	American postal Inspector, Robert Moon, died at the age of 83. He was the inventor of the postal ZIP code system.
	April 28th	American millionaire, Dennis Tito, became history's first space tourist.
	June 1st	In Nepal, Crown Prince Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, assassinated his family during a royal dinner. He was himself shot, only to die three days later.
	June 1st	American cartoon artist, Hank Ketcham, died at the age of 81. He was the creator of the world famous "Dennis the Menace" comic strip.
	June 3rd	Mexican-born actor, Anthony Quinn, died at the age of 86. He had dropped out of school and was a prize fighter and painter before becoming an actor. He portrayed more different ethnicities in his various characters than any other actor ever has.
	June 20th	General Pervez Musharraf appointed himself as president of Pakistan. He had acquired power following a bloodless coup d'etat on the 12th of October 1999.
	June 27th	American actor, Jack Lemmon, died at the age of 75. He is best remembered for his frequent collaborations with fellow actor and comedian Walter Matthau, the most famous of which was that of the "Odd Couple".
	June 28th	Former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was handed over by Serbia to the United nations war crimes tribunal.
	July 20th	During the 27th Annual G8 summit in Genoa, a protester was shot and killed by the local police.
	July 24th	Bulgarian politician, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, was sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria. He was the last Tsar of Bulgaria during 1943-1946 and is the only monarch in history to (re)become the head of state of a country via democratic elections.
	August 15th	The first ever solar system outside our own was discovered by Astronomers.
	September 11th	Terrorists, using 3 hijacked planes, attacked the World Trade Center in New York City, The Pentagon, and crashed another passenger airliner in Pennsylvania. Approximately 3,000 died as a result of the concerted terrorist effort in what has been the worst terrorist hit in history.
	September 12th	Article V of the NATO agreement was invoked for the very first time in the treaty's history, in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States of America. Article V is the core of the alliance which stipulates that should one of the alliance partners be attacked, it will be considered as an attack on all of them.
	September 14th	Greek popular singer, Stelios Kazantzidis, died at the age of 70. He was one of the most celebrated popular music singers in Greece. Despite his success and acceptance he died in poverty.
	October 7th	The United States began the invasion of Afghanistan with an air assault and covert operations on the ground.
	October 8th	A small Cessna plane collided with a Scandinavian Airlines passenger jet liner during take-off from Milan airport. 118 people died as a result of the crash.
	October 8th	The "Office of Homeland Security" was established in the United States. The department was created in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
	October 11th	The Polaroid Corporation filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States. The Polaroid Corporation was founded in 1937 and was famous for its instant film cameras which first appeared on the market in 1948. Many attribute the reasons for bankruptcy being that the company failed to predict the growth of the digital camera market.
	October 23th	The first iPod was released by Apple in the USA.
	October 25th	The Windows XP operating system was offically released.
	October 30th	Basketball superstar, Michael Jordan, made his final comeback to the NBA with the Washington Wizards. He would play for 2 seasons before retiring for the last time. He was 38 years old at the time of his last comeback and still was able to lead his team in scoring, assists and steals despite several injuries that plagued him that season.
	November 6th	Belgian national airliner, Sabena, went bankrupt. The company has now been replaced by SN Brussels Airlines. Several reasons lead to Sabena's bankruptcy, but prevailing reasons were a failed deal with Swissair through which Sabena purchased a number of airplanes but never received the money that was to be injected into the company. The seccond reason attributed was that as a government run company the airliner lacked the necessary service oriented philosophy that was required to succeed.
	November 12th	An American Airlines passenger jet crashed only minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport. All 260 on board died in the crash.
	November 14th	Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, fell to Afghan Northern Alliance forces. Taliban forces had fled from the city the previous night.
	November 15th	Microsoft released the Xbox console, marking the company's entrance into the video game console market.
	November 18th	Nintendo released its GameCube gaming console. While not a failure the console did not achieve the market penetration that either the playstation or xbox consoles did.
	November 29th	British musician, George Harrison, died at the age of 58. He was best known for being one of the legendary rock band, The Beatles. He died as a result of lung cancer from which he was suffering since the mid 1990's.
	December 2nd	In the United States, energy company, Enron filed for bankruptcy. It was the biggest bankruptcy in history.
	December 11th	The People's Republic of China joined the World Trade Organization.
	December 19th	The fire at the World Trade Centre site was extinguished. The fire was the result of the September 11, 2001 airplane attacks, three months earlier.
	December 26th	British actor, Nigel Hawthorne, died at the age of 72. His most famous role was that of Sir Humphrey Appleby in the British TV series, Yes, Minister and its sequel Yes, Prime Minister.

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