WHAT HAPPENED IN 2002.
Look what happened the 2002.

Euro banknotes and coins become legal tender in twelve of the European Union's member states. (1. January 2002)

Taiwan officially joins the World Trade Organization, as Chinese Taipei. (1. January 2002)

The Open Skies mutual surveillance treaty, initially signed in 1992, officially comes into force. (1. January 2002)

Israeli forces seize the Palestinian freighter Karine A in the Red Sea, finding 50 tons of weapons. (3. January 2002)

President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act. (8. January 2002)

The UN Security Council unanimously establishes an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the remaining members of the Taliban. (16. January 2002)

Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people. (17. January 2002)

Sierra Leone Civil War is declared over. (18. January 2002)

Kmart becomes the largest retailer in United States history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. (22. January 2002)

"American Taliban" John Walker Lindh returns to the United States in FBI custody. (23. January 2002)

Reporter Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered . (23. January 2002)

An explosion at a military storage facility in Lagos, Nigeria, kills at least 1,100 people and displaces over 20,000 others. (27. January 2002)

TAME Flight 120, a Boeing 727-100 crashes in the Andes mountains in southern Colombia killing 92. (28. January 2002)

In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea. (29. January 2002)

Daniel Pearl, American journalist and South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, kidnapped January 23, 2002, is beheaded and mutilated by his captors. (1. February 2002)

The trial of Slobodan Milošević, the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, begins at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. He dies four years later before its conclusion. (12. February 2002)

An Iran Airtour Tupolev Tu-154 crashes in the mountains outside Khorramabad, Iran while descending for a landing at Khorramabad Airport, killing 119. (12. February 2002)

The Budapest Open Access Initiative, one of the cornerstones of the Open access movement, was released to the public. (14. February 2002)

NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system. (19. February 2002)

Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi is killed in a military ambush. (22. February 2002)