The News of 2000.

January:

• Twenty Coptic Christians are massacred by Muslim villagers in Kosheh, Egypt
• The last natural Pyrenean ibex is found dead, apparently killed by a falling tree
• AOL announces an agreement to purchase Tim Warner for $162 billion, the largest ever corporate merger
• Dr Harold Shipman is found guilty of murdering 15 patients between 1995 and 1998 at Hyde, Greater Manchester and sentenced to life imprisonment; the subsequent enquiry considers him to have killed at least 215
• The Millennium Dome is officially opened by The Queen
• Catherine Hartley and Fiona Thornewill become the first British women to reach the South Pole

February:

• Russian forces execute between 56 and 60 civilians in a suburb of Grozny, dubbed the Novye Aldi massacre
• Torrential rains in Africa lead to the worst flooding in Mozambique in 50 years, lasting until March and killing 800 people
• Royal Bank of Scotland succeeds in the hostile takeover battle for its larger English rival, NatWest, successfully defeating a rival offer made by Bank of Scotland
• The Waterhouse report into North Wales child abuse scandal is published
• 8-year-old Victoria Climbié is tortured and murdered by her guardians, her great-aunt Marie Therese Kouao and Kouao’s partner Carl Manning

March:

• The PlayStation 2 is released in Japan
• Pope John Paul II apologises for wrongdoings by members of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the ages
• The US dollar becomes the official currency of Ecuador, replacing the Sucre
• The UK reports former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, to his native Chile where he will face trial for human rights violations

April:

• Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors
• Federal agents seize 6-year-old Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami and fly him to his father in Washington DC
• An Enigma machine is stolen from Bletchley Park Museum
• Charlie Kray, one of the infamous Kray brothers, dies in a hospital on the Isle of Wight after suffering a heart attack in Parkhust Prison aged 73
• The Royal Ulster Constabulary is presented with the George Cross by The Queen
• Kenneth Noye is sentenced to life imprisonment after murdering Stephen Cameron in a road rage incident
• Tony Martin is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 16-year-old burglar, Fred Barras, he shot dead at his Norfolk farmhouse; he is also convicted of the attempted murder of Barras’ accomplice, Brendon Fearon

May:

• The ILOVEYOU computer virus spreads across the world
• Millennium Force, the world’s tallest and fastest rollercoaster, opens at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio
• Real Madrid defeat Valencia 3-0 in the UEFA Champions League Final at Stade de France
• May Day riot in Central London by anti-capitalist protestors; the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square and the Cenotaph in Whitehall are daubed in graffiti
• The London Stock Exchange and Germany’s Deutsche Börse announce plans to amalgamate
• Ken Livingstone, standing as an independent, becomes the first directly elected Mayor of London
• The Tate Modern is opened to the public in London
• Royal Marines Alan Chambers and Charlie Paton become the first British people to reach the Geographic North Pole unaided
• Chelsea beat Aston Villa 1-0 to win the last FA Cup final at the old Wembley Stadium
• National Botanical Garden of Wales opens to the public in Carmarthenshire

June:

• 405 The Movie, the first short film widely distributed on the internet is released
• Belgium and the Netherlands jointly host UEFA Euro 2000; France defeat Italy 2-1 in the final via a golden goal, becoming the first team to win the World Cup and European Championship consecutively
• A preliminary draft of genomes, as part of the Human Genome Project, is finished
• Nine people die and 26 are injured as Pearl Jam perform at Roskilde Festival, Denmark
• Tony Blair receives a hostile reception during a speech at the Women’s Institute, where he is heckled and slow hand-clapped by furious members
• The Millennium Bridge across the Thames opens to the public, but has to close after it starts swaying
• Controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 which prevents local authorities from “promoting homosexuality” is repealed in Scotland
• David Copeland is found guilty of causing the three nail bomb attacks in London last year; he is sentenced to life imprisonment

July:

• A leaking petroleum pipeline in southern Nigeria explodes, killing about 250 villagers
• A powerful solar flare causes a geomagnetic storm
• Colin Fallows, driving the Vampire turbojet-propelled dragster, sets a British land speed record, a mean 300.3 mph, at Ellington, Yorkshire
• Big Brother first airs in the UK
• Sarah Payne, a 6-year-old Surrey girl, is found dead in West Sussex having gone missing sixteen days earlier
• Rioting breaks out in Brixton following the fatal shooting of Derek Bennett, a 29-year-old black man, by armed police in the area; 27 people are arrested and three police officers are injured

August:

• Rioting erupts on the Paulsgrove estate in Portsmouth, after more than 100 people besiege a block of flats allegedly housing a convicted paedophile; this is the latest vigilante violence against suspected sex offenders since the beginning of the News of the World’s “naming and shaming” anti-paedophile campaign
• The Nintendo GameCube is revealed
• Reggie Kray, of the infamous Kray brothers, is released from prison on compassionate grounds by Home Secretary Jack Straw due to bladder cancer from which he is expected to die within weeks

September:

• World leaders attend the Millennium summit at UN Headquarters
• Fuel protests take place in the UK, with refineries blockaded and supply to the country’s network of petrol stations halted
• Operation Barras, a British military operation to free five soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment held captive during the Sierra Leone Civil War, is successful
• Steve Jobs introduces the public beta of Mac OS X
• Windows Me (Millenium Edition) is made publicly available
• The 2000 Summer Olympic Games is held in Sydney, Australia; the United States top the medal table with 37 gold and 93 overall medals
• Ukrainian journalist investigating high-level corruption, Georgiy Gongadze, is last seen alive; he is found two months later decapitated in a forest 43 miles outside Kyiv
• HM Prison Maze, a prison used to incarcerate members of illegal paramilitaries during the Troubles, closes as a result of the Good Friday Agreement

October:

• Mass demonstrations in Belgrade lead to the resignation of Yugoslavia’s president Slobodan Milošević
• 250 million US gallons of coal sludge spill in Martin County, Kentucky; it is considered a greater environmental disaster than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill
• The USS Cole is badly damaged by two Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, who place a small boat laden with explosives against the US Navy destroyer, killing 17 crew and wounding at least 39
• The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper exposes Japanese archeologist Shinichi Fujimura as a fraud
• Soyuz TM-31 is launched, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station; it has been continuously crewed ever since
• Start of the Autumn 2000 Western Europe floods, particularly affecting England, the worst nationally since the winter of 1946-47, precipitated by the most rainfall since 1766
• Wembley Stadium closes after 77 years; it is set to re-open in 2003 following a complete reconstruction that will see its seating capacity raised to 90,000. In the final game at the old stadium, England lose 1-0 to Germany in their opening qualifying game for the 2002 World Cup and manager Kevin Keegan resigns after 18 months in charge
• Sven-Göran Eriksson, the 52-year-old Swedish coach of Italian side Lazio, accepts an offer by the FA to take charge of the England football team; Eriksson will be the first foreign manager to take charge of the national team

November:

• A criminal gang raids the Millennium Dome to steal the Millennium Star diamond, but police surveillance catch them in the act
• No winner is declared in the 2000 United States Presidential Election prompting a controversial recount in Florida
• A fire in a Alpine tunnel kills 155 skiers and snowboarders
• Michael Douglas marries Catherine Zeta-Jones
• Judith Keppel becomes the first person to win £1 million on the TV program Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
• Rio Ferdinand, the 22-year-old defender, becomes England’s most expensive player when he moves from West Ham United to Leeds United for a fee of £18 million
• Damilola Taylor, a 10-year-old boy originally from Nigeria, is stabbed to death on his way home from school in Peckham

December:

• The United States Supreme Court rules that the recount of the presidential election in Florida should be halted and the original results be certified, thus making George W Bush the 43rd President of the United States
• The third and final reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is shut down and the station is closed completely
• Madonna marries Guy Ritchie at Skibo Castle in the Scottish Highlands
• The Millennium Dome closes, as planned, after one year

Other:

• Earning $546 million at the worldwide box office, Mission: Impossible II is the highest grossing film of the year
• Bob the Builder’s “Can We Fix It?” is the best selling single in the UK with 850,000 sales