WHAT HAPPENED IN 2002.
Look what happened the 2002.

Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC. (24. October 2002)

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

Second Congo War: The Congolese parties of the Inter Congolese Dialogue sign a peace accord which makes provision for transitional governance and legislative and presidential elections within two years. (17. December 2002)

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

U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins, (ending on March 19 after killing 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, with 11 Western troop fatalities). (2. March 2002)

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

Earth Summit 2002 begins in Johannesburg, South Africa (26. August 2002)

Godhra train burning: A Muslim mob kills 59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya. (27. February 2002)

The overcrowded Senegalese ferry MV Le Joola capsizes off the coast of the Gambia killing more than 1,000. (26. September 2002)

Moscow Theatre Siege begins: Chechen terrorists seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 700 theater-goers hostage. (23. October 2002)

The Mars Odyssey finds signs of large ice deposits on the planet Mars. (28. May 2002)

Hu Jintao becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated. (15. November 2002)

Zimbabwe is suspended from the Commonwealth on charges of human rights abuses and of electoral fraud, following a turbulent presidential election. (19. March 2002)

The last successful telemetry from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10. (27. April 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)

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)

2003 California recall: Then Governor of California Gray Davis announces that the state would face a record budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier. (18. December 2002)

The first public version of the web browser Mozilla Firefox ("Phoenix 0.1") is released. (23. September 2002)

American civil rights movement: a jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of four girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. (22. May 2002)

The International Criminal Court is established to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. (1. July 2002)