A Decade in Review: 2001

January

NEWS

• George W. Bush is inaugurated as the 43^rd President of the United States in Washington. He is the first son of a former President to take the office since John Quincy Adams.
• A guar antelope named Noah is born. He is the first successful clone of an endangered species.
• Earthquakes hit India and El Salvador, killing over 12,000 between them.
• Wikipedia officially launches.
• Joseph Estrada is forced out as President of the Philippines.

SPORTS

• The Baltimore Ravens defeat the New York Giants 35-7 in Super Bowl XXXV. The Ravens defense, led by Ray Lewis, has one of the best seasons of any defense in history and the team wins the championship despite at one point going six games without scoring a touchdown.
• The Oklahoma Sooners win another NCAA football championship in a rather tragic Orange Bowl by a score of 13-2 over Florida State.

February

NEWS

• Ariel Sharon is elected Prime Minister of Israel.
• The Iraq Disarmament Crisis continues. The US and Britain carry out air raids in an attempt to disable the Iraqi air defense network.
• FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested and charged with spying for the Soviet Union for 15 years.
• An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK causes widespread craziness.

ARTS

• Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman divorce.
• Anthony Hopkins returns to the role of Hannibal Lecter in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal. Julianne Moore takes over for Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling. Results are decidedly mixed.
• The first Canadian hip-hop formatted station starts broadcasting.
• Jennifer Lopez is the first female artist to have the number one album (J. Lo) and movie (The Wedding Planner) the same week.
• Fidel Castro attends a concert by the Manic Street Preachers in Havana. They become the first Western rock band to play in Cuba since the Revolution.

SPORTS

• Dale Earnhardt crashes during the Daytona 500 and dies.
• The Xtreme Football League, a very sad attempt at competing with the NFL, debuts. It will last only one season.

March

NEWS

• The Space Station Mir’s orbit finally decays and it crashes into the Pacific near Fiji.
• It becomes clear that President Bush has no intention of following the terms of the Kyoto agreement to combat Global Warming.
• California suffers rolling blackouts, theoretically to save power. It later comes out that there’s no real shortage and there is evidence of collusion among power companies, including Enron.
  

ARTS

• Gladiator wins Best Picture at the Oscars, with its star Russell Crowe winning Best Actor. Julia Roberts wins Best Actress for Erin Brockovich. Steven Soderbergh wins Best Director for Traffic, one of his two entries in the category.
• Two Japanese pop albums, Hikaru Utada’s Distance and Ayuma Hamasaki’s The Best, are released the same day and end up at #1 and #2 on all-time first week sales charts, shattering records.

SPORTS

• Bob Knight is hired as Men’s Basketball coach at Texas Tech, but never achieves the same success there that he did at Indiana.

April

NEWS

• Former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is arrested in Belgrade and charged with war crimes.
• An American military plane and a Chinese military plane crash into each other in mid-air over Chinese airspace, and China keeps the American plane’s 24-member crew as hostages for 11 days before releasing them.
• A white police officer shoots and kills an unarmed black man in Cincinnati, precipitating widespread rioting.
• Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger denies rumors that he plans to run for Governor of California in 2002.
• The Netherlands becomes the first nation in the world since the Roman Empire to legalize same-sex marriage.
• The first “space tourist”, Dennis Tito, blasts off from Kazakhstan.

ARTS

• Joey Ramone dies.
• Comedy Central takes the bait and attempts to turn the White House into a sitcom with That’s My Bush! This last a month and a half.

SPORTS

• Duke wins another NCAA basketball championship.
• Albert Pujols makes his major league debut for the St. Louis Cardinals. He goes on to perhaps be the decade’s greatest player.

May

NEWS

• Industrialist Silvio Berlusconi and his “House of the Liberties” party win elections in Italy.
• Chandra Levy, an intern on Capitol Hill, disappears, and the resulting investigation turns up a story that sounds a lot like a political thriller.

ARTS

• The ridiculous, overblown mess that is Pearl Harbor, a naked attempt to tap into the same audience as Titanic, opens in theaters. Perhaps unfortunately, it does not quite manage to kill Michael Bay’s career.
• A much bigger hit is the animated film Shrek, first in a continuing series, which everyone in America seems to have seen by now.
• Walker, Texas Ranger, 3^rd Rock From the Sun, and Star Trek: Voyager go off the air.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer, still my favorite show of all-time, airs its final episode on the WB before moving to UPN in the fall. To honor the occasion, it (temporarily) kills off its main character.
  

SPORTS

• Bayern Munich wins the UEFA Champions League title.

June

NEWS

• President Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut makes it through Congress.
• Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, is executed.
• Crown Price Dipendra of Nepal kills his father, mother, and other members of the Nepalese royal family with an assault rifle in the royal palace before killing himself.
• Tropical Storm Allison strikes the Houston area, causing billions of dollars in damage and killing over 20 people.
• Tony Blair wins re-election as Prime Minister of Great Britain.
• An American missile strikes a soccer field in Northern Iraq, killing 23. The U.S. claims it is actually an Iraqi missile that malfunctioned.
• Pervez Musharraf becomes President of Pakistan.

ARTS

• American Gods by Neil Gaiman is published.
• Baz Luhrmann somehow manages to revive the musical with Moulin Rouge!, known for its creative uses for modern pop songs in its 1800s French love story.
• “Lady Marmalade” from the Moulin Rouge! Soundtrack reaches #1 on the Billboard charts, and later wins the MTV Award for Video of the Year.
• The original The Fast and the Furious film is released. It spawns an unlikely franchise.
• A Stanley Kubrick project directed by Steven Spielberg, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is released. It becomes one of the major debate points of the decade for critics.
• Six Feet Under premieres on HBO.
• Jack Lemmon and Archie Bunker die.

SPORTS

• Allen Iverson all by himself turns out not to be quite enough, and the Philadelphia 76ers fall to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA finals.
• The Colorado Avalanche win the Stanley Cup.
• France continues its era of dominance in International soccer by winning the Confederations Cup, held in South Korea and Japan.

July

NEWS

• China and Russia sign the “Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation”, setting a new standard for treaty naming.
• A 60-car train derailment occurs in a Baltimore tunnel, sparking a fire that lasts for days and virtually shuts down downtown Baltimore.
• A G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, is characterized by continuous mass protests against globalization. At least one protestor is shot and killed by police.
• The U.S. House of Representatives votes to ban human cloning, despite this procedure not yet ever having been performed.
  

ARTS

• Mariah Carey suffers an emotional breakdown and spends time in a New York hospital.
• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is released. It draws raves for its ground-breaking ability to create nearly photorealistic humans through animation. The story does not draw many raves.
• A.J. McLean enters rehab and the Backstreet Boys never really recover, which I suppose is sad.

SPORTS

• Beijing is selected to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.
• Cal Ripken, playing in his final All-Star Game, hits a dramatic home run off of Chan-Ho Park.

August

NEWS

• President Bush announces a rather convoluted policy allowing for “limited federal funding” of stem cell research.
• The President’s daily briefing on August 6 is titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S.” No known action is taken.
• Congressman Gary Condit admits that he had a “very close relationship” with Chandra Levy.
• Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has a 2.5 ton monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments installed in the rotunda of the state Judiciary building. Later he is sued, acts belligerent, and is removed from office, in one of the most famous modern church and state cases.
• The island of Anjouan tries to declare its independence from the Comoros, but is crushed rather summarily by the nation’s military.

ARTS

• Pop singer Aaliyah dies in a plane crash.
• Former President Bill Clinton is paid a record $10 million for his memoirs.
• The Hugo for Best Novel controversially goes to J.K. Rowling for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, published the previous year. Fantasy and young adult books go on to dominate the decade in genre publishing.

SPORTS

• The San Jose CyberRays win the first championship of the doomed Women’s United Soccer League.
• Dave Winfield and Kirby Puckett are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

September

NEWS

• On September 11, members of the radical Islamist terrorist organization al-Qaeda hijack four passenger airliners. They crash two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City and a third into the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth plane, United Flight 93, crashes in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after an attempt by passengers to retake the aircraft. Its target was apparently the U.S Capitol Building. Both towers of the World Trade Center collapse. 2,995 people die, though a surprising number make it out alive, partly due to the heroic efforts of rescue personnel.
• The days after September 11 are characterized by an outpouring of world support for the United States, as well as a national resurgence of patriotism that has both good and bad aspects. Blood donations go through the roof, hate crimes against Muslims are reported, and “I’m Proud to Be an American” is played every morning on my High School’s announcements.
• The national air network is grounded for days following the attacks, and even when air service resumes passenger levels plummet. Several airlines go bankrupt within the next few years.
• Packages containing Anthrax spores are received by several prominent U.S. political and media offices. 22 get sick and five die. It is assumed at the time that they are connected to Islamist terrorists but the letters turn out to have been mailed from Princeton, New Jersey, probably by a disaffected scientist.

ARTS

• The collapse of the World Trade Center towers is shown on live televison, a moment most famously narrated by CNN anchor Aaron Brown, paradoxically, with the line “there are no words.” Most American networks abandon regular programming for at least a week after the attacks.
• Fox News starts continuously scrolling headlines across the bottom of the screen so viewers can follow news of the attacks. This soon becomes permanently common place on news networks.
• Film critic Pauline Kael dies.
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen is published. The author refuses to allow Oprah to name it as her book of the month.
• The Life of Pi by Yann Martel is published. It is the greatest book ever written about being trapped in a life boat with a tiger.
• A music special entitled America: A Tribute to Heroes is aired across all major U.S. networks.
• System of a Down’s hit “Chop Suey!” is among a list of songs deemed “inappropriate” by Clear Channel in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
• Several TV shows are hurriedly re-written to address the September 11 attacks, most notably The West Wing.
• CBS debuts The Amazing Race, probably still the best idea for a reality show anybody’s produced. Also premiering this month is Alias.

SPORTS

• Michael Jordan announces he is returning to basketball to play for the Washington Wizards.
• New England Patriots QB Drew Bledsoe is injured and is replaced with a little known back-up named Tom Brady.
• All major sports are canceled in America for several days following the terrorist attacks. This is the first time the NFL has called off a weekend’s games since the Kennedy Assassination.

October

NEWS

• The United States begins air strikes in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and the other leaders of al-Qaeda are thought to be in hiding. The resulting “War in Afghanistan” continues to this day.
• President Bush signs the USA PATRIOT Act (which actually stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). This gives widespread powers to investigatory agencies in an attempt to prevent terrorism, though many believe it violates the Constitution.
• The spacecraft Galileo passes within a hundred or so miles of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io.

ARTS

• Scrubs, Smallville, and According to Jim debut on American networks. All are destined to live much longer than they have any right to.
• Meanwhile, a singing competition TV show called Pop Idol debuts in the UK. It will eventually threaten to become the monster that ate worldwide TV.

SPORTS

• Barry Bonds breaks Mark McGwire’s single-season home run record, ending the season with 73. Meanwhile, the Seattle Mariners break the single-season wins record with 116. Neither gets close to the World Series.
• Derek Jeter of the Yankees makes the famous flip to get Jason Giambi of the Oakland Athletics at home plate in the Divisional Playoffs.
• Pardon the Interruption debuts on ESPN. It is among my most-watched shows of the decade.
• An Ontario newspaper reports that Major League baseball plans to “contract” the Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins after the World Series. This plan is scuttled after the resulting public outcry.
  

November

NEWS

• President Bush signs an order allowing Military Tribunals to try foreigners suspected of connections to actual or planned terrorist attacks within the United States. It is the first such act since World War II.
• After 15 years of intense negotiations, the People’s Republic of China is admitted to the World Trade Organization.
• Heavy rains in Algeria result in massive mudslides that kill 900 people.
• American Airlines Flight 587 crashes just after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, killing 260 and setting off widespread panic among skittish New Yorkers.
• The U.S. government, fearful of biological terrorism, begins a widespread effort to train emergency workers to recognize the symptoms of smallpox.

ARTS

• George Harrison dies.
• 24 debuts on FOX, bringing a new frontier of serialization to modern TV.
• The film adaptation of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, is released. It is the year’s number one film and makes stars of many of its young cast members, including Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson as Harry and Hermione.
• Monsters, Inc. has the biggest opening weekend at the box office for any animated film up to this point.
• Britney Spears becomes the first female artist to have her first three albums debut at number one with the release of Britney.

SPORTS

• Luis Gonzalez singles in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 off Mariano Rivera to lift the Arizona Diamondbacks over the New York Yankees in the World Series, thus saving us from perhaps the most mawkish sports moment in history. The three games at Yankee Stadium are played under a tattered flag from the World Trade Center. Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson dominate for the Diamondbacks. It’s the first World Series completed in November.
• Seattle Mariners OF Ichiro Suzuki becomes only the second player to win both the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards, ushering in a new wave of Asian stars to the major leagues.

December

NEWS

• The Taliban government in Afghanistan collapses under pressure from Western military forces. A few weeks later Hamid Karzai is sworn as President of an Afghan democracy.
• Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden releases a video tape in which he brags about the September 11 attacks.
• Enron files for bankruptcy, destroying the 401(k) plans of most of its workers. Many of the executives later go to jail as it becomes clear just how ridiculous their behavior was. To this point this is the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
• A flight from Paris to Miami is diverted to Boston after Richard Reed attempts to ignite explosives hidden in his shoe. This is why I still have to take off my shoes prior to getting on a plane.
• New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is picked as Time Magazine’s man of the year.
• The U.S. indicts Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20^th hijacker” in connection with the September 11 attacks.
• Islamist terrorists attack the Parliament of India, killing 12 and precipitating an international crisis. Many are convinced war between India and Pakistan is inevitable.
• President Bush announces that the U.S. is withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

ARTS

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is released in movie theaters, first of a blockbuster trilogy of three-hour epics from director Peter Jackson that, through some miracle, are as good as the books they are based on.
• The ridiculously star-heavy remake Ocean’s Eleven is a surprisingly fun box office hit.

SPORTS

• Nebraska QB Eric Crouch wins the Heisman Trophy. He ends up playing Safety in the NFL.