February 2002

February 2002: January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December

Events

February 2, 2002

• Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, heir to the Dutch throne, marries Máxima Zorreguieta Cerruti in Amsterdam.

February 3, 2002

• American football: Super Bowl XXXVI: New England Patriots 20, Saint Louis Rams 17—one of the most astonishing upsets in Super Bowl history.

February 5, 2002

• Secretary of State Colin L. Powell says that the United States is willing to sign a treaty with Russia on limiting strategic nuclear weapons, indicating a possible shift in administration policy after withdrawing, last December, from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin are set to hold an arms reduction summit meeting in Moscow in May. – Background material: nuclear disarmament, nuclear warfare, nuclear proliferation.

February 6, 2002

• Proclamation by Mayor Martin O'Malley designating February 6, 2002, as "Beverly Lynn Burns Day" in Baltimore, Maryland.

February 8, 2002

• The opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, which are held in Salt Lake City.

February 11, 2002

• British Telecommunications plc starts its US federal court case relating to a controversial patent that it claims gives it a monopoly on the technology of web links.
• New British digital free-to-air television channels CBBC and CBeebies, launch at 6am from the BBC Television centre, London.

February 16, 2002

• George W. Bush signs a secret national security council directive establishing the goals and objectives for going to war with Iraq, according to the book Rumsfeld's War by Rowan Scarborough.^[1]
• 275 animal rights activists unite in front of the D.C. Neiman Marcus to demand that the company stop supporting the fur industry.^[2]
• George W. Bush's weekly Presidential Radio Address, titled Asia Trip, discusses foreign relations.

February 20, 2002

• Palindrome day, at 8:02 pm, on February 20, 2002, the date is read officially as 20:02, 20, 02, 2002. Or 2002 2002 2002.

February 22, 2002

• Chuck Jones, Academy-Award-winning animator, dies at 89.

February 26, 2002

• 12 Shiite Muslims are killed in a mosque in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

February 27, 2002

• Alicia Keys wins six Grammys.
• Today is the centennial of John Steinbeck's birth.
• "War on Terrorism": The U.S. sends Special Operations Forces to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to help combat guerrilla fighters, though Russia protests.
• 57 people die in Godhra when a Muslim mob sets fire to a carriage on the Sabarmati Express filled with Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists returning from Ayodhya en route to Ahmedabad. After detaching the burned carriage, the train continues to Vadodara, where Hindus beat and stab people leaving the train, killing one. A 17-year-old is later killed in Godhra by police trying to disrupt mobs.
• Comedian Spike Milligan dies from liver disease, aged 83.

February 28, 2002

• Gulbarg Society massacre : During the 2002 Gujarat riots, a mob attacked the Gulbarg Society, a lower middle-class Muslim neighbourhood in Chamanpura, Ahmedabad. Most of the houses were burnt, and at least 35 victims including a former Congress, Member of Parliament, Ehsan Jafri, were burnt alive, while 31 others went missing after the incident, later presumed dead, bringing the total of the dead to 69.^[3][4][5]

References

1. ↑ Bush 'wanted war in 2002' | The Guardian
2. ↑ Compassion Over Killing > Anti-Fur Protest at Neiman Marcus: February 16, 2002
3. ↑ "The Gulbarg Society massacre: What happened". NDTV. March 11, 2010. 
4. ↑ "Safehouse Of Horrors". Tehelka. 2007-11-03. 
5. ↑ "Apex court SIT submits report on Gulbarg Society massacre". The Hindustan Times. May 14, 2010.