2000

Events in 2000 96

• 1901 – 2000 Carl Barks (1901-2000) Died 25 August 2000, aged 99 Carl Barks was the Disney comics artist who defined Donald Duck in print and created Scrooge McDuck, Duckburg and much of its supporting cast. Working anonymously for decades, he was known to readers only as "the good duck artist" until fans identified him. His adventure stories influenced later cartoonists and filmmakers.
• 1901 – 2000 Dame Barbara Cartland (1901-2000) Died 21 May 2000, aged 98 Barbara Cartland was among the most prolific authors in history, publishing more than 700 books, mostly chaste historical romances, and selling hundreds of millions of copies. A flamboyant figure in pink chiffon, she was step-grandmother to Diana, Princess of Wales. In her last years she dictated a new novel every couple of weeks.
• 1904 – 2000 John Gielgud (1904-2000) English actor and director, one of the great Shakespearean actors of the 20th century, who won an Oscar at 77.
• 1904 – 2000 Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000) Died 21 May 2000, aged 96 John Gielgud was regarded as one of the great classical actors of the twentieth century, celebrated above all for his Hamlet and his verse speaking. His stage career spanned some seventy years, and late in life he won an Academy Award for the film Arthur. With Olivier and Richardson he dominated the British theatre.
• 1908 – 2000 Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) Died 25 December 2000, aged 92 W. V. O. Quine was among the most influential analytic philosophers of the twentieth century, teaching at Harvard for most of his career. His essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" attacked the analytic-synthetic distinction, and his work on the indeterminacy of translation and on ontological commitment reshaped philosophy of language and logic.
• 1909 – 2000 Victor Borge (1909-2000) Died 23 December 2000, aged 91 Victor Borge was a Danish-American pianist and humorist billed as the "Clown Prince of Denmark", who fled the Nazis and rebuilt his career in the United States. His act blended classical piano with verbal and physical comedy, including the "phonetic punctuation" routine. His Broadway show Comedy in Music ran for a record 849 performances.
• 1909 – 2000 Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (1909-2000) American actor, son of Douglas Fairbanks, a swashbuckling star who became a war hero and an honorary British knight.
• 1910 – 2000 Claire Trevor (1910-2000) American actress known as the Queen of Film Noir, Oscar winner for Key Largo.
• 1913 – 2000 Loretta Young (1913-2000) American actress with a career from silent films to her own TV show, winning an Oscar for The Farmer's Daughter.
• 1914 – 2000 Alec Guinness (1914-2000) English actor who moved from the Ealing comedies to The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars.
• 1914 – 2000 Sir Alec Guinness (1914-2000) Died 5 August 2000, aged 86 Alec Guinness was among Britain's foremost actors, ranging from Ealing comedies to David Lean epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai, for which he won an Oscar. To later audiences he was Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, a role he regarded with some disdain despite the fortune it brought him. He was also a celebrated stage performer.
• 1914 – 2000 Gino Bartali Gino the Pious Legendary climber who famously helped save Jews during WWII by hiding documents in his bike. Winner: 2x Tour de France.
• 1914 – 2000 Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) Died 19 January 2000, aged 85 Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born Hollywood star of the 1930s and 1940s, promoted as "the most beautiful woman in the world" and seen in Samson and Delilah. With the composer George Antheil she co-patented a 1942 frequency-hopping system meant to guide torpedoes, a concept later foundational to spread-spectrum wireless. Her scientific work was recognised only late in life.
• 1914 – 2000 Patrick O'Brian (1914-2000) Died 2 January 2000, aged 85 Patrick O'Brian wrote the Aubrey-Maturin novels, a twenty-book sequence set in the Royal Navy of the Napoleonic Wars and admired for its historical detail and prose. Long a cult favourite, the series found a wide readership in the 1990s. After his death it emerged that his "Irish" background was largely invented.
• 1915 – 2000 Sir Stanley Matthews (1915-2000) Died 23 February 2000, aged 85 Stanley Matthews was an English winger whose career ran from 1932 to 1965, playing top-flight football until he was fifty. Known as the "Wizard of the Dribble", he was the first European Footballer of the Year and the first footballer knighted while still playing. The 1953 FA Cup final is often called the "Matthews final".
• 1915 – 2000 John Tukey (1915-2000) Died 26 July 2000, aged 85 The American mathematician John Tukey developed the fast Fourier transform algorithm with James Cooley and pioneered exploratory data analysis, introducing the box plot and the stem-and-leaf display. He coined the word "bit" and is generally credited with coining "software". He advised the United States government on matters from polling to nuclear-test detection.
• 1917 – 2000 David Tomlinson (1917-2000) Died 24 June 2000, aged 83 David Tomlinson was an English actor remembered for three Disney films: as the reforming father George Banks in Mary Poppins, and in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Love Bug. A skilled light comedian, he had a long stage and screen career in Britain before Hollywood. He largely retired after the 1970s.
• 1917 – 2000 Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) Died 3 December 2000, aged 83 Gwendolyn Brooks was an American poet who chronicled everyday Black life on Chicago's South Side. In 1950 she became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for the collection Annie Allen. She later served as poet laureate of Illinois and as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress.
• 1919 – 2000 Pierre Trudeau (1919-2000) Died 28 September 2000, aged 80 Pierre Elliott Trudeau was prime minister of Canada from 1968 to 1979 and again from 1980 to 1984, a charismatic figure who inspired "Trudeaumania". He patriated the constitution with its Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, championed official bilingualism, and invoked emergency powers in the 1970 October Crisis. His death brought national mourning.
• 1920 – 2000 Werner Klemperer (1920-2000) Died 6 December 2000, aged 80 Werner Klemperer, son of the conductor Otto Klemperer, fled Nazi Germany as a boy and became an American actor. He won two Emmy Awards as the bumbling Colonel Klink in the sitcom Hogan's Heroes, taking the role on condition that Klink always be outwitted. He was also an accomplished concert narrator and singer.
• 1920 – 2000 Walter Matthau (1920-2000) Died 1 July 2000, aged 79 Walter Matthau was an American actor known for his hangdog face and gravelly delivery, often paired with Jack Lemmon in films such as The Odd Couple and Grumpy Old Men. He won an Academy Award for The Fortune Cookie in 1966. His career ran from Broadway to Hitchcock to broad comedy.
• 1921 – 2000 Harold Nicholas (1921-2000) American dancer, one of the Nicholas Brothers, famous for acrobatic tap routines.
• 1921 – 2000 Steve Allen (1921-2000) Died 30 October 2000, aged 78 Steve Allen was an American entertainer who created and first hosted The Tonight Show in 1954, setting the template for the late-night talk format. A restless polymath, he wrote thousands of songs and dozens of books and hosted the series Meeting of Minds. His improvised, audience-driven comedy influenced generations of hosts.
• 1922 – 2000 Jason Robards (1922-2000) Died 26 December 2000, aged 78 Jason Robards was an American actor closely identified with the plays of Eugene O'Neill, especially Long Day's Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh. He won consecutive Academy Awards for All the President's Men and Julia, playing editor Ben Bradlee and the writer Dashiell Hammett. He survived a near-fatal car crash in 1972.
• 1922 – 2000 Vittorio Gassman (1922-2000) Died 29 June 2000, aged 77 Vittorio Gassman was a leading Italian actor of stage and screen, a commanding classical performer who also starred in "commedia all'italiana" films such as Il Sorpasso and Big Deal on Madonna Street. He worked with directors including Dino Risi and Robert Altman. Italians knew him simply as "il Mattatore".
• 1922 – 2000 Emil Zatopek (1922-2000) Died 22 November 2000, aged 78 The Czech distance runner Emil Zatopek won three gold medals at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, taking the 5,000 metres, the 10,000 metres and, at his first attempt at the distance, the marathon. Known for his agonised style, he set eighteen world records. He was demoted to labouring work after backing the 1968 Prague Spring.
• 1922 – 2000 Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000) Died 12 February 2000, aged 77 Charles Schulz drew the comic strip Peanuts for nearly fifty years, creating Charlie Brown, Snoopy and a cast carried by thousands of newspapers worldwide. He wrote and drew every strip himself, close to 18,000 in all. He died the night before his final original Sunday strip appeared.
• 1923 – 2000 Tito Puente (1923-2000) Died 31 May 2000, aged 77 Tito Puente was a New York-born bandleader, timbales player and composer known as the "King of Mambo" and "El Rey" of Latin music. Over more than fifty years he recorded around a hundred albums, and his "Oye Como Va" became a hit for Santana. He did much to carry Latin jazz to mainstream American audiences.
• 1924 – 2000 Tom Landry (1924-2000) Died 12 February 2000, aged 75 Tom Landry was the founding head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, leading the team for 29 seasons from 1960 and winning two Super Bowls. Recognisable by the fedora on the sideline, he was credited with popularising the 4-3 defence and the modern shotgun formation. His run of twenty straight winning seasons is an NFL record.
• 1929 – 2000 Screamin' Jay Hawkins (1929-2000) Died 12 February 2000, aged 70 Screamin' Jay Hawkins was an American rhythm-and-blues singer best known for the 1956 song "I Put a Spell on You", performed with operatic howls and macabre props including a coffin and a skull. Widely covered, the song became a standard. He is often called a forerunner of shock rock.
• 1930 – 2000 Hafez al-Assad (1930-2000) Died 10 June 2000, aged 69 Hafez al-Assad ruled Syria for nearly thirty years after seizing power in a 1970 coup, building a police state around his Baath party and Alawite loyalists. He crushed a Muslim Brotherhood revolt at Hama in 1982 with tens of thousands of deaths. He was succeeded by his son Bashar.
• 1933 – 2000 Reginald Kray (1933-2000) Died 1 October 2000, aged 66 Reggie Kray and his twin Ronnie ran an organised-crime empire in London's East End in the 1950s and 1960s, mixing extortion and violence with celebrity nightclub glamour. Convicted of murder in 1969, he served more than thirty years and was freed on compassionate grounds weeks before his death from cancer. The twins became enduring figures of British true-crime lore.
• 1934 – 2000 Bettino Craxi (1934-2000) Died 19 January 2000, aged 65 Bettino Craxi led the Italian Socialist Party and was prime minister from 1983 to 1987, one of the longest tenures of the postwar era. He was brought down by the Tangentopoli corruption inquiries of the early 1990s and, facing prison, fled to Tunisia in 1994. He died there in exile, still a convicted fugitive.
• 1942 – 2000 Ian Dury (1942-2000) Died 27 March 2000, aged 57 Ian Dury was an English singer and lyricist who, with his band the Blockheads, brought wit and music-hall swagger to the punk and new wave era. Songs such as "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" showcased his wordplay. Left disabled by childhood polio, he was also an advocate for disabled people. He died of cancer.
• 1957 – 2000 Ofra Haza (1957-2000) Died 23 February 2000, aged 42 Ofra Haza was an Israeli singer of Yemenite Jewish descent who bridged traditional Middle Eastern music and international pop. Her "Im Nin'alu" was a hit across Europe in the late 1980s and was widely sampled. She represented Israel at the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing second.
• 1959 – 2000 Kirsty MacColl (1959-2000) Died 18 December 2000, aged 41 Kirsty MacColl was an English singer-songwriter known for "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis", a cover of Billy Bragg's "A New England", and her duet with Shane MacGowan on the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York". She was killed by a powerboat while diving with her sons in Mexico. Her family long campaigned over the death.
• 1971 – 2000 Big Pun (1971-2000) Died 7 February 2000, aged 28 Christopher Rios, known as Big Pun, was a Bronx rapper of Puerto Rican descent and the first solo Latino hip-hop artist to have an album certified platinum, with 1998's Capital Punishment. Admired for his rapid, intricate rhyming, he belonged to the Terror Squad collective. He died of a heart attack after long struggles with his weight.
• 2000 Anand wins FIDE World Championship First major title Anand won the FIDE World Championship knockout tournament in 2000, his first world title, seven years before becoming the undisputed champion.
• 2000 – 2006 Celebrity and television -- Australia's sporting icon At the peak of his fame (2000-2006), Thorpe is the most recognisable face in Australian sport and one of the most recognisable Australians internationally. He becomes an ambassador for Armani, launches his own jewellery and underwear lines, appears in television programmes (including the 2002 reality show Undercover Angels, which he hosts but which critics pan), and is a spokesperson for the unsuccessful New York bid for the 2012 Olympics. He attends the 2011 Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton as a guest. His celebrity is simultaneously a resource (commercial opportunities, platform for advocacy) and a burden (the scrutiny that compounds his depression).
• 2000 Last playoff trip of the Ewing era The Knicks make their final playoff appearance with Ewing on the roster before his trade the following year.
• 2000 – present Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II One stealth fighter, three versions The single-engine stealth fighter built in three versions — conventional, short take-off/vertical landing and carrier — and the most expensive weapons programme in history.
• 2000 Sydney 2000 -- three golds, two silvers, flag bearer The 2000 Sydney Olympics are the culmination of Thorpe's early career and the moment that transforms him from champion swimmer into national icon. At 17, carrying the weight of the entire country's expectations in his home city, he wins: gold in the 400m freestyle (breaking his own world record); gold in the 4×100m freestyle relay (in a famous race where Australia, responding to American Gary Hall Jr's pre-race boast about smashing them "like guitars," wins and celebrates by playing air guitar on the pool deck); gold in the 4×200m freestyle relay (world record); silver in the 200m freestyle behind Pieter van den Hoogenband; and silver in the 4×100m medley relay heats. He is named the most successful athlete of the entire Sydney Olympics and carries the Australian flag at the closing ceremony.
• 2000 The air guitar relay -- one of sport's great moments The 4×100m freestyle relay at Sydney 2000 is one of the defining moments of Australian sporting history. American swimmer Gary Hall Jr. publicly predicts that the US will "smash" Australia "like guitars." Australia wins. Thorpe, Michael Klim and their teammates celebrate on the pool deck by playing air guitar -- one of the most spontaneous and memorable celebrations in Olympic history. Hall Jr. later acknowledges it graciously: "I doff my cap to the great Ian Thorpe. He had a better finish than I had." The moment captures something essential about Thorpe's era: competitive excellence delivered with style and good humour.
• 2000 Young Australian of the Year 2000 In 2000 Thorpe is named Young Australian of the Year -- one of Australia's most prestigious civic honours, recognising "outstanding Australians aged 16 to 30 years." The award, combined with his Olympic success in the Sydney Games, makes him arguably the most celebrated young Australian of his generation. The Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), awarded by Queen Elizabeth II for service to sport as an Olympic gold medallist, follows in 2001. He is 17-18. The weight of national celebrity at this age -- with its implicit demand for continuous perfection -- is a burden that shapes everything that follows.
• 2000 Dot-com bubble bursts NASDAQ loses 78% of its value The dot-com bubble burst in 2000-2001 as the NASDAQ Composite fell from its peak of 5,048 in March 2000 to 1,114 by October 2002, wiping out $5 trillion in market value.
• 2000 Opening of the Millennium Dome Britain marks the new millennium on the Greenwich peninsula The Millennium Dome opened to the public in Greenwich, London, on 1 January 2000 after a New Year's Eve gala attended by the Queen and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Its year-long exhibition drew far fewer visitors than projected and it became a byword for costly public spending. The structure reopened as the O2 Arena in 2007.
• 2000 Year 2000 problem passes without major failure A feared computer date bug causes only scattered glitches Governments and companies had spent an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars since the mid-1990s rewriting software that stored calendar years as two digits. As clocks rolled into 1 January 2000, only minor and localised faults were reported around the world. Debate continues over whether the smooth transition vindicated the remediation effort or showed the danger had been overstated.
• 2000 AOL and Time Warner announce their merger The largest corporate merger ever announced at the time On 10 January 2000 America Online agreed to acquire Time Warner in a stock deal valued at about 165 billion dollars. Completed a year later, the combination was soon regarded as a debacle as the dot-com crash gutted AOL's value and the promised synergies never materialised. The companies formally separated in 2009.
• 2000 – present Remco Evenepoel The Aero Bullet Wonderkind; World Champion in both Time Trial and Road Race.
• 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill A gold-mine dam failure poisons the Tisza and the Danube On 30 January 2000 a tailings dam at a gold-recovery plant near Baia Mare in northern Romania burst, releasing around 100,000 cubic metres of cyanide-laden water. The plume moved down the Somes, Tisza and Danube rivers through Hungary and Serbia, killing large quantities of fish and contaminating drinking supplies. It was widely described as Europe's worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl.
• 2000 Crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 An MD-83 dives into the Pacific off the California coast On 31 January 2000 an Alaska Airlines MD-83 flying from Puerto Vallarta toward Seattle crashed into the Pacific near Anacapa Island, killing all 88 people aboard. Investigators found that a jackscrew controlling the horizontal stabiliser had failed through inadequate lubrication and lengthened maintenance intervals. The findings prompted changes to United States maintenance oversight.
• 2000 Vodafone completes its takeover of Mannesmann The largest hostile takeover in corporate history The British mobile operator Vodafone AirTouch won control of the German conglomerate Mannesmann in early February 2000 after a bitter contested bid worth roughly 180 billion euros. It was the biggest takeover ever undertaken and by far the largest hostile one. The battle triggered lasting debate in Germany over shareholder capitalism and executive pay.
• 2000 Russian forces capture Grozny The Chechen capital falls in the Second Chechen War After months of siege and bombardment, Russian troops took control of the Chechen capital Grozny in early February 2000, forcing separatist fighters to retreat into the southern mountains. The city was left in ruins, and the United Nations later called it the most destroyed city on earth. The victory strengthened Vladimir Putin ahead of the March presidential election.
• 2000 NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around Eros The first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid On 14 February 2000 NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous probe entered orbit around 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid. It studied the 34-kilometre body for a year and, in February 2001, made the first controlled landing on an asteroid. The mission returned detailed data on Eros's shape and composition.
• 2000 Release of Windows 2000 Microsoft ships its business operating system built on Windows NT Microsoft released Windows 2000 to the public on 17 February 2000 as the successor to Windows NT 4.0, aimed at corporate and server users. It introduced Active Directory, the NTFS 3.0 file system and improved plug-and-play support. Home systems that year moved instead to Windows Me.
• 2000 Launch of the PlayStation 2 Sony releases what became the best-selling home console Sony launched the PlayStation 2 in Japan on 4 March 2000, with North American and European releases following in the autumn. Backward compatible with PlayStation games and doubling as a DVD player, it eventually sold more than 155 million units, more than any other console. It stayed in production until 2013.
• 2000 Kanungu massacre Hundreds die in a Ugandan doomsday cult On 17 March 2000 a church building at Kanungu in south-western Uganda was set ablaze with members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God locked inside, killing around 330 people. Mass graves linked to the group found over the following weeks raised the toll above 700. The leaders, who had predicted the end of the world, were never found.
• 2000 Chen Shui-bian wins the Taiwanese presidency The first transfer of power away from the Kuomintang On 18 March 2000 Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party won Taiwan's presidential election, ending more than fifty years of unbroken Kuomintang rule on the island. It was the first peaceful transfer of power between parties in Taiwanese history. Beijing reacted with alarm at his party's pro-independence roots.
• 2000 Pope John Paul II visits the Holy Land A Jubilee pilgrimage to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories From 20 to 26 March 2000 Pope John Paul II made a week-long pilgrimage to the Holy Land during the Catholic Jubilee year. He prayed at the Western Wall and left a note apologising for Christian mistreatment of Jews, and he visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. The trip was seen as a landmark in Jewish-Catholic relations.
• 2000 2000 World Snooker Championship Mark Williams First Winner: Mark Williams; Runner-up: Matthew Stevens. Score: 18–16.
• 2000 Federal agents seize Elian Gonzalez An armed dawn raid in Miami ends an international custody dispute Before dawn on 22 April 2000 armed United States federal agents removed six-year-old Elian Gonzalez from the home of Miami relatives to reunite him with his father, ending a months-long standoff over the Cuban boy rescued at sea. A news photograph of an agent confronting the child with a rifle became iconic. Elian returned to Cuba with his father in June.
• 2000 The ILOVEYOU worm spreads worldwide An email virus infects tens of millions of computers Beginning on 4 May 2000 a computer worm carried in an email attachment titled "ILOVEYOU" spread from the Philippines across the globe, overwriting files and mailing itself to victims' contacts. It reached an estimated 45 million computers and caused billions of dollars in damage and cleanup. Philippine suspects were freed because the country then had no law against writing malware.
• 2000 Mission: Impossible 2 #1 film of 2000 — $546m worldwide Directed by John Woo, starring Tom Cruise. Agent Ethan Hunt must stop a rogue IMF agent from releasing a deadly virus.
• 2000 British military intervention in Sierra Leone Operation Palliser helps turn the civil war In May 2000, as Revolutionary United Front rebels advanced on Freetown and seized hundreds of UN peacekeepers, British forces deployed to Sierra Leone under Operation Palliser. They secured the airport and capital, evacuated foreign nationals and stiffened the government. The intervention is widely credited with breaking the rebellion and hastening the war's end in 2002.
• 2000 Gladiator Oscar Best Picture 2000 — $460m worldwide Directed by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe. A Roman general is betrayed, enslaved, and becomes a gladiator seeking revenge. Won 5 Academy Awards.
• 2000 Tate Modern opens in London A Bankside power station becomes a museum of modern art Tate Modern opened to the public on 12 May 2000 in the converted Bankside Power Station on the south bank of the Thames. It quickly became one of the most visited modern art museums in the world, drawing more than five million people in its first year. Its Turbine Hall commissions became a fixture of the art calendar.
• 2000 Enschede fireworks disaster An explosion at a fireworks depot destroys a Dutch neighbourhood On 13 May 2000 a fire at the S.E. Fireworks storage depot in a residential district of Enschede, in the eastern Netherlands, set off a chain of massive explosions. Twenty-three people were killed, among them four firefighters, about a thousand were injured, and the Roombeek district was flattened. The disaster led to far stricter Dutch rules on fireworks storage.
• 2000 Release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Ang Lee's martial-arts epic becomes a global hit Ang Lee's Mandarin-language wuxia film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2000 and opened widely later that year. It became the highest-grossing foreign-language film in United States history to that point and won four Academy Awards. Its wire-assisted fight choreography influenced action cinema worldwide.
• 2000 George Speight's coup in Fiji Armed nationalists seize Parliament and the prime minister On 19 May 2000 the failed businessman George Speight led armed men into Fiji's Parliament and took Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, the country's first ethnic-Indian leader, and dozens of others hostage. They were held for 56 days before the elected government was dissolved and Chaudhry ousted. Speight was later convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment.
• 2000 Eminem releases The Marshall Mathers LP Then the fastest-selling rap album in United States history Released on 23 May 2000, The Marshall Mathers LP sold over 1.7 million copies in its first week in the United States, a record for a hip-hop album at the time. Its violent and satirical lyrics drew condemnation from politicians and advocacy groups even as critics praised its craft. It later won the Grammy for Best Rap Album.
• 2000 Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon The end of a 22-year occupation of the border security zone In the early hours of 24 May 2000 Israel completed the withdrawal of its forces from the security zone it had held in southern Lebanon since the 1980s, and its allied South Lebanon Army collapsed. The pullout, ordered by Prime Minister Ehud Barak, ended a long and costly campaign against Hezbollah. The United Nations later certified the withdrawal to the Blue Line.
• 2000 Survivor premieres in the United States A reality contest becomes a national phenomenon The American version of Survivor debuted on CBS on 31 May 2000, stranding sixteen contestants on a Borneo island to compete for a million-dollar prize. Its August finale drew more than 50 million viewers and helped make competitive reality television a fixture of network schedules. The format was adapted from a Swedish programme.
• 2000 The London Millennium Bridge opens and closes A pedestrian bridge is shut after an alarming sway The Millennium Bridge, a steel footbridge linking St Paul's Cathedral with Tate Modern across the Thames, opened on 10 June 2000. Crowds set it swaying sideways as pedestrians unconsciously matched their steps to its motion, and it closed two days later. After dampers were fitted it reopened in 2002, by then nicknamed the "wobbly bridge".
• 2000 Tiger Woods wins the US Open by fifteen strokes A record-breaking victory at Pebble Beach At Pebble Beach in June 2000 Tiger Woods won the US Open by fifteen shots, the largest margin of victory in any golf major. He went on to take the Open Championship and the US PGA that year, and by holding all four major titles at once in 2001 completed the "Tiger Slam". The 2000 season is often called the finest in the sport's history.
• 2000 Announcement of a draft human genome Rival teams present a working sequence at the White House On 26 June 2000 President Bill Clinton, joined by satellite by Prime Minister Tony Blair, announced that the publicly funded Human Genome Project and the private company Celera had each produced a working draft of the human genetic code. The competing sequences were published in February 2001. The project was declared essentially complete in 2003.
• 2000 The Vatican reveals the Third Secret of Fatima The Church discloses a long-withheld 1917 prophecy On 26 June 2000 the Vatican published the text of the so-called Third Secret of Fatima, a vision reported by shepherd children in Portugal in 1917 and kept sealed since 1960. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger read its vision of a "bishop dressed in white" being struck down as foreshadowing the 1981 attempt on Pope John Paul II's life. Some commentators disputed the interpretation.
• 2000 France win UEFA Euro 2000 A golden goal beats Italy in the Rotterdam final France defeated Italy 2-1 in the final of the European Football Championship on 2 July at De Kuip in Rotterdam, with Sylvain Wiltord equalising in stoppage time and David Trezeguet scoring the golden goal in extra time. The tournament, co-hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands, is often rated among the best ever. France now held the World and European titles at once.
• 2000 Vicente Fox wins the Mexican presidency An election ends 71 years of one-party rule On 2 July 2000 Vicente Fox of the National Action Party won Mexico's presidential election, ending 71 consecutive years in power for the Institutional Revolutionary Party. It was the first time since 1929 that an opposition candidate had taken the presidency. Fox was inaugurated that December.
• 2000 The Camp David Summit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Clinton hosts Barak and Arafat but no deal is reached From 11 to 25 July 2000 President Bill Clinton hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at Camp David in a bid for a final peace settlement. The talks collapsed over Jerusalem, refugees and borders, with each side blaming the other. The failure preceded the outbreak of the Second Intifada that autumn.
• 2000 Crash of Air France Concorde Flight 4590 A supersonic airliner catches fire on take-off near Paris On 25 July 2000 an Air France Concorde bound for New York ran over metal debris on the runway at Charles de Gaulle Airport, bursting a tyre whose fragments ruptured a fuel tank. The aircraft caught fire and crashed into a hotel at Gonesse, killing all 109 aboard and four on the ground. It was the only fatal Concorde accident, and the type was retired in 2003.
• 2000 A court orders Napster to block copyrighted music A recording-industry lawsuit targets music file sharing In late July 2000 a United States federal judge granted the recording industry a preliminary injunction against Napster, the peer-to-peer service that let users trade MP3 files freely. The order was briefly stayed on appeal, but the courts ultimately upheld it and Napster shut down its network in 2001. The case shaped a decade of legal conflict over digital music.
• 2000 X-Men Superhero era begins — $296m worldwide Directed by Bryan Singer, starring Hugh Jackman. The first major X-Men film launched the Marvel superhero franchise era.
• 2000 Firestone recalls millions of tyres Tread failures are linked to Ford Explorer rollovers In August 2000 Bridgestone/Firestone announced a recall of about 6.5 million tyres, many fitted to the Ford Explorer, after tread separations were tied to rollover crashes that had caused hundreds of deaths. Congressional hearings followed, and Ford and Firestone ended a supply relationship dating to 1906. The scandal produced the United States TREAD Act on vehicle-safety reporting.
• 2000 Sinking of the submarine Kursk Explosions kill all 118 aboard a Russian nuclear submarine On 12 August 2000 the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea after a torpedo explosion set off a second, larger blast. All 118 crew died; some survived for hours in a rear compartment before the air gave out. President Vladimir Putin was criticised for the slow official response and for at first refusing foreign help.
• 2000 – present Usain Bolt Born August 21, 1986 — fastest human ever Usain Bolt was born on August 21, 1986 in Trelawny, Jamaica. He set world records of 9.58s (100m) and 19.19s (200m) at the 2009 Berlin World Championships and won 8 Olympic gold medals.
• 2000 2000 Summer Olympics XXVII Olympiad - Sydney Cathy Freeman lights the cauldron. Winner: USA.
• 2000 Outbreak of the Second Intifada A Palestinian uprising follows a visit to the Temple Mount On 28 September 2000 the Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif, in Jerusalem, and clashes the next day spread across the West Bank and Gaza. The uprising that followed brought years of shootings, suicide bombings and Israeli military operations, killing roughly 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis before subsiding around 2005.
• 2000 Radiohead release Kid A An acclaimed album marks a turn away from guitar rock Radiohead's fourth album Kid A, released on 2 October 2000, followed OK Computer with a dense electronic sound and no conventional singles or promotional videos. It divided listeners on release yet topped the United States and United Kingdom charts and won a Grammy. Critics later named it one of the finest albums of the decade.
• 2000 Fall of Milosevic Serbian revolution ousts dictator Mass protests in Belgrade on October 5, 2000 toppled Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic after he refused to accept election results.
• 2000 Bombing of the USS Cole An al-Qaeda suicide attack on a United States warship in Yemen On 12 October 2000 two suicide bombers in a small boat detonated explosives against the hull of the destroyer USS Cole as it refuelled at Aden, Yemen. The blast tore a hole in the ship and killed 17 American sailors. Al-Qaeda was responsible, and the attack is seen as a precursor to the 11 September 2001 attacks.
• 2000 Hatfield rail crash A broken rail derails an express train in England On 17 October 2000 a London-to-Leeds express derailed at speed near Hatfield, Hertfordshire, when a rail shattered from rolling-contact fatigue, killing four passengers. The infrastructure owner Railtrack imposed emergency speed limits across the network, causing months of disruption. The crash contributed to Railtrack's collapse and replacement by Network Rail.
• 2000 – present Adele Born May 5, 1988 — record-breaking singer Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on May 5, 1988 in London. Her album 21 spent 24 weeks at number one in the UK and 24 in the US. Her single Hello sold 1 million copies in the UK in a single week.
• 2000 First resident crew reaches the International Space Station Expedition 1 begins a continuous human presence in orbit Expedition 1, with commander Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, launched from Baikonur on 31 October 2000 and docked with the International Space Station on 2 November. Their arrival began an unbroken human presence aboard the station that still continues. The crew stayed for over four months.
• 2000 US Election 2000 Bush vs Gore — 36-day recount The US presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore ended in a 36-day recount in Florida. The Supreme Court halted the recount, handing victory to Bush by 537 votes.
• 2000 Kaprun funicular fire A blaze in an Alpine tunnel kills 155 skiers On 11 November 2000 fire broke out in a funicular train carrying skiers up through a tunnel toward the Kitzsteinhorn glacier at Kaprun, Austria. Trapped in the confined tunnel, 155 people died of smoke and fumes; only twelve escaped. A long trial of railway staff and officials ended in acquittals, to the fury of victims' families.
• 2000 Alberto Fujimori is removed as president of Peru The leader flees to Japan amid a corruption scandal In November 2000 President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, undermined by videotapes showing his intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos bribing politicians, travelled to Japan and sent his resignation by fax. Congress refused it and instead voted him out, declaring the office vacant. Fujimori stayed abroad until his 2007 extradition and later conviction for abuses and corruption.