Timeline February 2000

Events in February 2000 12

• 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".
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 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 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 Wins Eight Grammy Awards Supernatural ties record for most wins in one night At the February 23, 2000 Grammy Awards, Supernatural won eight awards including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for "Smooth" featuring Rob Thomas, tying the record for most Grammy wins by an artist in a single night. The sweep confirmed the scale of Santana's commercial resurgence and introduced his music to listeners far removed from his 1960s and 1970s heyday. "Smooth" would go on to become one of the best-performing singles of the Billboard Hot 100's history.