Timeline April 2003

Events in April 2003 12

• 1930 – 2003 Robert Atkins (1930-2003) Died 17 April 2003, aged 72 Robert Atkins was a cardiologist who popularised the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet set out in his 1972 book 'Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'. The Atkins diet became a worldwide phenomenon in the early 2000s. He died from a head injury after falling on ice.
• 1933 – 2003 Nina Simone (1933-2003) Died 21 April 2003, aged 70 Nina Simone was a singer, pianist and songwriter whose repertoire spanned jazz, blues, gospel, classical and folk. Songs such as 'Mississippi Goddam' and 'To Be Young, Gifted and Black' made her a prominent voice of the civil rights movement. She spent her later years in France, where she died.
• 1956 – 2003 Leslie Cheung (1956-2003) Died 1 April 2003, aged 46 Leslie Cheung was one of the most successful Cantopop singers and film actors in Hong Kong, known internationally for 'Farewell My Concubine' and 'Happy Together'. He died after falling from a hotel in an apparent suicide, prompting mass public mourning across Asia.
• 2003 AMD Opteron — entering the server market AMD introduces the Opteron server processor in April 2003 alongside the Athlon 64 — bringing AMD64 to the datacenter. The Opteron's integrated memory controller (eliminating the front-side bus bottleneck that limits Intel's Xeon) and HyperTransport interconnect give it a significant performance and memory bandwidth advantage over Intel's Xeon. Google, Sun Microsystems and major cloud providers adopt Opteron for their data centres. For a brief period (2003–2006) AMD has the best server processor in the world.
• 2003 End of the Second Congo War Transitional government ends Africa's deadliest war The Sun City Agreement and the swearing-in of a power-sharing transitional government in Kinshasa formally ended the Second Congo War, a conflict that had drawn in nine African countries. Several million people had died, mostly from disease and hunger, making it the deadliest war since 1945. Fighting nonetheless continued in the eastern provinces.
• 2003 Fall of Baghdad US forces take the Iraqi capital; Saddam's statue toppled Three weeks after the invasion began, US forces entered central Baghdad and organised Iraqi resistance collapsed. A crowd and a US armoured vehicle pulled down a large statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square, an image broadcast worldwide. Saddam went into hiding and the Baathist government ceased to function, though looting and insurgency followed.
• 2003 Human Genome fully sequenced Complete DNA blueprint of humanity published The Human Genome Project announced the complete sequencing of the human genome on April 14, 2003, two years ahead of schedule. The 3.2 billion base pairs provide the blueprint for human biology and disease.
• 2003 Final NBA game Jordan plays his last career game for the Wizards against the Philadelphia 76ers, scoring 15 points in a loss.
• 2003 Treaty of Accession signed in Athens Ten countries sign to join the EU in 2004 Representatives of ten countries, most of them former communist states, signed the Treaty of Accession in Athens, clearing the way for the European Union's largest single enlargement on 1 May 2004. The new members were Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
• 2003 2003 World Snooker Championship Mark Williams Title 2 Winner: Mark Williams; Runner-up: Ken Doherty. Score: 18–16.
• 2003 Aron Ralston's self-amputation Trapped climber cuts off his own arm to escape The canyoneer Aron Ralston, trapped for more than five days by a boulder that pinned his arm in a remote Utah canyon, amputated his own forearm with a multi-tool and walked out to rescue. His account was later filmed as '127 Hours'.
• 2003 iTunes Store opens Apple sells songs for 99 cents Apple opened the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, selling individual songs for $0.99. It sold one million songs in its first week and transformed the music industry.