ico exploded, killing 11 workers. Major oil pollution ensued.
27/1/2010, J D Salinger, reclusive author of ‘Catcher in the Rye’, died aged 91.
25/9/2009, Senator Edward Kennedy died, aged 77.
25/6/2009, The American entertainer Michael Jackson died (born 29/8/1958).
18/11/2008, Heads of the big three US car manufacturers asked the US government for assistance during the ongoing Credit Crunch. They said their companies were important as job providers.
16/4/2007, Student Cho Seung Hui went on a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University, killing 32 staff and students. Cho then shot himself.
26/4/2006, Construction of the Freedom Tower in New York began. It was on the site of the Twin Towers destroyed in the 9-11 attacks in 2001.
2/12/2005, Kenneth Boyd became the 1,000th person to be executed in the USA since capital punishment was re-introduced in 1976.
29/8/2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the southern and south –east states of the USA, with winds of up to 175 mph, severely damaging an area as big as Great Britain. New Orleans was particularly badly hit. The city of 500,000 people sits around 1 metre below sea level, due to subsidence associated with the growth of the Mississippi delta, and was flooded, in some areas several metres deep, when the levees protecting the city from Lake Pontchartrain to the north gave way. Several thousand people died. There were allegations that the maintenance of the levees had been cut back to help fund the fighting in Iraq, and that National Guardsmen who could have helped evacuate the victims and restore law and order were away in Iraq. A week after the floods, there was almost no food or potable water, and disease and looting, along with rapes and murder, were rampant. People likened the situation to a Third World disaster, right in America itself.
28/8/2005, The Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, ordered the evacuation of the city as Hurricane Katrina loomed.
18/11/2003, US President Bush visited Prime Minister Tony Blair of the UK; there were ongoing protests against the US war on Iraq.
14/8/2003, Across the N.E. USA and Canada, nine States (Ontario, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Vermont) lost power when one power station became overloaded and shut down, creating a domino effect across the outdated electricity distribution system.
17/4/2003, John Paul Getty, oil magnate, died aged 84.
29/1/2002, US President Bush denounced the ‘Axis of Evil’ – the states of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
23/12/2001, The ‘shoe bomber’, Richard Reid, attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami, by setting off explosives hidden in his shoe, but was overpowered by the other passengers.
7/10/2001. Following the September 11, 2001 attack on the USA, missile attacks began on Afghanistan, prior to US invasion. President George Bush announced the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, to root out Al Quaeda
4/10/2001, The first anthrax attack occurred on a US government office, sent through the post. More anthrax arrived in the post on 9/10/2001.
20/9/2001, President Bush declared a ‘War on Terror’.
17/9/2001. The US Stock market re-opened after the 9-11 attacks.
See also Islam and Middle East for events following ‘9-11’ attacks
11/9/2001, The World Trade Centre in New York was hit by two planes, bringing both its twin towers down. A third plane hit the Pentagon in Washington, and a fourth crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside after failing to reach perhaps Camp David or the White House. Casualties were approximately 5,000. All four planes had been hijacked by Muslim extremist suicide squads, but on the fourth plane, passengers retook control from the hijackers. Osama Bin Laden, head of the Al-Quaeda terrorist organisation, and based in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, was swiftly blamed.
Click here for image from Financial Times, UK, September 11 2001. Interesting symbolism relating to the NY attacks a few hours later.
6/8/2001, President Bush was warned that Osama Bin Laden was planning a strike against the US and that this might inv