istoryworld
All Events
Ehud Barak becomes prime minister after leading the Labour party to election victory in Israel
NATO peacekeepers enter Kosovo after Milosevic agrees to withdraw Serb troops
Nelson Mandela retires from active politics and is succeeded by Thabo Mbeki as South Africa's president
A Scottish parliament resumes business in Edinburgh after an interval of 292 years
President Kabbah and the guerrilla leader Foday Sankoh arrange for shared government in Sierra Leone
A peace plan signed in Lusaka brings to an end eleven months of renewed civil war in the Congo
A translation by Irish author Seamus Heaney brings many new readers to the Old English poem Beowulf
An amnesty is declared for some 8000 Muslim terrorists held in Algeria's gaols
Labour leader Helen Clark heads a coalition government as prime minister of New Zealand
Approximately 130,000 Hutus are held in gaol awaiting trial for their part in Rwanda's genocide
Sam Mendes directs Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening in American Beauty
The Russian army returns to Chechnya after Islamic militants commit acts of terrorism
The TV reality show Big Brother, devised by John de Mol, is broadcast for the first time in the Netherlands
The UN commits 6000 troops to a peace-keeping role in war-torn Sierra Leone
A Pakistani general, Pervez Musharraf, takes power in a military coup
The UN sends in KFOR (Kosovo Force) to supervise post-war recovery in Kosovo
On the eve of the new millennium twenty-one Coptic Christians are murdered by Muslims in the Egyptian village of Kosheh
Britain's hereditary peers lose their rights in the House of Lords, apart from a few elected to serve for an interim period
Floods and massive mudslides in the Vargas state of Venezuela kill an estimated 25,000 people
The island of Macau reverts from Portuguese ownership to the People's Republic of China
Boris Yeltsin announces his completely unexpected resignation on New Year's Eve and effectively hands power to Vladimir Putin as acting president
The US relinquishes sovereignty over the canal zone to Panama on the last day of the century, as agreed in the 1977 treaty
Chromosome 22 becomes the first human genome to be fully sequenced, at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England
It is estimated that during this year the population of the world reached six billion
Trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai leads a newly formed party in Zimbabwe, the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change)
