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Top Song(s)
• Eminem - Lose Yourself
• Eminem - Without Me
• Shakira - Whenever, Wherever
• Nickelback - How You Remind Me
• Avril Lavigne - Complicated
Top Film(s)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• City of God
• The Bourne Identity
• Catch Me If You Can
• 28 Days Later...
Best Selling Book(s)
• Coraline - Neil Gaiman
• The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
• The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
• Eragon - Christopher Paolini
• Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Famous Deaths
• January 3 - Freddy Heineken, Dutch beer brewer (Heineken)
• January 8 - Dave Thomas, American businessman who founded Wendy's Restaurants
• February 8 - Ong Teng Cheong, President of Singapore
• April 2 - John Pierce, American engineer (1st communications satellite Telstar 1)
• June 10 - Benjamin Ward, 1st African American NYC Police Commissioner
• July 21 - John Cunningham, British Royal Air Force night fighter ace (WW II)
• September 9 - Geoffrey Dummer, British electronics engineer who built the first integrated circuit (microchip)
• October 4 - Alphonse Chapanis, founder of ergonomics
• November 7 - Charles Hambro, English banker, multi-millionaire and CEO (Hambros)
• December 6 - Philip Berrigan, American peace activist and Roman Catholic priest
Medical/Science/Technology
• The Mars Odyssey finds signs of huge water ice deposits on the planet Mars.
• The ringed dwarf planet Quaoar is discovered.
• New suborder of insects, Mantophasmatidae, announced.
• Hobo–Dyer projection commissioned.
• The first version of the web browser Firefox is released by the Mozilla Organization.
• The iMac G4 is introduced by Apple, Inc., as the next generation iMac.
• Polynomial-time primality test published.
• Red wine is claimed by Spanish researchers to protect against the common cold.
• The gene BRAF is shown to be faulty (mutated) in some human cancers.
• Clozapine is the first drug approved by the United States FDA for reducing the risk of suicidal behavior.
Political
• January 8 – The No Child Left Behind Act is signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush.
• January 9 – The United States Department of Justice announces it will pursue a criminal investigation of Enron.
• January 13 – President Bush chokes on a pretzel and faints briefly.
• January 29 – In his State of the Union Address, President Bush describes North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil".
• February 12 – The U.S. Secretary of Energy makes the decision that Yucca Mountain is suitable to be the United States' nuclear repository.
• April 19 – The Senate defeats President Bush's plan to authorize oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• May 12 – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro.
• October 9–10 – Congress passes the Iraq Resolution authorizing the Iraq War.
• November 5 – Republicans gain a majority in the Senate and a larger majority in the House of Representatives.
• November 25 – U.S. President George W. Bush signs the Homeland Security Act into law.
National
• January 6 - A student shoots six at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, killing 3.
• February 8–24 – The Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City, Utah.
• March 14 – 125 vehicles are involved in a massive pile up on Interstate 75 in Ringgold, Georgia.
• April 27 – The Laughlin, Nevada River Run Riot kills three.
• May 26 – I-40 bridge disaster: A barge collides with the Interstate 40 bridge across the Arkansas River in eastern Oklahoma, killing 14.
• August 12 – In Arlington, Virginia, US Airways declares bankruptcy.
• September 5 – The Sour Biscuit Fire in Oregon and northern California, which burned 499,570 acres, is contained.
• October 2 - The Beltway sniper attacks begin with five shootings taking place in Montgomery County, Maryland.
• November 6 – The U.S. Federal Reserve System drops its primary discount rate by 25 basis points
• December 13 – President George W. Bush announces a smallpox vaccination program for military personnel.
Worldwide
• January 17 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.
• February 6 – Queen Elizabeth II of the Commonwealth realms celebrates her Golden Jubilee.
• March 3 – Switzerland votes in favor of a referendum to join the United Nations.
• April 4 – A peace agreement is made to end the Angolan Civil War.
• May 9 – Over 40 people are killed when insurgents bomb a military parade in Kaspiysk, Russia.
• June 13 - Afghanistan changes its official longform name to the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan.
• July 5 – The Imperial War Museum North opens in Trafford, England.
• September 14–27 – Hurricane Isidore crosses Cuba, the Yucatán Peninsula, and Louisiana.
• October 17 – The European Space Agency launches the INTEGRAL observatory.
• December 2 – Opponents of President Chavez begin a strike in Venezuela.