A timeline of events in the news for February, 2002.

See also:

• Afghanistan timeline February 2002

Table of contents

1 February 27, 2002 2 February 26, 2002 3 February 22, 2002 4 February 11, 2002 5 February 8, 2002 6 February 5, 2002 7 February 3, 2002 8 February 2, 2002

February 27, 2002

• Alicia Keys wins five Grammys.
• Today is the centennial of John Steinbeck's birth.
• "War on Terrorism": The U.S. sends Special Operations Forces to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to help combat guerrilla fighters, though Russia protests.
• Ethnic violence in India: 57 people die in Godhra when a Muslim mob sets fire to a carriage on the Sabarmati Express filled with Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists returning from Ayodhya en route to Ahmedabad. After detaching the burned carriage, the train continues to Vadodara, where Hindus beat and stab people leaving the train, killing one. A 17-year-old is later killed in Godhra by police trying to disrupt mobs.

• 12 Shiite Muslims are killed in a mosque in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

• Chuck Jones, Academy-Award-winning animator, dies at 89.

• British Telecommunications plc starts its US federal court case relating to a controversial patent that it claims gives it a monopoly on the technology of web links.

• The opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, which are held in Salt Lake City.

• Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that the United States was willing to sign a treaty with Russia on limiting strategic nuclear weapons, indicating a possible shift in administration policy after withdrawing, last December, from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. President George W. Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin are to hold a arms reduction summit meeting in Moscow this May. - Background material: nuclear disarmament, nuclear warfare, nuclear proliferation.

• American football: Super Bowl XXXVI: New England Patriots 20, Saint Louis Rams 17 -- one of the most astonishing upsets in Super Bowl history.

• Prince Willem-Alexander, heir to the Dutch throne, marries Máxima Zorreguieta Cerruti in Amsterdam.