On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Millennium Dome in London suffers another setback as British government breaks off talks with Legacy, group led by property developer Robert Bourne, and reopens process to other bidders; Legacy's 125 million pounds proposal ($182 million) to turn Dome into high-tech office park fails to gain enough support; Japanese bank Nomura also submitted proposal and is considering its options; photo (S)
EM.TV & Merchandising AG, German media company that bought Muppets and half Formula One racing organization, escapes collapse; but prospects are much less clear for its chairman and founder, Thomas Haffa; after two months of tangled negotiations and unexpected battle with European car companies over future of Formula One, EM.TV agrees to sell big stake in itself and Formula One business to Kirch Group for $550 million; Haffa in last few months has been forced to restate company's earnings, drastically reduce his forecasts and admit that he secretly sold shares of company in violation of rules governing EM.TV public stock offering; Haffa's brother, Florian, who was co-founder of EM.TV, was forced to resign as chief financial officer last fall; both brothers are being investigated by Bavarian authorities on suspicions of insider trading and they face many lawsuits from angry shareholders; Kirch will pay $550 million for half of EM.TV's stake in Formula One business as well as 16 percent of EM.TV and voting rights equal to 25 percent of stock--enough under German law to have veto over major corporate decisions; photo of Thomas Haffa with Kirch deputy chairman Dieter Hahn (M)
Nortel Networks, Canadian maker of communications equipment, plans to eliminate 10,000 jobs; says it expects sales to grow only 15 percent this year, down from already lowered estimate of 30 percent; cites slower-than-expected sales in US as main reason for its reduced expectations; chief executive John Roth comments (M)
Wardel Fenderson, former driver for hip-hop mogul Puffy Combs, testifies that Combs had repeatedly offered him money to claim ownership of gun that police found in Comb's vehicle shortly after nightclub shooting in December 1999, trial; Fenderson, 36th witness to testify in three weeks, has been the only person to provide evidence against Combs on both of two charges against him: bribing a witness and gun possession; photo (M)
Profile of New York Mets' player John Franco, who at 40 years old remains one of baseball's best relief pitchers; photo (M)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of February 14, 2001, covering February 16, 2001.
Shaggy
Jennifer Lopez
Soundtrack
The Beatles
Ja Rule
2001Yuki Naito, Japanese tennis player[†]
Yuki Naito is a Japanese tennis player. Naito has been ranked as high as world No. 169 in singles and No. 224 in doubles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA).
2001Howard W. Koch, American director and producer (born 1916)[†]
Howard Winchel Koch was an American film producer and director. He served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was involved in the production and direction of numerous films throughout his career, including The Manchurian Candidate (1962), The Odd Couple (1968), Airplane! (1980) and its 1982 sequel, and Ghost (1990). At the 62nd Academy Awards, he was honored the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his "outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes".
2001William Masters, American gynecologist and sexologist (born 1915)[†]
William Howell Masters was an American gynecologist and the senior member of the Masters and Johnson human sexuality research team. Along with his partner Virginia E. Johnson, he pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunctions and disorders from 1957 until the 1990s.
In 2001, the world population was approximately 6,254,936,459 people[†]