2001 – NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touches down in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid. The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The mission succeeded in closing in with the asteroid and orbited it several times, finally terminating by touching down on the asteroid.
2002 – In Pakistan police arrested Ahmed Saeed Sheikh, the prime suspect in the kidnapping of WSJ reported Daniel Pearl. Pakistan charged 3 men in connection with the kidnapping. They and a fourth man were later convicted of Pearl’s murder.
2002 – Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic went on trial in The Hague, accused of war crimes.
2003 – The UN nuclear agency declared North Korea in violation of international treaties, sending the dispute to the Security Council.
2003 – UN weapons inspectors in Iraq destroy a declared stockpile of mustard gas and artillery shells at a former weapons site.
2008 – The U.S. Senate votes to grant immunity to telecommunications companies for their role in NSA call database.
2010 – The United States successfully shoots down a launching ballistic missile using the Boeing YAL-1, a military Boeing 747-400F aircraft mounted with a chemical oxygen iodine laser weapon. The Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser Testbed (formerly Airborne Laser) weapons system is a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) mounted inside a modified Boeing 747-400F. It is primarily designed as a missile defense system to destroy tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs), while in boost phase. The aircraft was designated YAL-1A in 2004 by the U.S. Department of Defense.
2013 – Following a seismic event recorded in South Korea, North Korea confirms that it has successfully tested a nuclear device, claiming that it is small enough to be weaponized.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/february-12/
