2003
year
2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2003rd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 3rd year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 4th year of the 2000s decade.
The year 2003 was marked by the United States invasion of Iraq and the subsequent period of occupation and insurgency. The Kashmir conflict also saw a period of escalation, and the Second Intifada continued in Israel and Palestine. The global economy recovered from the early 2000s recession, especially in China, Japan, and the United States, and Argentina recovered from its years-long economic crisis. A conference of World Trade Organization members caused diplomatic conflict between developing and developed nations, with the former creating their own trade bloc, the G20 developing nations. The Catholic Church celebrated the 25th anniversary of the election of Pope John Paul II, while disputes about gay rights emerged within several Christian denominations in 2003. The Islamic world faced crisis as the war on terror and Islamic terrorism prompted religious leaders to define Islam's identity. Elsewhere in the world, ten nations were approved for membership to the European Union, North Korea restarted its nuclear weapons program, and several political leaders were convicted in the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and for the former Yugoslavia. The International Criminal Court also began operation in 2003.
The 110th element of the periodic table was officially named darmstadtium (Ds) in 2003.
The public source identifies “2003” as year. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around year.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1986. The Library of Congress control number is sh2004014458. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “2003” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.