Veerappan

Veerappan was born in a Tamil Vanniyar Gounder family. He married Muthulakshmi who reportedly married him because of his “notoriety and moustache." As of 2004, his two daughters, Vidya Rani (born in 1990) and Prabha (born in 1993), were studying in Tamil Nadu.

Criminal life

Veerappan started as an assistant to his relative Saalvai Gounder, a notorious poacher and sandalwood smuggler. His father and relatives, whose village lay in the forest area, were also known to be poachers and smugglers. Veerappan began his career in crime in 1970 and was first arrested in 1972.

Veerappan initially developed as a sandalwood and ivory smuggler, killing elephants for the latter. He later started killing those who resisted his activities. He committed his first murder at the age of 17 and his victims tended to be police officers, forest officials, and informants.

In 1987, Veerappan kidnapped and murdered a forest officer named Chidambaram from Tamil Nadu. This first brought him to the Indian Government’s attention. Among his best-known killings are a senior IFS officer named Pandillapalli Srinivas in November 1991, and an ambush of a police party including a senior IPS officer, Harikrishna, among others, in August 1992.

Veerappan was not averse to killing civilians, and killed a man from his native village for having once travelled in a police jeep.^[14] He regularly killed anyone suspected of being a police informer. Because of political instability, Veerappan could easily escape from one state to another. State jurisdiction problems also prevented police officers from entering other states to apprehend Veerappan. 

Palar blast

 

In Govindapadi, Mettur, Veerappan killed a Bandari person whom he suspected of being a police informer. As a result, a 41-member team of police officers and forestry officials were called in to investigate. On the 9th of April, 1993, landmines were detonated underneath the two vehicles in which the team was travelling. The blast occurred at Palar, near Malai Mahadeswara Hills (present-day Chamarajanagar District, Karnataka) and killed 22 members of the team. Known as the Palar blast, this was Veerappan's single largest mass killing.

Special Task Force

In 1992, the Karnataka and the Tamil Nadu Governments formed a Special Task Force to catch Veerappan.It was headed in Tamil Nadu by Sanjay Arora and in Karnataka by Shankar Bidri with Walter Devaram as the joint chief. In February 1992, his lieutenant Gurunathan was killed by the Karnataka task force, with SI Shakeel Ahmed single-handedly responsible for the capture. Three months later, Veerappan attacked the Ramapura police station in the Chamarajanagar district in Karnataka, killing several policemen and capturing arms and ammunition. In August 1992, Veerappan laid a trap for SI Shakeel Ahmed, killing him along with five others. The Karnataka and Tamil Nadu Special Task Forces then began intensified combing operations along the two states’ border areas and also around Gopinatham village, Veerappan’s birthplace.

Through these operations, under charge of Sanjay Arora and Shankar Bidari, the gang was reduced to 5 members. Meetings with Gopinatham villagers were held, and the 5-crore bounty was announced. In 1993, the task force arrested Veerappan’s wife, Muthulakshmi, and charged her with aiding,but she was acquitted of all charges.

Kidnap of Rajkumar 

 

On 30 July 2000, Veerappan kidnapped actor Rajkumar and three others from Dodda Gajanur, a village in Erode district near the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border where the film star was attending his housewarming ceremony. Public outcry and violence ensued in Bangalore as well as other parts of Karnataka.A bandh, or strike, also occurred on 22 September in Bangalore. Karnataka’s Chief Minister and police personnel sought the help of Tamil Nadu Government and visited Chennai seeking help.Negotiations were conducted and R. Gopal, an editor of the Tamil magazine Nakkeeran, was involved in several rounds of talks with Veerappan. Gopal had earlier visited Veerappan for similar negotiations, and visited the forest several times for videotaped discussions. Veerappan demanded justice for Tamil Nadu in the Cauvery Water dispute, as well as making Tamilthe second official language of Karnataka and the release of certain Tamil extremists jailed in Tamil Nadu.Rajkumar was held for 108 days and finally released without harm in November 2000. A police official later suggested that 20 crore rupees had been paid by Karnataka government for his release.

Kidnap of Nagappa 

On 25 August 2002, Veerappan abducted H. Nagappa, a former minister of Karnataka, from his village house in Chamarajanagar district.  Nagappa had been a minister for Agricultural Marketing from 1996 to 1999. The Joint Special task forces of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu worked with the Kerala police to help release Nagappa.  An encounter to release him failed, and Nagappa was found dead three months later in a Karnataka forest.  The reward offered by the Karnataka state government was then increased to 50 crore rupees.

Ransom demands

For several years during the 1990s, Veerappan kidnapped police officials and other personalities and demanded ransom money. It is believed that ransoms were often unofficially paid. In July 1997, he kidnapped nine forest officials in the Burude forests in Chamarajanagar district. In that case, the hostages were released unharmed a few weeks later even though his ransom demand was not met. It is also believed that Veerappan buried large amounts of money in various parts of the forest, and in 2002 police recovered 33 lakh rupees from his gang members.

Political support

During his later years, Veerappan got political support from Tamil nationalist organisations like Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), a political party predominantly of the Vanniyar caste to which Veerappan belonged. Former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) was a known sympathiser of Veerappan and his aides, and demanded the removal of the death penalty for four of Veerappan’s aides as soon the sentence was given to them in 2013.Karunanidhi also extended the 31 October 1997 deadline for Veerappan’s surrender and postponed Special Task Force (STF) police action by few days saying, “it is not far too late for Veerappan to surrender”. Banned organisations like the Tamil National Retrieval Troops (TNRT) and Tamil Nadu Liberation Army (TNLA, a front in Tamil Nadu for LTTE) helped Veerappan to secure a Robin Hoodimage and to draft terms of negotiations when he kidnapped prominent people. Kolathur Mani, president of Dravidar Viduthalai Kazhagam, formerly the Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam (PDK) party, supported Veerappan and was booked by police as an accomplice in several of Veerappan’s crimes.

Death 

 

On 18 October 2004, Veerappan annd two of his associates were killed by the Tamil Nadu Special Task Force headed by K Vijay Kumar.

The killing happened near the village of Papparapatti  in Dharmapuri district, Tamil Nadu. Veerappan and his men were lured into an ambulance by an undercover policeman under the pretext of taking them to Dharmapuri for medical treatment.The Tamil Nadu Special Task Force, which had been observing his movements for several months, surrounded the ambulance, and the gangsters were killed in the ensuing gunfight.

The entire operation was named Operation Cocoon and Veerappan’s associates Sethukuli Govindan, Chandre Gowdar and Sethumani were also killed in the operation.

His death was described as the “death of a demon” by The Guardian. The villagers of Gopinatham celebrated with firecrackers on hearing the news.

Several human rights outfits, which rallied under the banner of the Centre for Protection of Civil Liberties (CPCL), claimed that circumstantial evidence indicated that Veerappan was murdered by police after being tortured. Since Veerappan’s death, Gopinatham has been promoted as a destination for ecotourism by the Karnataka State Department of Forest and Tourism.

Veerappan was buried at a village named Moolakadu, Tamil Nadu, as his family members were more attached to it and most of his relatives in Gopinatham had left. The police had planned a cremation but decided on a burial after objections from Veerappan’s relatives.Thousands of people turned out for the burial, while others were kept away by heavy security.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Born in 1931 in Dhanushkodi, India, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam joined India's defense department after graduating from the Madras Institute of Technology. He was a central figure in the development of the country's nuclear capabilities, and was hailed as a national hero after a series of successful tests in 1998. Kalam served as India's president for one term, and died of a heart attack on July 27, 2015.

Early Years

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born into a Muslim family on October 15, 1931, on the island of Dhanushkodi off the southeastern coast of India. He developed an early fascination with flight by watching birds, which developed into an interest in aeronautics after he saw a newspaper article about a British fighter plane. Despite his modest beginnings – his dad built and rented boats – Kalam was a bright student who showed promise in science and mathematics. He attended St. Joseph's College, and went on to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Madras Institute of Technology. 

Rise to the Presidency 

His hopes of becoming a fighter pilot was dashed when he narrowly missed out on a spot with the Indian Air Force. Kalam instead joined the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) as a senior scientific assistant in 1958. After moving to the newly formed Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in 1969, he was named project director of the SLV-III, the first satellite launch vehicle designed and produced on Indian soil.

Returning to the DRDO as director in 1982, Kalam implemented the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program. He then became the senior scientific adviser to India's defense minister in 1992, a position he used to campaign for the development of nuclear tests. 

Kalam was a key figure in the May 1998 Pokhran-II tests, in which five nuclear devices were detonated in the Rajasthan Desert. Although the tests resulted in condemnation and economic sanctions from other world powers, Kalam was hailed as a national hero for his stanch defense of the country’s security. 

In 2002, India's ruling National Democratic Alliance helped Kalam win an election against Lakshmi Sahgal and become India's 11th president, a largely ceremonial post. Known as the People's President, Kalam set a goal of conducting 500,000 one-on-one meetings with young people over the course of his five-year term. His immense popularity led to him being nominated by MTV for a Youth Icon of the Year award in 2003 and 2006. 

After leaving office in 2007, Kalam became a visiting professor at several universities. He formed the "What Can I Give Movement" in 2011 with the goal of creating a compassionate society, and in 2012, his efforts to improve healthcare led to the release of a tablet for medical personnel to use in remote areas. 

Death and Legacy 

On July 27, 2015, Kalam suffered a massive heart attack while lecturing at the Indian Institute of Management and subsequently died at the age of 83. 

Kalam was laid to rest on July 30 with full state honors in his native Tamil Nadu. In honor of the scientist and former president, the southeast Indian state government of Tamil Nadu created a "Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Award," which recognizes exceptional individuals who promote the sciences, students and humanities. The government has also established Kalam's birthday (October 15) as "Youth Renaissance Day." Discussion about building a large-scale memorial at his burial site is underway. 

Among his many accolades, including honorary doctorates from 40 universities, he was granted the Padma Bhushan (1981), the Padma Vibhushan (1990) and the Bharat Ratna (1997) — India's highest civilian awards — for his contributions in modernizing government defense technology. He also wrote several books, including the autobiography Wings of Fire in 1999.

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai is a computer engineer and the current CEO of Google Inc. The technology giant Google, which specializes in Internet-related services and products, underwent a major corporate restructuring in 2015 following which Alphabet Inc was launched as its parent company with co-founders Larry Page as its CEO and Sergey Brin as President. Pichai, who had been serving as Google’s head of Products and Engineering, was named the new CEO of Google which is the biggest company under Alphabet Inc. Pichai had joined Google years ago in 2004 as a product manager and led the innovative efforts for several of Google’s products including Google Chrome and Chrome OS which went on to become highly successful. Eventually he took over the management of other Google products like Gmail and Google Docs, and rose through the ranks rapidly. Born in Chennai, India, Pichai was bright and creative from a young age. 

Childhood & Early Life:

• He was born as Pichai Sundararajan on July 12, 1972, in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. His father, Regunatha Pichai, worked as an electrical engineer for the British conglomerate GEC and managed a factory that made electrical components. His mother used to be a stenographer before having children. He has one brother.
• Pichai grew up in a middle-class home and was a bright student. He excelled academically at his school, Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan, and earned a seat in the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, one of the most prestigious engineering institutions in India.
• He did his B.Tech in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and then won a scholarship to study materials science and semiconductor physics from Stanford University from where he eventually earned his M.S.

Career

• He initially planned to pursue a Ph.D. from Stanford and embark on an academic career. However, he dropped out and joined Applied Materials—a Silicon Valley semiconductor maker—as an engineer and product manager. He did not work there for long.
• He went on to complete his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (2002), where he was named a Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar.
• Following the completion of his MBA he was appointed as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.
• He joined Google in 2004. Initially he worked on Google’s search toolbar as a part of a small team. The toolbar gave users of Internet Explorer and Firefox easy access to Google search.
• He also worked on other Google products like Google Gears and Google Pack. The success of Google’s toolbar gave Pichai the idea that Google should develop its own browser. He discussed his idea with his seniors and faced an objection from then-CEO Eric Schmidt, who thought that developing a browser would be a too expensive affair.
• However, Pichai persevered and convinced the co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to launch Google’s own browser. Pichai played a pivotal role in the ultimate launch of the browser, Google Chrome, in 2008. Chrome proved to be a great success as it allowed the users to directly access Google’s search engine.
• Pichai became an internationally known figure following the phenomenal success of the Chrome which eventually became the No. 1 browser in the world, surpassing competitors such as Internet Explorer and Firefox. The Chrome also paved the way for a series of other important products like Chrome OS, Chromebooks, and Chromecast.
• In 2008, Pichai was promoted to Vice President of product development. In this position he started appearing more often at Google presentations and continued rising up the ranks in Google. By 2012, he had become the Senior Vice President of Chrome and apps.
• In 2013, Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, left to work on a different project. Larry Page then made Pichai in-charge of Android as well. His influence continued to increase and he was made the Product Chief in October 2014.
• In 2015, Google formed a company, Alphabet Inc., to serve as a holding company and conglomerate to own the subsidiaries that were previously owned by Google, including a new “slimmed down” version of Google itself. On 10 August 2015, Sundar Pichai was named the new CEO of Google.
• In February 2016, he was awarded 273,328 shares of Google's holding company Alphabet, which led to a rise in his net worth. These shares were worth $199 million, and this took his holdings up to $650 million.

Major Works

• An engineering genius known for his innovative ideas, Sundar Pichai is best known as the mastermind behind the launch of the Chrome browser in 2008. He played a pivotal role in convincing his seniors at Google to launch the browser which in time became the most popular browser on the internet and also led to the launch of the Chrome operating system.

Top 10 Facts You Did Not Know About Sundar Pichai

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• Sundar Pichai is a huge cricket fan and was the captain of his school cricket team.
• His family did not possess a phone until he was 12.
• He once tried to talk a friend out of working at Google before joining the company himself.
• Sundar Pichai joined Google even before the company went public.
• He is very good at remembering numbers and could remember every telephone number he dialed when he was young.
• He interacts with students at IIT-Kharagpur over Skype at regular intervals.
• He was also one of the top contenders for the post of CEO at Microsoft, which ultimately went to Satya Nadella.
• The Google CEO is not at all “nerdy” as his appearance might suggest! He is actually very grounded, helpful and friendly.
• He has been the master of ceremonies at Google I/O for the past few years.
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Biography Of Barack Obama

Who Is Barack Obama?

Born in Honolulu in 1961, Barack Obama went on to become President of the Harvard Law Review and a U.S. senator representing Illinois. In 2008, he was elected President of the United States, becoming the first African-American commander-in-chief. He served two terms as the 44 president of the United States. 

Early Life

Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother, Ann Dunham, was born on an Army base in Wichita, Kansas, during World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dunham's father, Stanley, enlisted in the military and marched across Europe in General George Patton's army. Dunham's mother, Madelyn, went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, the couple studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program and, after several moves, ended up in Hawaii.

Education

While living with his grandparents, Obama enrolled in the esteemed Punahou Academy, He excelled in basketball and graduated with academic honors in 1979. As one of only three black students at the school, Obama became conscious of racism and what it meant to be African-American. He later described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage with his own sense of self: "I noticed that there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog. . .and that Santa was a white man," he wrote. "I went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with all my senses and limbs seemingly intact, looking as I had always looked, and wondered if something was wrong with me."

Ten years later, in 1981, tragedy struck Obama Sr. when he lost both of his legs in a serious car accident. Confined to a wheelchair, he also lost his job. In 1982, Obama Sr. was involved in yet another car accident while traveling in Nairobi. This time, however, the crash was fatal. Obama Sr. died on November 24, 1982, when Obama was 21 years old. "At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me," Obama later wrote, "both more and less than a man."

After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science. After working in the business sector for two years, Obama moved to Chicago in 1985. There, he worked on the impoverished South Side as a community organizer for low-income residents in the Roseland and the Altgeld Gardens communities.

Law Career

It was during this time that Obama, who said he "was not raised in a religious household," joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. He also visited relatives in Kenya, and paid an emotional visit to the graves of his biological father and paternal grandfather. "For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept," Obama wrote. "I saw that my life in America—the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago—all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away."

Returning from Kenya with a sense of renewal, Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. The next year, he met with constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe and their discussion so impressed Tribe, that when Obama asked to join his team as a research assistant, the professor agreed. “The better he did at Harvard Law School and the more he impressed people, the more obvious it became that he could have had anything, said Professor Tribe in a 2012 interview with Frontline, “but it was clear that he wanted to make a difference to people, to communities.” That same year Obama joined the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin as a summer associate and it was there he met Michelle Robinson, a young lawyer who was assigned to be his adviser. Not long after, the couple began dating. In February 1990, Obama was elected the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law in 1991.

After law school, Obama returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer with the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He also taught constitutional law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School between 1992 and 2004—first as a lecturer and then as a professor—and helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. On October 3, 1992, he and Michelle were married. They moved to Kenwood, on Chicago's South Side, and welcomed two daughters several years later: Malia (born 1998) and Sasha (born 2001).

Entry Into Illinois Politics

Obama published an autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, in 1995. The work received high praise from literary figures such as Toni Morrison and has since been printed in more than 25 languages, including Chinese, Swedish and Hebrew. The book had a second printing in 2004 and was adapted for a children's version. The audiobook version of Dreams, narrated by Obama, received a Grammy Award for best spoken word album in 2006.

Obama's advocacy work led him to run for a seat in the Illinois State Senate. He ran as a Democrat and won election in 1996. During his years as a state senator, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans to draft legislation on ethics, as well as expand health care services and early childhood education programs for the poor. He also created a state earned-income tax credit for the working poor. As chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases after a number of death-row inmates were found to be innocent.

In 2000, Obama made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. Undeterred, he created a campaign committee in 2002 and began raising funds to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004. With the help of political consultant David Axelrod, Obama began assessing his prospects for a Senate win.

Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Obama was an early opponent of President George W. Bush's push to go to war with Iraq. Obama was still a state senator when he spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq during a rally at Chicago's Federal Plaza in October 2002. "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars," he said. "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." Despite his protests, the Iraq War began in 2003.

2008 Presidential Election

In February 2007, Obama made headlines when he announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. He was locked in a tight battle with former first lady and then-U.S. senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton. On June 3, 2008, Obama became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee after winning a sufficient number of pledged delegates during the primaries, and Clinton delivered her full support to Obama for the duration of his campaign. On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama defeated Republican presidential nominee John McCain, 52.9 percent to 45.7 percent, to win election as the 44th president of the United States—and the first African-American to hold this office. His running mate, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, became vice president. Obama's inauguration took place on January 20, 2009.

Osama bin Laden- A Review on History

On May 1, 2011, American soldiers killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden at his compound near Islamabad, Pakistan. Intelligence officials believe bin Laden was responsible for many deadly acts of terrorism, including the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. He had been on the FBI’s “most wanted” list for more than a decade.

Osama bin Laden: Early Life

Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was the 17th of 52 children born to Mohammed bin Laden, a Yemeni immigrant who owned the largest construction company in the Saudi kingdom. Young Osama had a privileged, cosseted upbringing. His siblings were educated in the West and went to work for his father’s company (by then an enormous conglomerate that distributed consumer goods like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages across the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close to home. He went to school in Jiddah, married young and, like many Saudi men, joined the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Osama bin Laden: The Pan-Islamist Idea

For bin Laden, Islam was more than just a religion: It shaped his political beliefs and influenced every decision he made. While he was at college in the late 1970s, he became a follower of the radical pan-Islamist scholar Abdullah Azzam, who believed that all Muslims should rise up in jihad, or holy war, to create a single Islamic state. This idea appealed to the young bin Laden, who resented what he saw as a growing Western influence on Middle Eastern life.
In 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan; soon afterward, Azzam and bin Laden traveled to Peshawar, a Pakistani city on the border with Afghanistan, to join the resistance. They did not become fighters themselves, but they used their extensive connections to win financial and moral support for the mujahideen (the Afghan rebels). They also encouraged young men to come from all over the Middle East to be a part of the Afghan jihad. Their organization, called the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) served as a global recruitment network–it had offices in places as far away as Brooklyn and Tucson, Arizona–and provided the migrant soldiers, known as “Afghan Arabs,” with training and supplies. Most important, it showed bin Laden and his associates that it was possible to put pan-Islamism into practice.

Osama Bin Laden: Building Al-Qaida

In 1988, bin Laden created a new group, called al-Qaida (“the base”) that would focus on symbolic acts of terrorism instead of military campaigns. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia to step up fundraising for this new and more complicated mission. However, the comparatively pro-Western Saudi royal family feared that bin Laden’s fiery pan-Islamist rhetoric might cause trouble in the kingdom, and so they tried to keep him as quiet as they could. They took away his passport and spurned his offer to send “Afghan Arabs” to guard the border after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Then, adding insult to injury, they sought help from the “infidel” U.S. instead. Furious about being snubbed, bin Laden vowed that it was al-Qaida, and not the Americans, who would one day prove to be “master of this world.”
Early the next year, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia for the more militantly Islamist Sudan. After one more year of preparation, al-Qaida struck for the first time: A bomb exploded in a hotel in Aden, Yemen, that had housed American troops on their way to a peacekeeping mission in Somalia. (No Americans died in the blast, but two Austrian tourists did.)

Osama bin Laden: Worldwide Jihad

Emboldened, bin Laden and his associates embraced violent jihad in earnest. For example, they trained and armed the Somali rebels who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu in 1993. They were also linked to the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center; the attempted assassination of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarek in 1995; the bombing of a U.S. National Guard training center in Riyadh that same year; and the truck bomb that destroyed the Khobar Towers, an American military residence in Dharan, in 1996.

Osama bin Laden: “Public Enemy #1″

In an attempt to protect himself from arrest and win even more recruits to al-Qaida’s deadly cause, bin Laden moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Meanwhile, the scale of al-Qaida’s attacks continued to increase. On August 7, 1998, bombs exploded simultaneously at the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, where 213 people were killed and 4,500 were injured, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, where 11 people were killed and 85 were injured. Al-Qaida took credit for the bombings. Then, on October 12, 2000, a small boat loaded with explosives plowed into the hull of the U.S.S. Cole, an American naval destroyer docked off the coast of Yemen. 17 sailors were killed and 38 were injured. Bin Laden took credit for that incident as well.
A federal grand jury in the United States indicted bin Laden on charges related to the embassy bombings, but with no defendant there could be no trial. Meanwhile, al-Qaida operatives were busy planning the biggest attack of all: the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Even in the frenzy of the post-September 11 “global war on terror,” bin Laden eluded capture. For almost ten years, he remained in hiding, issuing fatwas and taunts over radio and television, recruiting enthusiastic young jihadis to his cause and plotting new attacks. Meanwhile, the CIA and other intelligence officials searched in vain for his hiding place.
Finally, in August 2010, they traced bin Laden to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 35 miles from Islamabad. For months, CIA agents watched the house while drones photographed it from the sky. Finally, it was time to move. On May 2, 2011 (May 1 in the United States), a team of Navy SEALs burst into the compound. They found the al-Qaida leader in an upstairs bedroom with a pistol and an assault rifle nearby and shot him in the head and chest, killing him instantly. “Justice,” said President Obama in a televised address to the nation that night, “has been done.”