Chronopin: upcoming release dates, events and other important dates

The $265M Sands Macao opened as the city's first Las Vegas-style resort, ending Stanley Ho's 42-year gambling monopoly and starting Macau's transformation into the world's densest gaming hub.

Shrek 2 is a 2004 American animated fantasy comedy film directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, and Conrad Vernon from a screenplay by Adamson, Joe Stillman, and the writing team of J. David Stem and David N. Weiss. Loosely based on the 1990 children's picture book Shrek! by William Steig, it is a direct sequel to Shrek (2001) and the second installment in the Shrek film series.

Manglobe's Samurai Champloo begins airing, a hip-hop-infused samurai adventure directed by Shinichiro Watanabe that follows wanderers Mugen and Jin escorting waitress Fuu as she searches for a mysterious 'sunflower samurai.'

Ojamajo Doremi Na-i-sho premieres, a 13-episode OVA continuing the Ojamajo Doremi magical-girl franchise with a more mature, romance-tinged coda for the five witch apprentices.

The spring term is beginning for the students at Lillian Girls' Academy. Friends are reunited, but for the Yamayuri Council, it's a bittersweet time.

The action-horror TV anime Elfen Lied begins broadcast, following the psychotic, telekinetic Diclonius Lucy after two teenagers take in her amnesiac alter-ego "Nyuu".

Exorcist: The Beginning is a 2004 American supernatural horror film serving as a prequel to The Exorcist (1973), and the fourth installment in The Exorcist film series. Directed by Renny Harlin, the film stars Stellan Skarsgård, Izabella Scorupco and James D'Arcy.

The television anime Bleach begins airing, a Studio Pierrot adaptation of Tite Kubo's manga about high schooler Ichigo Kurosaki, who inherits a Soul Reaper's powers and takes up the fight against soul-devouring Hollows.

The Royal Danish Navy commissioned HDMS Absalon, lead ship of the Absalon-class flexible support ships built at Odense Steel Shipyard. The 137-meter vessel combines helicopter, troop, and vehicle capacity with modern weapon systems.

Honda Shigeharu is a Major League batter on the rise. His son Gorou is a Little League pitcher who one day hopes to follow in his father's footsteps.

Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle opens in Japan, Hayao Miyazaki's adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones's novel about a young hatmaker cursed into an old woman's body who takes refuge with a wizard in his walking castle.

Norman Foster's Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world, opened over southern France's Tarn valley, completing the A75 motorway route between Paris and the Mediterranean.

A former CargoLifter airship hangar in Brandenburg, big enough to enclose the Statue of Liberty, reopened as the Tropical Islands indoor resort on December 19, 2004. Its beaches, lagoons and rainforest now draw about a million visitors a year to the world's largest free-standing hall.

A magnitude 9.1 megathrust rupture off Aceh generated a tsunami that crossed the Indian Ocean and struck coastlines from Indonesia to East Africa. It is the third-largest earthquake ever instrumentally recorded.

The world's largest pumping station begins lifting water from Lake Nasser into the Sheikh Zayed Canal, launching Egypt's attempt to grow a second Nile valley 310 km into the Sahara.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist is a 2005 American supernatural horror film directed by Paul Schrader and written by William Wisher Jr. and Caleb Carr. The film serves as an alternative prequel to The Exorcist (1973) and is the fifth installment in The Exorcist series.

During an excavation at the mysterious ruins in Clow Country, Syaoran discovers his childhood friend Princess Sakura appear on the site with wings that disperse into many feathers.

Shin-Ei Animation and Studio Pierrot relaunch Doraemon as a new weekly TV series, replacing the original 1979 cast and staff for a modern retelling of Fujiko F. Fujio's manga about a robotic cat from the future helping the boy Nobita.

Shin-Ei Animation's hour-long Doraemon TV specials, broadcast alongside the 2005 series for holidays and milestones, began airing with the revival's debut.

F-WWOW, the first of the only full-length double-deck jet airliner ever built, flew from Toulouse–Blagnac with a crew of six under chief test pilot Jacques Rosay, who said handling it was "like handling a bicycle".

Grant Achatz's "maximalist modernist" restaurant opened on a Lincoln Park side street and went on to hold three Michelin stars from 2011 to 2024. It is named after the alinea, the paragraph symbol that is also its logo.

Katrina came ashore near Buras-Triumph at 11:10 UTC as a high-end Category 3 hurricane with 125 mph winds. Flooding from failures in the federally built levee system put 80% of New Orleans under water.

Hurricane Katrina shut in about half of US domestic oil production and knocked out refineries and import terminals, so on 2 September 2005 President Bush found a severe energy supply interruption and ordered a sale. DOE offered 30 million barrels and sold 11 million; the first oil left Bryan Mound on 26 September.

Production I.G's Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – The Laughing Man releases direct to video. The single-episode OVA recompiles and expands the "Laughing Man" arc from the first Stand Alone Complex season with new footage, as Public Security Section 9's Togusa revisits a six-year-old unsolved case tied to an elusive hacker.

Gintama: Jump Festa 2005 Special premieres, a Sunrise-animated comedy short pitting Gintoki's Yorozuya against the Shinsengumi in a brutal game of rock-paper-scissors over a prime cherry-blossom viewing spot.

Drift peacefully into Neo Venezia, a city on the planet Aqua (formerly known as Mars). By the 24th century, humans have found a way to colonize the previously uninhabitable planet.

Artland's Mushishi begins broadcast, an episodic supernatural series following the wandering Mushi Master Ginko as he investigates the effects of Mushi, primordial lifeforms that blur the line between the natural and supernatural.

Digging for Istanbul's Marmaray rail tunnel at Yenikapı, workers strike the silted-up remains of the Theodosian Harbor, a Byzantine-era port that would go on to yield 37 shipwrecks and roughly 100,000 artifacts.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a 2005 high fantasy film directed by Andrew Adamson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ann Peacock and the writing team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, based on the 1950 novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first published and second chronological novel in the children's book series The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.

This series picks up a few years after season one. Goro is now older, and has come back to his original home town. As if nothing changed, he starts off right where he left with his old friends and tries to fit back in.

A feature-length Kaleido Star OVA follows star performer Layla Hamilton as she vanishes from rehearsals for a Broadway production of Phoenix to search alone, by bicycle, for whatever she feels is missing in herself.

The second OVA arc of Saint Seiya's Hades storyline begins release, continuing the surviving Bronze and Gold Saints' descent into the underworld to confront Hades himself.

Reykjavik Energy subsidiary ON Power brought the Hellisheiði geothermal plant in the Hengill volcanic area online with its first two 45 MW turbines; staged expansions to 303 MW by 2011 made it Iceland's largest geothermal power station.

Production I.G releases Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG - Individual Eleven, a compilation film recutting the "Individual Eleven" story arc from the second Stand Alone Complex TV season.

MADHOUSE's Hellsing Ultimate OVA series premieres, a bloodier, manga-faithful retelling of Kouta Hirano's Hellsing in which the vampire mercenary Alucard and his British masters battle the Vatican's rival agents and the Nazi-remnant group Millennium.

M.S.C begins the Zenkoku Taikai-hen OVA series, continuing The Prince of Tennis as Seigaku's tennis team advances into the National Tournament to face rival schools old and new.

Kyon, your typical high school student, has long given up his belief in the supernatural.

Akari Mizunashi continues her training to become a Prima Undine (a professional tour guide gondolier) along with her friends Aika and Alice in the peaceful city of Neo Venezia.

Sunrise's Gintama begins airing, an Edo-period comedy following freelancer Gintoki Sakata and his odd-jobs crew navigating a Japan under alien occupation, adapted from Hideaki Sorachi's manga.

The TV adaptation of Ai Yazawa's josei manga Nana begins airing, following two young women who share the name Nana as they chase romance and rock stardom after moving to Tokyo.

Bones' Ouran High School Host Club begins its television broadcast, adapting Bisco Hatori's manga about a scholarship student who joins her elite academy's all-male Host Club to work off a debt after accidentally breaking a priceless vase.

Watanuki Kimihiro can see spirits and other assorted supernatural creatures, which is quite a bothersome ability he strongly dislikes.

Okajima Rokuro is a Japanese businessman in a town full of Japanese businessmen. His normal day consists of social drinking with clients and being kicked around by his bosses.

Syaoran, Sakura, Kurogane, Fai and Mokona's journey through to different worlds continue as they search for Sakura's feathers.

After 56 days of trial and six days of deliberation, a federal jury in Houston convicted Enron's two former chief executives. Kenneth Lay was found guilty on all six counts he faced; Jeffrey Skilling was convicted on conspiracy, securities fraud, false statements and insider trading counts, closing the criminal case over the largest US corporate collapse of its time.

GONZO's Welcome to the N-H-K begins airing, a dark comedy adapting Tatsuhiko Takimoto's novel about recluse Tatsuhiro Satou, convinced a shadowy conspiracy is behind his isolation, and the mysterious Misaki who tries to draw him back into society.

At 397 metres long and able to carry roughly 14,770 TEU, Emma Maersk was the largest container ship in the world when she entered service in 2006. Built by Odense Steel Shipyard, she led Maersk's E-class fleet with one of the largest diesel engines ever installed on a ship.

Production I.G's Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society premieres, a feature-length special set two years after the TV series in which Section 9, now led by Togusa, investigates a hacker known as the Puppeteer.

Okajima Rokuro - now known almost exclusively as 'Rock' - was once a typical, put-upon Japanese businessman.

Madhouse's Death Note begins broadcast, adapting Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's manga about high schooler Light Yagami, who gains the power to kill by writing a name in a supernatural notebook.