16 2003 in the United States

The 140th Anniversary Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation was a national campaign to honor, celebrate, and commemorate January 1, 2003, as the 140th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, by United States President Abraham Lincoln.

Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them! controversy

"Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!" is a slogan on a T-shirt by Florida clothing company David and Goliath which in 2003 became the subject of a campaign by radio-host and men's rights activist Glenn Sacks on the grounds of misandry and the incitement of violence against children. This raised national attention and led to the removal of the shirts from several thousand retail outlets.

The Bush–Blair 2003 Iraq memo or Manning memo is a secret memo of a two-hour meeting between American President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that took place on 31 January 2003 at the White House. The memo purportedly shows at that point, the administrations of Bush and Blair had already decided on the invasion of Iraq two months later. The memo was written by Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning, who participated in the meeting.

Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, Inc., 339 F.3d 1119, is an American legal case dealing with the protection provided an internet service provider under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) United States Code Title 47 section 230(c)(1). It is also known as the Star Trek actress case as the plaintiff, Chase Masterson – whose legal name is Christianne Carafano – is well known for having appeared on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The case demonstrated that the use of an online form with some multiple choice selections does not override the protections against liability for the actions of users or anonymous members of a Web-based service.

The United States-Chile Free Trade Agreement is a free trade agreement between the United States and Chile signed on June 6, 2003. The pact came into force on January 1, 2004. On that date, tariffs on 90% of U.S. exports to Chile and 95% of Chilean exports to the United States were eliminated. The agreement also established that Chile and the U.S. will establish duty-free trade in all products within a maximum of 12 years (2016). In 2009, bilateral trade between the United States and Chile reached US$ 15.4 billion, a 141% increase over bilateral trade levels before the U.S.-Chile FTA took effect. In particular, U.S. exports to Chile in 2009 showed a 248% increase over pre-FTA levels.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) was an internal commission convened by NASA to investigate the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-107 upon atmospheric re-entry on February 1, 2003. The panel determined that the accident was caused by foam insulation breaking off from the external fuel tank, forming debris which damaged the orbiter's wing, and that the problem of "debris shedding" was well known but considered "acceptable" by management. The panel also recommended changes that should be made to increase the safety of future shuttle flights. The CAIB released its final report on August 26, 2003.

Miss Teen USA 2003, the 21st Miss Teen USA pageant, was televised live from Palm Springs Convention Center, Palm Springs, California on 12 August 2003. At the conclusion of the final competition, Miss Oregon Teen USA Tami Farrell was crowned by outgoing queen Vanessa Semrow of Wisconsin.

The Mission Accomplished speech was a televised address by United States President George W. Bush on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003.

Park Forest is an L5 chondrite meteorite that fell on 26 March 2003 in Illinois, United States.

Play for a Billion was a contest, announced by soft drink company Pepsi Cola on April 10, 2003 that ran from May 1, 2003 to September 14, 2003. For the contest, Pepsi printed one billion special codes, which could be redeemed either on the Pepsi website or via postal mail, and of which one million were instant cash winners. Of all the codes redeemed, which Pepsi estimated to be 200 million-300 million, 1000 were chosen in a random draw to appear in a two-hour live gameshow-style television special.

The 2003 ricin letters refers to two ricin-laden letters found on two separate occasions between October and November 2003. One letter was mailed to the White House and intercepted at a processing facility; another was discovered with no address in South Carolina. A February 2004 ricin incident at the Dirksen Senate Office Building was initially connected to the 2003 letters as well.

Operation Shining Express was the June 2003 deployment of an American naval task force, consisting of the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) and the 3rd Battalion 2nd Marines (3/2) to rescue U.S. embassy personnel and American citizens during the Second Liberian Civil War. The deployment was announced on June 12, 2003 and lasted until July 2003.

The United States–Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA), officially the Free Trade Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Singapore, is a preferential trade agreement between Singapore and the United States that was signed on 6 May 2003. It was ratified by the US House of Representatives on 24 July 2003 by a vote of 272–155, and the US Senate ratified the bill on 31 July 2003 by a vote of 66–32. Then U.S. President George W. Bush signed into law the United States–Singapore Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act on 3 September 2003 and it officially came into effect on 1 January 2004.

The Smallpox Vaccination Campaign of 2003 was a vaccination program announced by the White House on 13 December 2002 as preparedness for bioterrorism using smallpox virus. The campaign aimed to provide the smallpox vaccine to those who would respond to an attack, establishing Smallpox Response Teams and using DryVax to mandatorily vaccinate half a million American military personnel, followed by half a million health care worker volunteers by January 2004. The first vaccine was administered to President Bush.

Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003), was a court case in the United States which questioned the constitutionality of the Alaska Sex Offender Registration Act's retroactive requirements. Under the Act, any sex offender must register with the Department of Corrections or local law enforcement within one business day of entering the state. This information is forwarded to the Department of Public Safety, which maintains a public database. Fingerprints, social security number, anticipated change of address, and medical treatment after the offense are kept confidential. The offender's name, aliases, address, photograph, physical description, driver's license number, motor vehicle identification numbers, place of employment, date of birth, crime, date and place of conviction, and length and conditions of sentence are part of the public record, maintained on the Internet.

The 2003 State of the Union Address was given by the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, on Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 9 p.m. EST, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives to the 108th United States Congress. It was Bush's second State of the Union Address and his third speech to a joint session of the United States Congress. Presiding over this joint session was the House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, accompanied by Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States.