Timeline Finland
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The Kalevala, 12,078 verses, is the national epic.
(SFC, 2/3/99, p.A9)
7000BC The Sami people began herding reindeer in northern Europe about this time as the last Ice Age ended. They were later considered to be Europe’s only indigenous people. By 2013 they numbered about 80,000 including 8,000 in Finland, 50,000 in Norway, 20,000 in Sweden and 2,000 in Russia.
(SFC, 8/30/13, p.A2)
1475 The Olavinlinna castle was founded by the governor of Viipuri on the border between Sweden-Finland and Russia.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, p.T4)
1550 Helsinki was founded by the Swedes.
(SFEM, 8/8/99, p.44)
1743 Aug 17, By the Treaty of Abo, Sweden ceded southeast Finland to Russia, ending Sweden's failed war with Russia.
(HN, 8/17/98)
1751 A treaty between Finland and Norway defined a strait-line border along the side of the Halti mountain, depriving the Fins of the crest. In 2016 Norway PM Erna Solberg suggested that her government might cede some 15,000 sq. meters of Halti mountain as a birthday gift to Finland in 2017, making it the highest point in Finland.
(Econ, 8/6/16, p.40)
1806 May 12, J.V. Snellman, Finnish journalist, statesman and nationalist, was born. The day is remembered in Finland as Snellman day.
(SC, internet, 5/12/97)
1809 Finland broke free of Sweden to become a Grand Duchy of Russia. Finland fell into Russian hands after Europe's Napoleonic wars, though it was allowed to develop as an autonomous part of the Czarist empire until 1917.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, p.T4)(AP, 12/6/17)
1809-1917 Finland was an autonomous grand duchy under the Czar of Russia.
(WSJ, 12/17/98, p.A1)
1812-1840 Carl Ludvig Engel, a Prussian architect, redesigned and rebuilt Helsinki as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland-Russia.
(SFEM, 8/8/99, p.44)
1852 In Finland the Lutheran Helsinki Cathedral was completed.
(SSFC, 6/3/12, p.H4)
1854 May 5, English pirate Plumridge robbed along pro-English Finnish coast.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1862 Jul 10, Helene Schjerfbeck (d.1946), Finnish painter, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helene_Schjerfbeck)
1865 Dec 8, Jean Sibelius (d.1957), composer (Valse Triste, Finlandia), was born as Johan Julius Christian in Tavastehus, Finland: “Pay no attention to what critics say. There has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.
(SFC,10/14/97,p.B3)(WUD,1994, p.1323)(SFEC,11/16/97, Z1 p.5)(MC, 12/8/01)
1865 In Finland the Nokia Co. began making wood and paper products. Later it diversified to cellular phones.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(Econ, 12/6/08, p.85)
1867 Jun 4, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, president of Finland, was born.
(HN, 6/4/98)
c1890s In the late 1800s Rosvo-Ronkainen, a notorious Finnish brigand, recruited only men who proved their worth by carrying heavy weight on a challenging track. This practice later developed into the sport of wife carrying.
(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.A1)
1893 Jean Sibelius composed “Karelia."
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B3)
1898 Feb 3, Alvar Aalto (d.1979), Finnish architect, was born.
(HN, 2/3/01)
1900 Urho Kekkonen, later president, was born in a sauna.
(SFCM, 1/14/01, p.6)
1902 Mar 8, The 1st performance of Jean Sibelius' 2nd Symphony.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1903 Dec 2, The play “Kuolema" (Death), a drama by Finnish writer Arvid Järnefelt, was first performed. It included incidental music by Jean Sibelius. The opening number, Valse Triste (Sad Waltz), was later adapted into a separate concert piece.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuolema)
1906 Oct 1, In Finland the Parliament Act came into force. It replaced the old Diet dating back to the 17th century with a 200-seat unicameral Parliament and introduced universal suffrage.
(http://web.eduskunta.fi/Resource.phx/parliament/aboutparliament/presentation/history.htx)
1907 Mar 15-1907 Mar 16, Finland held elections and Finnish women became the first in the world to attain full political rights.
(http://electionresources.org/fi/)
1908 At the Olympic games in England, Russia objected to separate medal totals and flag-flying for athletes from Finland, die to its control over Finland. The Finns marched with no flag.
(WSJ, 4/12/08, p.R2)
1910 Aug 20, Eero Saarinen (d.1961), Finnish-US architect (IBM Building, MIT Chapel), was born in Rantasalmi, Finland.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1915 Dec 8, Jean Sibelius' 5th Symphony in E, premiered.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1917 Dec 6, Finland declared independence from the Russian Empire (National Day).
(SFEM, 8/8/99, p.44)(AP, 12/6/17)
1917 Dec 9, New Finnish Republic demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1917 Dec 18, The Soviet regiment under Stalin and Lenin declared Finland Independent.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1918 Jan 6, Germany acknowledged Finland’s independence.
(HN, 1/6/99)
1918 Jan 27, Communists attempted to seize power in Finland.
(HN, 1/27/99)
1918 Feb 22, Germany claimed the Baltic states, Finland and Ukraine from Russia.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1918 Mar 7, Finland signed an alliance treaty with Germany.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1918 Jun 3, The Finnish Parliament ratified its treaty with Germany.
(HN, 6/3/98)
1918 Gustaf Mannerheim led a Finnish victory over much larger Bolshevik and Finnish Red Guard forces.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1918 Idel-Ural (Volga-Ural), a 1917 union of Finno-Ugric people in the middle of Russia, was crushed by the Bolsheviks. Its foreign minister Sadri Maqsudi Arsal was welcomed in Finland and then Estonia.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.73)
1919 Jun 6, Finland declared war on Bolsheviks.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1919 In Finland the Helsinki Central Station, designed by Eliel Saarinen, was completed.
(SSFC, 6/3/12, p.H4)
1920 Oct 14, In the Dorpart Treaty the Soviet Bolsheviks reaffirmed Finnish independence, gave Finland the ice-free port of Pechenga towards the Arctic Ocean and put the Finnish border 18 miles west of Leningrad. The treaty, signed by Stalin, was precipitated by Gustaf Mannerheim’s victory over much larger Bolshevik and Finnish Red Guard forces in 1918.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1921 The League of Nations granted the Aland Island group to the new Finnish Republic. Aland was populated by native Swedes. Under the accord Aland was given veto power in international treaties signed by Finland.
(WSJ, 12/5/97, p.A1)
1923 Aug 22, Paavo Nurmi of Finland ran a world record mile (4:10.4).
(MC, 8/22/02)
1924 The US dominated the summer Olympics in Paris and Finland ranked a distant 2nd.
(Ind, 2/16/02, 6A)
1926 Apr 3, 1st performance of Jean Sibelius' 7th Symphony in C.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1926 May 24, Paavo Nurmi ran world record 3000 meters in 8:25.4.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1928 Finland signed the Berne Convention on Copyright (1886).
(Econ, 2/18/12, ILp.21)
1930-1955 Finland engaged in a forced sterilization program that sterilized some 1,460 people over this period.
(SFC, 8/28/97, p.A12)
1935 Feb 4, Martti Talvela, operatic basso, was born in Hiitola, Karelia, Finland.
(MC, 2/4/02)
1939 Aug 23, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav M. Molotov signed a Treaty of Non-Aggression, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland. Secret protocols, made public years later, were added that assigned Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia to be within the Soviet sphere of influence. Poland was partitioned along the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. Germany retained Lithuania enlarged by the inclusion of Vilnius. Just days after the signing, Germany invaded Poland, and by the end of September, both powers had claimed sections of Poland.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A16)(AP, 8/23/97) (HNPD, 8/22/98)(HN, 8/23/98)
1939 Oct 5, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov invited the Finnish Foreign Minister, Elias Erkko, to come to Moscow for political discussions. The Finns delayed the meeting until Oct 12. Field Marshall Gustaf Mannerheim prepared Finland for war.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Oct 9, Full scale mobilization for war was called.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Oct 12-Nov 8, Finnish special envoy, Juho Paasikivi, began negotiations in Moscow. The Finns refused to allow the establishment of Soviet military bases.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Nov 10-Mar 13,1940, Finland began to wage a defensive war against the Soviet Union for 104 days.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Nov 26, Soviets charged Finland with an artillery attack on border leading to a 105-day Winter War. Soviet Foreign Minister V.M. Molotov accused Finnish troops of firing at the Russians across the 800-mile (1,300km) border near the southeastern village of Mainila.
(AP, 11/26/02)(AP, 11/30/09)
1939 Nov 28, USSR scraped its non-aggression pact with Finland.
(HN, 11/28/98)
1939 Nov 29, Soviet planes bombed an airfield at Helsinki, Finland.
(HN, 11/29/98)
1939 Nov 30, The Russo-Finnish war began when Stalin attacked Finland with 4 armies, 540,000 men, 2485 tanks, and 2000 guns. Finnish troops were led by Field Marshall Gustaf Mannerheim. Over the next two weeks, a greatly outnumbered Finnish army resisted the invasion of nearly fifty Red Army divisions--over one million men. The Finnish used forest combat to inflict heavy damage on the Russian invaders. The British and French came to the Finnish defense in mid-December but by March, the "Peace of Moscow" treaty was signed, and Finland ceded 16,000-square miles of land to the Soviet Union, including the city of Vyborg and the Karelian Isthmus.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)(AP, 11/30/99)(MC, 12/30/01)
1939 Dec 6, Britain agreed to send arms to Finland.
(HN, 12/6/98)
1939 Dec 9, A Russian air raid was made on Helsinki.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1939 Dec 25, Finnish troops entered Soviet territory.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1940 Jan 12, Soviet bombers raided cities in Finland.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1940 Mar 2, Soviet armies conquered Tuppura Island, Finland.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1940 Mar 12, Finland surrendered to Russia. Finland and the Soviet Union concluded an armistice during World War II. Fighting between the two countries flared again the following year.
(HN, 3/12/98)(AP, 3/12/98)
1940 Mar 13, The 105-day war between Russia and Finland ended with the signing of a treaty in Moscow. Finland capitulated conditionally to Soviet terms, but maintains its independence. Some 27,000 Finnish soldiers were killed and 43,000 wounded in a population of 3.7 million. The Soviet Union put its losses at 217,500 dead or wounded.
(HN, 3/13/01)(AP, 11/30/09)
1941 Jun 22, Finland invaded Karelia. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in summer 1941, Finland joined in and began re-taking the lost territory.
(www.publiscan.fi/cu13e-9.htm)
1941 Jun 25, Finland declared war on the Soviet Union.
(HN, 6/25/98)
1941 Jun 26, Finland entered WW II against Russia.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1941-1943 In 2019 an independent 248-page investigative report in English, commissioned by the Finnish government, was released. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served within the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them aged between 17 and 20 years old. The report concluded that the country's volunteer battalion, which served with Nazi Germany's Waffen-SS, took part in atrocities during World War II, including participating in the mass murder of Jews.
(AP, 2/10/19)
1943 Feb 3, Finland began talks with the Soviet Union.
(HN, 2/3/99)
1944 Mar 21, Finland rejected a Soviet armistice.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1944 May 28, Katri Vala (42), Finnish poet, died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1944 Sep, Finland concluded a truce with Moscow, with the country finding itself beaten and impoverished - but free.
(AP, 12/6/17)
1944 Sep, Finland began fighting Nazi Germany in the Lapland War and continued to April 1945.
(Econ, 3/30/13, p.54)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapland_War)
1944 Retreating German troops burned Rovaniemi to cinders. The town was redesigned by Alvar Aalto, Finland's patron saint of modern design.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.T8)
1945 Mar 3, Finland declared war on the Axis.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1945 Jul 7, Matti Salminen, operatic basso (King Philip-Don Carlos), was born in Turku, Finland.
(MC, 7/7/02)
c1945 Karelia was ceded to the Soviet Union as part of the peace terms following the 2 Finnish-Soviet wars from 1939-1944.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B4)
1946 Jan 28, Helene Schjerfbeck (b.1862), Finnish painter, died. She did a 5 painting series of self-portraits that represented herself at various ages.
(Econ, 11/24/07, p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helene_Schjerfbeck)
1948 Neste Corporation, an oil refining and marketing company, was founded in Espoo, Finland, as the state petrol company. By 2017 it had operations in 14 countries.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neste)
1948 The Soviet Union imposed a “Friendship Treaty" that limited Finnish sovereignty. It was abandoned in 1992.
(Econ, 7/9/16, p.43)
1949 Aug-Sep, In Finland a wave of Communist strikes were defeated by firm government action and the loyalty of non-Communist workers.
(EWH, 1968, p.1203)
1951 Armi Ratia, Finnish designer, expanded her husband's printing business into a fashionable "total work of art" business (Gesamtkunstwerk) that became "Marimekko."
(WSJ, 1/6/04, p.D10)
1952 Aug 3, The 15th Olympic Games concluded in Helsinki. US competitors won 40 gold medals.
(SFC, 8/2/02, p.E4)(SC, 8/3/02)
1952 Czech runner Emil Zatopek (1922-2000) won three gold medals at the Olympic games in Helsinki.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Z%C3%A1topek)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.84)
1952 Yvette Williams (1930-2019) of New Zealand won the long jump gold medal at the Helsinki Olympics with a jump of 6.24m, an Olympic record and only 1 cm short of the world record then held by Dutch athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen. She set a new world mark of 6.29m in the New Zealand city of Gisborne in February, 1954.
(AP, 4/14/19)
1956 Finland’s conservative party rule ended.
(AP, 2/6/12)
1957 Sep 20, Jean Julius Christian Sibelius (b.1865), Finnish composer (Finlandia), died. He had published no music for the last three decades of his life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Sibelius)(Econ, 2/18/12, ILp.20)
1958 Jun 30, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor (Giro), was born in Helsinki, Finland.
(MC, 6/30/02)
1960 Aug 7, Vaino Hannikainen (60), Finnish composer, died.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1957 Sep 20, Jean Julius Christian Sibelius (b.1865), Finnish composer (Finlandia), died.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B3)(WUD, 1994, p.1323)(AP, 9/20/07)
1960 In Finland 3 teenage camping companions were found stabbed to death inside a tent by Lake Bodom. A 4th survived with multiple stab wounds. In 2005 Nils Gustafsson (63), the survivor, was charged with murdering his 3 companions.
(AP, 8/16/05)
1961 May 29, Uuno Kalervo Klami (60), composer, died.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1961 Sep 1, Eero Saarinen (51), Finnish-US architect (Dulles Airport), died.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1964-1966 Johannes Virolainen (d.2000 at 86) served as prime minister.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B4)
1965 Martti Ahtisaari, a primary school teacher, joined the Foreign Ministry.
(SFC, 6/4/99, p.A10)
1967 Emil Petaja (d.2000 at 85), American science fiction writer, authored “Lord of the Green Planet." His 13 novels included a series based on the Kalevala, a Finnish epic poem. These included “Saga of Lost Earth" and “Tramontane."
(SFC, 8/19/00, p.A19)
1972 May 18, Eero Aukusti Sipila (53), Finnish composer, died.
(http://meteli.net/eerosipila)
1972 Finland introduced comprehensive schools, a merger of specialist academic and vocational institutions, in the north and into the rest of the country over the next 4 years. In 2006 Finland ranked at the top in OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.66)
1973 Jul 3, The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) opened in Helsinki with 35 states sending representatives.
(http://tinyurl.com/4wq42s)
1973 Oct 2, Paavo "Flying Finn" Nurmi (b.1897), Finnish runner, died. He won a total of 9 Olympic gold medals and 3 silver medals between 1920 and 1928.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paavo_Nurmi)
1974 In Finland the home of composer Jean Julius Christian Sibelius, near Lake Tuusula, opened as a museum.
(Econ, 2/18/12, ILp.20)
1975 Jul 30, Representatives of 35 countries convened in Finland for a conference on security and human rights that resulted in the Helsinki accords.
(AP, 7/30/00)
1975 Aug 1, A 35-nation summit in Helsinki, Finland, concluded with the signing the Helsinki Accords, dealing with European security, human rights and East-West contacts. The Helsinki Final Act, signed by 35 states, was an attempt to improve the relations between the Communist bloc and the West. The Soviet Union reluctantly signed as a token of East -West détente.
(AP, 8/1/00)(www.hri.org/docs/Helsinki75.html)(Econ, 4/11/20, p.66)
1975 Joonas Kokkonen (1921-1996), Finnish composer, had his opera "The Last Temptations" first performed by the Finnish National Opera. He also composed 4 symphonies and numerous chamber and choral pieces.
(http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=26983)(SFC, 10/3/96, p.C6)
1976 May 11, Alvar Aalto (b.1898), Finnish architect, died. A show in 1998 featured his work and an accompanying book was published that covered his Nordic classicism of the 1920s to the completion of his Finlandia Hall in Helsinki in 1971.
(WSJ, 7/28/00, p.W11C)(www.imdb.com/name/nm2043227/bio)
1987 Jul 28, Klaus Schelkle (20) was killed and his girlfriend Bettina Taxis (22) severely injured in a brutal attack while they were sleeping on the outer deck of the Viking Sally, en route from Stockholm in Sweden to the Finnish port of Turku. Viking Sally was later sold to an Estonian shipping company and sailed under the name of M/S Estonia.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Viking_Sally_murder)(AP, 6/30/21)
1987 In Finland the conservative party broke 21 years of being in the opposition when it joined the Social Democrats in government.
(AP, 2/6/12)
1989 Oct 25, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev began a three-day visit to Finland.
(AP, 10/25/99)
1989 Nov 1, A Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) and Finnair ban on smoking took effect for all Nordic flights.
(http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/13/suppl_1/i20)
1989 Finland’s YLE radio launched a five-minute weekly news program in Latin to a small group of committed listeners around the globe. It inspired Latin students, academics and language lovers around the globe, from China and Vietnam all the way to Belgium and the United States. In 2017 YLE leadership agreed to extend it until at least its 30th anniversary in 2019.
(AP, 12/29/17)
1989 The Finnish ministry of Public health suggested a sex vacation to thwart stress.
(www.sexpo.fi/briefhistory.htm)
1991 Aug 25, Linus Torvalds (b.1969), Finnish software engineer, asked other software developers to comment on a computer operating system he had written, which became known as Linux.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds)(Econ, 8/27/16, p.46)
1991 In Finland government action to rescue banks began with assistance to Skopbank.
(http://tinyurl.com/26dosm)(Econ, 3/22/08, p.88)
1992 Mar 5, In Copenhagen the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden, in the presence of the representative from the European Commission, opened a 2-day meeting and decided to establish a Council of the Baltic Sea States to serve as a forum for guidance and overall coordination among the participating states. Iceland joined the CBSS in 1995
(Econ, 6/7/08, p.63)(www.bmwi.de/English/Navigation/European-policy/baltic-market.html)
1992 Mar 18, Finland formally applies to join the European Communities.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)
1992 Mar, In Finland the US signed the Open Skies Treaty with 26 other nations to promote openness by allowing countries to gather information about each other through unarmed observation flights.
(SFC, 8/5/97, p.A2)
1992 Apr, A state guarantee fund was set up in Finland. When this was restructured in February 1993, parliament resolved that the government would guarantee payments by Finnish banks. At its peak, Finland’s financial assistance to its banks was equivalent to 10% of GDP, offset by collection of receivables and proceeds from the sale of assets. The banks continued to produce operating losses until 1996.
(http://tinyurl.com/26dosm)
1992 The Wife Carrying contest was initiated to revive a 200 year old tradition from when Ronkainen the Robber tested aspiring members of his gang by making them carry huge sacks on their backs through an obstacle course. Cash prizes and the wife’s weight in beer was awarded to the winners.
(SFEC, 7/5/98, p.A2)
1994 Mar 1, Martti Ahtisaari was inaugurated as President of Finland.
(SFC, 6/4/99, p.A10)(SC, 3/1/02)
1994 Finland’s parliament banned the import and export of spent nuclear fuel. It later planned to isolate its own stockpile in the Onkalo repository on the island of Olkiluoto.
(Econ, 4/15/17, p.51, 52)
1995 Jan 1, Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the European Union. Sweden held their elections to the parliament later that year on 17 September. Austria held its elections on 13 October, 1996 and Finland on 20 October, 1996.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_European_Union)(Econ, 5/1/04, p.26)
1995 Mar 19, Finnish voters throw out the center-right coalition government and give the opposition Social Democratic Party its biggest election victory since World War II.
(AP, 3/19/02)
1995 In Finland the eurosceptic, nationalist and anti-immigration Finns Party was co-founded by Timo Soini. He took over as its leader in 1997, a position he held for 20 years. In the 2011 elections it won 19 percent of the vote, but refused at the time to enter the government, which it deemed too pro-European.
(AP, 6/13/17)
1995 Finnish hunting regulations began protecting wolverines. The increasing wolverine population soon began impacting the reindeer population.
(Econ, 12/24/16, p.26)
1996 Mar, Motorcycle gang Bandido leader Jarkko Kokko was shot dead on a central Helsinki street.
(SFEC, 8/11/96, p.A13)
1996 May, The Finnish food company Raisio Group has invented a new product that blocks the body’s absorption of cholesterol. The new “pharmafood" is called benecol and based on a plant extract known as beta sitostanol, a plant sterol extracted from Nordic pine trees.
(WSJ, 5/31/96, p.B3C)
1996 Jun, Finland’s latest unemployment rate was 16.7%.
(SFC, 6/9/96, Par, p.9)
1996 Sep 19, The Arctic Council was founded to promote joint scientific research and to study pollution, conservation and mapping. The Ottawa Declaration named eight members of the Arctic Council: Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the United States, Sweden and Finland. The first step towards the formation of the Council occurred in 1991 when eight Arctic countries signed the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS).
(Econ, 3/24/12, p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Council)
1997 Mar 20, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin met in Helsinki for talks on arms control and NATO expansion. They agreed to negotiate a new arms accord to reduce strategic warheads, and to give Russia a more formal role in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations.
(WSJ, 3/21/97, p.A1)(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A1)(AP, 3/20/98)
1997 Mar 21, President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin wrapped up their summit in Helsinki, Finland, still deadlocked over NATO expansion, but able to agree on slashing nuclear weapons arsenals.
(AP, 3/21/02)
1998 May, The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by Steven Holl, opened in Helsinki. The name was taken after the Greek word for intersection, the x shape of the letter chi, and meant it to stand for a synthesis of building and landscape.
(WSJ, 5/14/98, p.A20)
1998 Jul 4, In the annual Wife Carrying World Championships, 2 Estonian couples won top honors in the 278 yard course in Sonkajarvi.
(SFEC, 7/5/98, p.A2)
1998 Jun, The Tampere Convention was negotiated in Finland to end excessive import duties and minimize barriers across national borders for telecommunications under emergency situations.
(SFC, 11/18/98, p.C5)
1998 Dec, Martii Ahtisaari served as president.
(WSJ, 12/17/98, p.A10)
1999 Jan 1, The Maastricht Treaty specified that a monetary union will be established by this date, and laid down several criteria that EU nations must fulfill in order to join. Some of the criteria included: maximum budget deficits of 3% of GDP, a cap on government debt of 60% of GDP. The European economic and monetary union (EMU) was scheduled to start with a new "Euro" currency. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain made the transition. Public use was set for Jan 1, 2002.
(WSJ, 9/25/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 12/5/95, p.A-14)(SFC, 11/16/96, p.A1)(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A8)
1999 Feb 12, In Finland the parliament voted 171 to 4 to reduce the president's influence on foreign affairs and government formation.
(SFC, 2/13/99, p.A5)
1999 Mar 21, In Finland the ruling social Democrats under Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen lost 12 seats but kept 51 in the 200-member Eduskunta. The Center Party gained 4 seats with voter frustration over unemployment.
(SFC, 3/22/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/22/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 27, Maria Butyrskaya of Russia won the World Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki, Finland; defending champion Michelle Kwan of the United States finished second.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1999 May 17, Pres. Martti Ahtisaari, appointed as the new Balkans mediator, consulted with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
(SFC, 5/18/99, p.A8)
1999 Aug 7, In Finland the village of Kutemajarvi planned a sex fair for people over age 45 to commemorate the UN designation of 1999 as the Int'l. Year of Older Persons.
(SFC, 1/16/99, p.A12)
1999 Dec 9, European leaders gathered in Helsinki for an EU summit. On the agenda was the creation of a defense force, expansion to 28 members and clearing the path for Turkey to join.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.D4)
1999 The Finnish film "Juha" by Aki Kaurismaki was a silent black and white work based on a classic 1911 novel. It starred Sakari Kuosmanen and Kati Outinen.
(SFC, 4/22/99, p.E4)
1999 Finland’s government began issuing electronic ID cards.
(Econ, 2/9/13, p.60)
1999 Finland’s government updated some laws on fines for traffic violations and based fines on net income rather than gross income.
(WSJ, 1/02/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 6, In Finland Tarja Halonen was elected as the 1st woman Prime Minister over Esko Aho 51.5-48.4%.
(SFC, 2/7/00, p.A14)
2000 Mar 1, Tarja Halonen assumed office as Finland’s first female president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarja_Halonen)
2000 Mar, Annikki Luukela, a light artist, designed and installed 45 moving lamps in the Washington DC Metro station under a commission by Helsinki Mayor Eva-Riita Siitonen.
(SFEC, 4/2/00, p.T3)
2000 Martti Ahtisaari founded the Helsinki-based Crisis Management Initiative, a non-governmental conflict resolution organization.
(Econ, 7/2/11, p.50)
2001 Jun 27, Tove Jansson (b.1914), writer and creator of the Moomin family of trolls, died in Finland. She began her 1st Moomin book in 1939. The Swedish-speaking Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966. In 2014 Tuula Karjalainen’s “Tove Jansson: Work and Love" became available in English.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tove_Jansson)
2001 Aug 26, The 6th Annual Air Guitar World Championship was held in Oulu.
(WSJ, 8/29/01, p.A1)
2002 Oct 11, In Vantaa, Finland, a blast in the Myyrmanni shopping mall of suburban Helsinki killed 7 people, including chemistry student Petri Gerdt (19), the suspected bomber. 80 others were injured.
(AP, 10/12/02)(SSFC, 10/12/02, p.A20)(SFC, 10/16/02, p.A14)
2003 Apr 14, In Finland 3 political parties agreed to form a center-left government led by Anneli Jaatteenmaki.
(AP, 4/14/03)
2003 Apr 15, Finnish lawmakers appointed Anneli Jaatteenmaki the country's first female prime minister, making Finland the only state in Europe with women as president and premier.
(AP, 4/15/03)
2003 Jun 18, In Finland PM Anneli Jaatteenki resigned amid accusations that she lied about sensitive political information during her election campaign.
(SFC, 6/19/03, p.A14)
2003 Jun 24, Finland's parliament elected Matti Vanhanen as PM.
(SFC, 6/25/03, p.A3)
2003 Jul 6, The annual Wife Carrying World Championship took place in Sonkajarvi, Finland.
(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.A1)
2003 Finland commissioned a new nuclear reactor. It was the 1st order in Western Europe in 13 years.
(WSJ, 9/22/05, p.B6)
2004 Jan 16, Kalevi Sorsa (73), Finland's longest serving prime minister, died. Sorsa headed four coalition governments from 1972 to 1987 and led the Social Democrats, Finland's largest party, for 12 years.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Feb 17, Finnish technology group Setec said it won the first order for passports with new biometric technology required by international aviation authorities and the U.S. government.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 28, In Finland hundreds of trucks prepared to roll onto frozen roads at midnight, stocked with beer and hard cider for a population that eagerly awaits a historic government measure that will cut alcohol prices by nearly 40 percent.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Mar 19, In southern Finland a bus crashed into a truck in icy conditions, killing 24 people and injuring 15.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 22, The Finnish Foreign Ministry said two Finnish businessmen were shot and killed in Baghdad.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2004 Apr 15, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, became the 1st recipient of Finland’s $1.2 million Millennium Technology Prize.
(Econ, 5/14/05, p.84)(www.infoworld.com/article/04/04/16/HNbernerslee_1.html)
2004 Nov 2, More than 3,000 workers walked out of 22 UPM-Kymmene forest industry plants throughout Finland, in a 24-hour strike to protest the timber and paper products company's planned layoffs and closures.
(AP, 11/2/04)
2005 Jan 1, Finland was forecast for 3% annual GDP growth with a population at 5.3 million and GDP per head at $37,740.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.88)
2005 Apr 16, A Finnish mediator said Aceh rebels and Indonesian government delegates have made a "breakthrough" at peace talks on the tsunami-ravaged province, and will continue negotiations in Finland May 26-31.
(AP, 4/16/05)
2005 May 20, The Finnish paper industry, which accounts for 15% of world production, remained at a standstill after labor talks between unions and employers ended without resolution.
(AP, 5/20/05)
2005 Jul 16, In Finland Indonesia's government and Aceh rebels reached a tentative peace deal to end a 29-year insurgency in the tsunami-devastated province. They agreed to sign a peace accord on Aug 15 in exchange for more autonomy.
(AP, 7/17/05)(WSJ, 7/18/05, p.A1)
2005 Aug 6-2005 Aug 14, Helsinki, Finland, hosted the 10th IAAF World Championships. The International Amateur Athletic Federation was founded in 1912 by 17 national athletic federations who saw the need for a governing authority, for an athletic program, for standardized technical equipment and world records.
(www.helsinki2005.fi/index.php?&Lang=eng)
2005 Nov 16, Nokia Corp. said it is paying $430 million to acquire Intellisync Corp., a provider of wireless e-mail service for cellular carriers, adding to the mobile phone maker's growing arsenal of products to compete with BlackBerry.
(AP, 11/16/05)
2005 Dec 2, A Finnish man was jailed for 11 years for sexually abusing dozens of boys during trips to Thailand in what the court called the biggest pedophile case in Finland's history. Jouko Jaatinen (43) was detained in April on suspicion of molesting at least 445 Thai boys aged 13 or younger over the last 15 years and creating massive amounts of pornography.
(AP, 12/02/05)
2005 In Olkiluoto, Finland, construction began on a 1,630-megawatt reactor, the first generation 3 European Pressurized Water Reactor, a joint venture between France's nuclear plant builder Areva SA and Germany's Siemens AG. Completion was expected in 2009. Soaring costs and delays pushed the opening date to 2018.
(www.hightechfinland.com/2006/energy/energy/en_GB/tvo/)(Econ, 10/24/15, p.64)
2006 Jan 15, Finnish President Tarja Halonen won the first round of the country's presidential election, but failed to obtain an absolute majority and will be forced into a runoff.
(AP, 1/15/06)
2006 Jan 29, Finland's first female president said she was confident of re-election in a runoff vote. Polls suggested a close race after a steady surge in support for her conservative challenger. Pres. Tarja Halonen clinched a narrow re-election victory over a rival with a pro-alliance agenda. She won a new six-year term with 51.8 percent of the vote.
(AP, 1/29/06)(AFP, 1/30/06)
2006 Feb 14, Sanyo and Nokia announced they will set up a joint venture to make advanced cell phones, underlining the ambitions of the Japanese and Finnish manufacturers to grow globally in the competitive mobile market.
(AP, 2/14/06)
2006 Mar 25, It was reported that Finnish 15-year-olds have the highest level of mathematical skills, scientific knowledge and reading literacy of any rich industrialized country.
(Econ, 3/25/06, p.58)
2006 May 20, Lordi, a Finnish metal band with monster masks and apocalyptic lyrics, won the Eurovision contest in Greece.
(AP, 5/21/06)
2006 Jun 1, Jorma Ollila stepped down as chief of Finland’s Nokia Corp. He was succeeded by Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. The new Nokia Nseries included the N73 camera-phone; the N91 phone, which doubled as an iPod-style music player; the N92, a mobile TV; and the N93, a mobile video camera.
(Econ, 5/27/06, p.64)
2006 Jul 1, Finland began its 6-month rotating presidency of the EU.
(www.government.fi/eu/suomi-ja-eu/2006/en.jsp)
2006 Sep 9, In Finland leaders and top officials from 38 Asian and European nations gathered in Helsinki for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). The agenda included security issues, trade and global warming.
(AFP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Helsinki, Finland, European and Asian leaders representing nearly half the world's population promised to work to reduce global warming, to get world trade talks back on track and to keep up the battle against terrorism. They pledged to set new carbon dioxide emissions targets that go beyond those now set for 2012 under the UN's Kyoto Protocol.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Oct 20, In Lahti, Finland, 25 EU leaders held a one-day summit on energy. Russian President Vladimir Putin defended his government's tough stance on Georgia and dodged EU leaders' demands that he commit to a legally binding energy charter that would guarantee better access to Russia's oil and gas fields.
(AP, 10/20/06)
2006 Oct 25, In Finland the US and the EU ended a 2-day meeting on cleaner energy. They agreed on tighter cooperation on renewable energy and other environmental policies despite splits over the UN’s Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
(WSJ, 10/26/06, p.A6)
2006 Nov 6, Transparency International, a watchdog group, reported that nearly three-quarters of 163 countries ranked in a new survey suffer from a perception of serious corruption, while in nearly half it is seen as rampant. Finland, Iceland and New Zealand ranked as the least corrupt, while Haiti, Guinea and Myanmar ranked as most corrupt.
(AP, 11/6/06)(Econ, 11/11/06, p.69)
2006 Dec 4, The Estlink cable connected power grids of the Baltic States with Finland. The cost of Estlink, which measures 100 kilometers (60 miles), was around 110 million euros (132 million dollars). It was built by Swiss-Swedish group ABB.
(AP, 12/4/06)
2006 Dec 8, In Finland officials said alcohol is now the leading killer of Finnish adults, with consumption reaching an all-time high last year.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2007 Jan 8, In Finland 2 newspaper editors were fined for publishing a letter that said violence against Jews was justified and that the Holocaust was acceptable.
(AP, 1/9/07)
2007 Feb 15, Nokia, the world's leading maker of mobile phones, said it would shed some 700 jobs, with Finland taking the brunt of the cuts.
(AFP, 2/15/07)
2007 Feb, In Finland "The Prime Minister's Bride," a book by Susan Kuronen (36), a twice-divorced mother of three and the former girlfriend of PM Matti Vanhanen, was released as parliamentary campaigning began. It immediately hit the country's nonfiction best seller list.
(AP, 3/15/07)
2007 Mar 18, Finns voted in a parliamentary election in a tight race between PM Matti Vanhanen's Center Party, its left-leaning coalition partner and the Conservative opposition. The ruling centrist party of PM Matti Vanhanen retained power. The Center Party won 23.1% of the vote while the Conservatives had 22.3% and the Social Democrats 21.4%, according to provisional results.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 May 12, In Finland Bosnia-Herzegovina opened this year's Eurovision Song Contest. Marija Serifovic from Serbia won the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest at the Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, early Sunday May 13, 2007 with a song entitled 'Prayer.'
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 23, A bomb in northern Afghanistan killed a Finnish soldier and an Afghan civilian, while a suicide attacker in Kabul killed two people, including a policeman. Two operations in southern Afghanistan killed 18 suspected militants, including seven "foreigners," while six people died when a stash of ammunition exploded in the east.
(AP, 5/23/07)(AP, 5/24/07)
2007 Jun 2, Iran detained 3 Finns for allegedly straying into its territorial waters during a fishing trip in the Persian Gulf. In June 6 Iran agreed to release them.
(AP, 6/6/07)
2007 Aug 31, In Finland representatives of feuding Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq began a 2-day meeting at a seminar behind closed doors to discuss ways of ending the bloodshed.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2007 Sep 26, Transparency International's 2007 index ranked Myanmar and Somalia as the most corrupt nations. Both received the lowest score of 1.4 out of 10. Denmark, Finland and New Zealand were ranked the least corrupt, each scoring 9.4.
(AP, 9/26/07)
2007 Oct 1, Nokia Corp. said it is buying US navigation-software maker Navteq Corp. for around $8.1 billion as the world's largest mobile phone maker continues to expand services and content.
(AP, 10/1/07)
2007 Oct 5, Finland’s justice ministry said PM Matti Vanhanen is suing his ex-girlfriend for revealing details of their relationship in a tell-all book published earlier this year.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Nov 7, In southern Finland 8 people were killed and 11 wounded after Pekka-Eric Auvinen (18) opened fire at Jokela High School in Tuusula. He then shot himself in the head and died hours later in a hospital.
(AP, 11/7/07)(AP, 11/8/07)
2007 Nov 8, Nordic countries again dominated the World Economic Forum's ranking of gender-equal countries. New Zealand squeezed into the top five and the US fell to 31st place. Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland retained the top four spots in the 2007 Gender Gap Index released by the Swiss-based think tank.
(Reuters, 11/8/07)
2007 Nov 9, Finland said it will raise the minimum age for buying guns from 15 to 18 in the wake of the Nov 7 rampage by a teenage student.
(SFC, 11/10/07, p.A3)
2008 Jan 15, Finland's Nokia, the top global mobile phone manufacturer, said that it planned to close a factory in Germany by mid-year which employs 2,300 workers.
(AFP, 1/15/08)
2008 Feb 1, Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient's upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen.
(Reuters, 2/1/08)
2008 Apr 8, Chilean police said Marko Kulju (26), a Finnish tourist who chipped an earlobe off an ancient Moai on Easter Island, is being allowed to go home after paying a US$17,000 (euro10,830) fine and agreeing not to return for three years.
(AP, 4/9/08)
2008 Apr 19, In southern Spain a crash of a bus filled with Finnish tourists left nine people dead near the resort town of Benalmadena. Police arrested the driver of the other vehicle, who was not seriously injured, after he failed a blood alcohol test.
(AP, 4/20/08)
2008 Jun 15, In northern Finland an 88-year-old man killed his two disabled adult daughters and shot his bedridden wife before turning the gun on himself.
(AP, 6/16/08)
2008 Sep 1, Some three weeks before the Slovenian parliamentary elections, allegations were made in Finnish TV in a documentary broadcast by the Finnish national broadcasting company YLE that Slovenia’s PM Jansa had received bribes from the Finnish defense company Patria (73.2% of which is the property of the Finnish government) in the so-called Patria case. Jansa rejected all accusations as a media conspiracy concocted by left-wing Slovenian journalists, and asked YLE to provide evidence or to retract the story. Jansa's naming of individual journalists, including some of those behind the 2007 Petition Against Political Pressure on Slovenian Journalists, and the perceived use of diplomatic channels in an attempt to coerce the Finnish government into interfering with YLE editorial policy, drew criticism from media freedom organizations such as the International Press Institute.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janez_Jan%C5%A1a)
2008 Sep 23, In western Finland Matti Juhani Saari (22), whose violent YouTube postings made police bring him in for questioning, opened fire at his trade school, killing 8 women and 2 men before shooting himself.
(AP, 9/23/08)(AP, 9/24/08)
2008 Oct 10, Finland's ex-president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to build a lasting peace from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Middle East. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it honored Ahtisaari for important efforts over more than three decades to resolve international conflicts.
(AP, 10/10/08)
2008 Oct 21, Top US and Russian military officers held an unannounced meeting in Helsinki in an effort to maintain dialogue after Moscow's crushing defeat of American ally Georgia.
(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2008 Nov 20, Finland's Finance Ministry said four Nordic countries will lend Iceland $2.5 billion (euro1.98 billion) to help the country recover from its economic meltdown.
(AP, 11/20/08)
2009 Mar 4, The Finnish Parliament approved controversial legislation that allows employers to track workers' e-mails.
(AP, 3/4/09)
2009 Jul, Slovenian prosecutors charged a Finnish journalist who had quoted unnamed sources alleging that former PM Janez Jansa (2004-2008) had taken bribes.
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.62)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janez_Jan%C5%A1a)
2009 Sep 8, Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom SA said they intend to combine their British mobile phone units, shaking up the country's intensely competitive market and forming the country's biggest mobile operator. Analysts said Nokia Siemens Networks, the key equipment vendor to British operations of Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, had most to lose in the merger.
(AP, 9/8/09)(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Oct 30, The 16-deck Oasis of the Seas, the world's largest cruise liner, began its maiden voyage to Florida, gliding out from a shipyard in Finland with an amphitheater, basketball courts and an ice rink on board. The ship cost euro1 billion ($1.5 billion) and took two and a half years to build at the STX Finland Oy shipyard in Turku.
(AP, 10/30/09)
2009 Nov 3, Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture between Finland's Nokia Corp. and Siemens AG of Germany, said it will lay off up to 5,700 workers globally as part of a move to cut annual costs by euro500 million ($740 million).
(AP, 11/3/09)
2009 Nov 5, Finland and Sweden approved a Baltic Sea pipeline project that would ship Russian natural gas to Germany, clearing two key obstacles for construction to begin next year.
(AP, 11/5/09)
2009 Dec 31, In Finland Ibrahim Shkupolli (43) shot himself at his home in Espoo after going on a rampage that killed his ex-girlfriend, then four other people at a local shopping mall where she also worked.
(AP, 12/31/09)
2010 Jan 21, Finland’s Nokia Corp. said it will offer free navigation services globally for users of its smart phones, in a drive to counter a similar move by Google Inc.
(AP, 1/21/10)
2010 Feb 15, Nokia, the world's biggest maker of mobile handsets, said it would merge its Linux Maemo software platform, used in its flagship N900 phone, with Intel's Moblin, which is also based on Linux open-sourced software, to create a new platform, MeeGo. The software deal was set to boost Intel's chances of getting its chips into the cellphones of the Finnish company, which controls around 40% of the global phone market.
(Reuters, 2/15/10)
2010 Mar 26, In Finland Juha Turunen, a corporate lawyer, was convicted of kidnapping heiress Minna Nurminen (26) and holding her captive for two weeks in 2009 until her family paid a multimillion euro (dollar) ransom. He had admitted during the trial that he had kidnapped Nurminen and held her captive at an apartment in Turku, western Finland. She was released unharmed and police recovered the ransom money.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 26, In Finland Juha Turunen, a corporate lawyer, was convicted of kidnapping heiress Minna Nurminen (26) and holding her captive for two weeks in 2009 until her family paid a multimillion euro (dollar) ransom. He had admitted during the trial that he had kidnapped Nurminen and held her captive at an apartment in Turku, western Finland. She was released unharmed and police recovered the ransom money.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Jun 9, The Technology Academy of Finland awarded Michael Graetzel of Switzerland, a German-born chemist, the international Millennium Technology Prize for inventing low-cost solar cells used in renewable energy. The prize included euro800,000 ($960,000).
(AP, 6/9/10)
2010 Jun 11, A Finnish court sentenced former Rwandan pastor, Francois Bazaramba, to life imprisonment for committing genocide against the Tutsi minority in his home country in 1994.
(AP, 6/11/10)
2010 Jun 18, Finnish PM Matti Vanhanen resigned to allow the ruling Center Party's new leader, Mari Kiviniemi (41) to succeed him as the head of the country's coalition government.
(AP, 6/18/10)(SFC, 6/19/10, p.A2)
2010 Jul 13, Divers found bottles of champagne in a wreck near the Aland Islands between Finland and Sweden. 5 bottles of dark, foamy beer wee later recovered while salvaging the champagne. The shipwreck was believed to be from the early 19th century. In 2011 Finnish scientists said they hoped to re-brew an old ale after studying the ancient beer found in the shipwreck. On June 8, 2012, 11 bottles of the champagne were auctioned for over $156,000.
(http://tinyurl.com/4kawd2n)(AP, 2/8/11)(SFC, 6/9/12, p.D3)
2010 Sep 3, Finland and Sweden urged the European Union to create an independent peace institute to broaden the scope of the bloc's peacekeeping efforts around the world.
(AP, 9/3/10)
2010 Sep 10, Finland’s Nokia Corp. said it is replacing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with top Microsoft executive Stephen Elop as the world's top handset maker aims to regain lost ground in the fiercely competitive smartphone market.
(AP, 9/10/10)
2010 Sep 11, In Finland Hossein Alizadeh (45), a senior official at the Iranian embassy, said that he has resigned from his post to join the political opposition against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Alizadeh's mission in Finland had ended on August 20.
(AP, 9/11/10)(AFP, 9/11/10)
2010 Sep 14, Nokia, the Finnish phone giant, unveiled of 3 new touchscreen smartphones.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/20100914/tc_ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc3609)
2010 Oct 1, In Finland tobacco sales were pushed under shop counters as a new law, set to progress in stages, came into effect. Finland is the first country to target an end to smoking through legal means.
(AP, 10/2/10)
2010 Oct 21, Finland’s Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, announced 1,800 jobs cuts right on the heels of stellar third-quarter results and just one month after a new chief executive took the helm.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 29, In Finland the Allure of the Seas, the second in a pair of the largest cruise liners in the world, set sail for its new home port in Florida. Sister ship, the Oasis of the Seas, was also delivered to Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines last year with a price tag of about $1.5 billion.
(AP, 10/29/10)
2011 Feb 11, Finland’s Nokia corp. announced plans to make Microsoft Windows its primary software in the competition for smart-phone customers.
(SFC, 2/12/11, p.D1)
2011 Mar 29, Finland’s Nokia said it is suing Apple in the United States for allegedly infringing patents in "virtually all" of its mobile phones, portable music players, tablets and computers.
(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Apr 17, Finns turned out in droves for a parliamentary vote marked by the meteoric rise of the nationalist True Finns party, which could tip the political scale to the right and even block Finnish approval of EU bailouts. The pro-EU conservative National Coalition Party topped the vote with 44 seats but the coalition it previously belonged to no longer held a parliamentary majority. As a result, the party is expected to begin difficult negotiations on forming a new government with at least one euroskeptic party. The nationalist True Finns gained 33 seats to 39 vs 42 for the Social Democrats.
(AFP, 4/17/11)(AP, 4/18/11)(SFC, 4/18/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 17, In Finland 6 parties across the political spectrum united to form a government, saving Finland from the embarrassment of having no prime minister at a key European Union summit next week.
(AP, 6/17/11)
2011 Jul 8, A 225-page international review showing wide variances of Internet freedom gave Finland the best marks for making citizens' access to a broadband connection a legal right. The report was presented at OSCE headquarters in Vienna.
(AP, 7/8/11)
2011 Aug 18, Four EU countries (Austria, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia) said they want hundreds of millions of euros in collateral as security for a bailout of Greece. Finland had just struck a deal with Greece for cash collateral on Aug 16.
(SFC, 8/19/11, p.A2)
2011 Sep 7, Finland arrested two Somali people, a man (34) and a woman (28), on suspicion of financing terrorism and performing terror recruitment activities. They had foreign backgrounds and their alleged actions were not aimed at Finland. The woman, released in October, was ordered not to leave the country.
(AP, 9/17/11)(AP, 10/7/11)
2011 Dec 21, Finnish officials said they have found around 160 tons of explosives and 69 surface-to-air Patriot missiles on a cargo ship bearing a British flag and ultimately destined for China. They didn't know the origin of the missiles or who was supposed to receive them.
(AP, 12/21/11)
2011 Dec 26, A British-registered ship, the M/S Thor Liberty, held in a Finnish port after authorities discovered 69 surface-to-air missiles and 160 tons of explosives onboard, received permission to travel again, but without those materials or its captain. The Patriot missiles were an official shipment from Germany to South Korea. Finnish authorities said the explosives were a legitimate shipment for China, but the missiles lacked proper transit documents, and the explosives weren't safely stored. On Jan 4 the Finnish government authorized the transport.
(AP, 12/26/11)(AP, 1/4/12)
2011 Finland's population was about 5.3 million.
(AP, 4/17/11)
2012 Jan 22, Finns voted for a new president. The front-runner, ex-finance minister Sauli Niinisto, won 37% setting up a 2nd round on Feb 5. Pekka Haavisto of the Greens Party was second with 18.8%. Finland's 12th president since independence from Russia in 1917 will replace Tarja Halonen.
(AP, 1/22/12)(SFC, 1/23/12, p.A2)
2012 Feb 5, Finland voters chose a leader in a runoff between a veteran conservative and the first openly gay candidate from the small Greens party. Former Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto (63) won the runoff election with 63 percent of the votes against Greens candidate Pekka Haavisto (53) with 37 percent. This restored the National Coalition Party to the presidency after 56 years and giving it the nation's two top posts for the first time.
(AP, 2/5/12)(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 May 26, In Finland police arrested an 18-year-old gunman who killed two people and wounded seven others in what appeared to be a random shooting in the southern town of Hyvinkaa. Finland has some 650,000 officially recognized gun owners in a population of 5.4 million people, with strong hunting traditions.
(AP, 5/26/12)
2012 Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen (b.1977) authored “When the Doves Disappeared." It was set in Estonia as the country was caught between Stalin’s hammer and Hitler’s anvil. In 2015 it was translated to English by Lola Rogers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofi_Oksanen)(Econ, 5/2/15, p.74)
2013 Feb 8, Finnish customs officers confiscated a container on a Finnish freighter, en route to Syria from Russia, because it did not have a transit license and found 9.6 tons of tank spare parts.
(AP, 2/15/13)
2013 Mar 9, Max Jakobson (89), a former Finnish diplomat, died. He helped shape his country's policy of neutrality during the Cold War.
(AP, 3/21/13)
2013 Sep 2, Microsoft Corp. announced that it is buying Nokia Corp.'s line-up of smartphones and a portfolio of patents and services for 5.44 billion euros ($7.2 billion) in an attempt to strengthen its fight with Apple Inc. and Google Inc. to capture a slice of the lucrative mobile computing market.
(AP, 9/3/13)
2013 Oct 10, In western Finland Thursday a 16-year-old boy stabbed and seriously injured four people at a vocational training college in Oulu. Three of the victims were women under the age of 20 and the fourth was the school's caretaker, a 21-year-old man.
(AFP, 10/10/13)
2013 Oct 22, Finland-based Nokia showed off its first tablet in Abu Dhabi, the Lumia 2520, at its last launch party as much of the company faced acquisition by Microsoft.
(Econ, 10/26/13, p.73)
2014 Mar, In Finland a man and a woman were arrested for plotting to kill about 50 people in an attack at the University of Helsinki. They were also charged with weapons possession. The suspects had met online and discussed the massacre using encrypted emails.
(AP, 5/26/14)
2014 Apr 9, Stuart Parkin (58) won the Finnish 1 million-euro ($1.3 million) Millennium Technology Prize for discoveries leading to a thousand-fold increase in digital data storage on magnetic disks. The British-American physicist directed the IBM-Stanford spintronic science center in California.
(AP, 4/9/14)
2014 Apr 25, Finland-based Nokia said it has completed the 5.44 billion-euro ($7.5 billion) sale of its troubled cellphone and services division to Microsoft Corp.
(AP, 4/25/14)
2014 Jun 3, Finnish police officers found the bodies of 5 dead babies in packages in a basement cupboard of an apartment building in the western city of Oulu after they were alerted to the scene by emergency services. A woman (35) was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
(AP, 6/4/14)
2014 Jun 24, In Finland former European affairs minister Alexander Stubb took over as the head of the conservative-led government after PM Jyrki Katainen resigned to pursue a position in the European Commission.
(AP, 6/24/14)
2014 Jul 24, In western Afghanistan gunmen riding on a motorcycle opened fire and killed two Finnish women aid workers in Herat.
(AP, 7/24/14)
2014 Aug 15, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto told his counterpart Vladimir Putin that Western sanctions against Moscow and the food ban Russia introduced in response were damaging bilateral ties and proposed to seek ways to end the Ukraine crisis.
(Reuters, 8/15/14)
2014 Sep 18, Finland’s government extended a license to Finnish-Russian consortium Fennovoima to build a nuclear reactor in Pyhajoki. In response the environmentalist Green Party said it's dropping out of the coalition government.
(AP, 9/18/14)
2014 Sep 26, The head of Interpol, based in Lyon, France, said an international database of foreign would-be jihadis joining extremists in Iraq and Syria that started 18 months ago with little fanfare, and just three countries participating, has expanded to include 33 countries and 1,300 names.
(AP, 9/26/14)
2014 Oct 30, Researchers in Sweden said they have identified genetic variations at two key sites the human genome that may distinguish extremely violent individuals following a study of some 794 convicts in Finland.
(SFC, 10/31/14, p.A7)(Econ, 11/1/14, p.75)
2014 Nov 13, Eight northern European nations (Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden) agreed to step up cooperation to counter an increase in Moscow's military activity that has included a tripling of NATO intercepts of Russian jets this year.
(Reuters, 11/13/14)
2015 Apr 15, Finland-based Nokia said it is to buy ailing French telecom company Alcatel-Lucent for around 15.6 billion euros ($16.5 billion) through a public exchange of shares in France and the United States.
(AP, 4/15/15)
2015 Apr 19, Finland held elections. A three year recession has put Juha Sipila, a self-effacing millionaire businessman and leader of the opposition Center Party, in a clear lead in all recent opinion polls. The Center Party took 49 seats of 200 seats. The Eurosceptic True Finns party took 19% of the vote and 38 seats.
(AP, 4/19/15)(Econ., 4/25/15, p.50)
2015 Apr 28, The Finnish military fired handheld underwater depth charges as a warning against a suspected submarine in waters near Helsinki.
(Reuters, 4/28/15)
2015 May 7, Finland's likely next prime minister Juha Sipila said that he plans to form a government coalition with the populist, eurosceptic The Finns Party, which wants a tougher line on eurozone bailouts and tighter immigration restrictions.
(Reuters, 5/7/15)
2015 Aug 8, Finland detained a Russian citizen, Maxim Senakh, at the request of US federal authorities on computer fraud charges. Senakh was accused in the state of Minnesota of infecting computer servers with malware, resulting in criminal gains worth millions of dollars. Russia later called the move illegal.
(Reuters, 8/27/15)
2015 Sep 5, Finnish PM Juha Sipila offered to host refugees at his country home.
(AFP, 9/5/15)
2015 Sep 10, Finland proposed increasing capital gains tax and income tax on high earners to help pay for a 10-fold increase in refugees expected to arrive this year.
(Reuters, 9/10/15)
2015 Sep 18, In Finland a one-day strike halted public transportation and shut down ports nationwide as workers protested against government cutbacks aimed at trying to drag the Nordic country out of a three-year economic downturn.
(AP, 9/18/15)
2015 Sep 19, Finland started border checks for asylum seekers arriving from Sweden in the northern town of Tornio, while people there demonstrated against a growing influx of refugees.
(Reuters, 9/19/15)
2015 Sep 25, Finland's government condemned a racist protest in which demonstrators -- including one dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit -- attacked a bus transporting asylum seekers in the early hours today.
(AFP, 9/25/15)
2015 Oct 12, In Finland Iraqi asylum seekers rallied in central Helsinki and signed a petition against plans to negotiate a deal with Baghdad that could lead to their deportation, arguing that their country should not be considered safe.
(Reuters, 10/12/15)
2015 Oct 30, Coast Guard leaders from the US, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden signed an agreement setting up the Arctic Coast Guard Forum dedicated to stewardship of Arctic waters.
(SFC, 10/31/15, p.A4)
2015 Nov 4, Finland said it has suspended its decision-making process for Afghani asylum claims due to an ongoing assessment of the security situation in the country. It said it would also review EU practices and the possibility of returning people to Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 11/4/15)
2015 Nov 12, Finland became the first country in the world to give a construction license for a permanent underground nuclear waste repository. It approved Posiva Oy's plan to construct a spent nuclear fuel encapsulation plant and disposal facility at the island of Olkiluoto. Up to 6,500 tons of uranium may be deposited in the facility.
(Reuters, 11/12/15)
2015 Dec 10, Finnish police said they have arrested two Iraqi brothers believed to have been members of the Islamic State group in Iraq and suspected of fatally shooting "11 unarmed and defenseless prisoners" in June 2014.
(AP, 12/10/15)
2016 Jan 23, Finland began a 2nd government sanctioned trial wolf hunt permitting the cull of 46 wolves until Feb 21. In 2015 17 wolves were killed. Wolf hunting was banned in the country from 2007 to 2015.
(SFC, 1/23/16, p.A2)
2016 Mar 11, In Finland over 3,000 farmers with some 600 tractors gathered on a central Helsinki square in a protest urging the government to support the country's agricultural sector suffering on decreasing food prices and EU's Russia sanctions.
(AP, 3/11/16)
2016 Mar 22, Finland's Defense Ministry said its website had come under a cyberattack that forced it divert web traffic to a temporary site. The latest incident coincided with talks in Moscow between Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on cross-border cooperation and international issues including Ukraine and Syria.
(Reuters, 3/22/16)
2016 Apr 29, An expert panel told the Finnish government that Finland could expect "harsh" reactions from Russia if it decided to join NATO, but would be better off doing so together with neighboring Sweden.
(AP, 4/29/16)
2016 May 13, President Barack Obama welcomed a group of Nordic leaders to the White House and celebrated the five Nordic nations (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) as models of reliability, equality, generosity, responsibility, even personal happiness. Obama said that he and the five Nordic nations agreed on the need to maintain sanctions against Russia.
(AP, 5/13/16)(Reuters, 5/13/16)
2016 Jun 17, Finland police in Vihti, northwest of Helsinki, dispatched several officers to a property late today. They were targeted by gunfire as they approached the house and one shot fatally wounded a policeman (30) and seriously wounded another. The shooter (73) committed suicide.
(AP, 6/18/16)
2016 Jul 2, In Finland eight Cuban volleyball players were arrested following allegations that a woman was raped at a hotel where the team was staying in Tampere, 170 km (105 miles) north of Helsinki. Two were later released. On June 30, 2017, a Finnish court of appeal cut the prison sentences of five Cuban volleyball players jailed for aggravated rape in the southwestern city of Turku.
(AP, 8/29/16)(AFP, 9/20/16)(AFP, 6/30/17)
2016 Jul 8, Leaders of the NATO military alliance met in Warsaw and began a landmark summit that will order ambitious actions against a daunting array of dangers to the security of their nations and citizenry, including a rearmed and increasingly unfriendly Russia to Europe's east and violent Islamic extremism to the south. Finland and Sweden joined NATO leaders at the top table for the first time as Russia's military build-up pushed the two countries closer to the western military alliance.
(AP, 7/8/16)(Reuters, 7/8/16)
2016 Sep 10, In Finland Jesse Torniainen (26), a neo-Nazi activist, kicked Jimi Joonas Karttunen (28) in the chest during a demonstration in Helsinki. Karttunen died of his injuries six days later. On Dec 30 Torniainen was sentenced to two years in prison for assaulting Karttunen.
(AP, 12/30/16)
2016 Oct 7, Estonia said a Russian jet violated its airspace, hours after neighboring Finland said two similar planes passed over its territory as it prepared to sign a defense pact with the United States.
(Reuters, 10/7/16)
2016 Dec 3, In Finland a lone gunman shot dead a local official and two journalists, all of them women, in a night-time attack in the small town of Imatra. A 23-year-old suspect was swiftly arrested after the shooting.
(AFP, 12/4/16)
2016 Dec 14, Two Finnish journalists quit public broadcaster Yleisradio (YLE), saying the company had suppressed critical reporting on politicians including PM Juha Sipila.
(Reuters, 12/14/16)
2016 Dec 29, A Finnish court sentenced Jari Aarnio (59), the former chief detective of the Helsinki police drug squad, to ten years in prison for taking part in a drug smuggling ring. He reportedly played a key role in helping a gang smuggle nearly 800 kg (1,750 pounds) of hashish from the Netherlands into Finland in 2011 and 2012.
(AFP, 12/29/16)
2017 Feb 17, Finnish lawmakers rejected a petition from more than 100,000 people demanding the repeal of a law allowing same-sex marriage effective on March 1.
(AP, 2/17/17)
2017 Apr 5, China and Finland will increase cooperation under the China-European Union framework, President Xi Jinping said after arriving in Finland for his first visit as head of state.
(Reuters, 4/5/17)
2017 Apr 11, Several EU and NATO countries signed up to establish a center in Helsinki to research how to tackle tactics such as cyber-attacks, propaganda and disinformation. The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania signed the Memorandum of Understanding for the membership. More countries were due to come on board in July.
(Reuters, 4/11/17)
2017 May 4, Finland's government held its weekly cabinet meeting in front of the glare of a live audience for the first time, part of celebrations for the Nordic country's first hundred years of independence.
(Reuters, 5/4/17)
2017 Jun 12, Finland's government was brought to the verge of collapse as centrist and conservative parties both said the populist The Finns party cannot stay in the three-member government coalition after it elected an anti-EU and anti-immigration hardliner as its chairman last week.
(AP, 6/12/17)
2017 Jun 13, Finland’s PM Juha Sipila said his coalition would carry on with a new populist faction that emerged at the last minute. The Finns Party split in two, with Sipila welcoming the more moderate faction to stay on in his government.
(AFP, 6/13/17)
2017 Jun 20, Finland's government survived a no-confidence vote after a coalition partner split in two following a leadership battle.
(AP, 6/20/17)
2017 Jun 30, Finland and Sweden joined a British-led military rapid reaction force that can either operate alone or jointly with the UN, NATO or the EU.
(AP, 6/30/17)
2017 Jul 10, In Finland Japanese PM Shinzo Abe pledged to increase cooperation with Finland in Arctic issues and on furthering Russian relations, after talks with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.
(AP, 7/10/17)
2017 Jul 29, The Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica set a new record for the earliest transit of the fabled Northwest Passage after 24 days at sea and a journey spanning more than 10,000 km (6,214 miles).
(AP, 7/29/17)
2017 Aug 18, Police in Finland shot a Moroccan asylum-seeker in the leg after he was suspected of stabbing several people in the western city of Turku. Two women were killed and seven other people wounded. Police over the next hours arrested five people in a Turku apartment overnight in their investigation into the stabbings. The attacker was later identified as Abderrahman Bouanane (18). Police later said he had become radicalized some three months before the attack, and although he acted alone, he thought of himself as an IS fighter.
(AP, 8/18/17)(AP, 8/19/17)(AFP, 8/19/17)(AP, 8/21/17)(AP, 2/7/18)
2017 Sep 27, Finnish energy group Fortum offered to buy all the shares in German utility Uniper in an 8.05 billion-euro ($9.5 billion) deal that aims to boost Fortum's gas, hydroelectric and nuclear assets. Fortum offered to buy the 46.65 percent stake that Germany's E.ON holds and the rest of the shares for 22 euros each. E.ON has until early 2018 to decide whether to sell its stake.
(AP, 9/27/17)
2017 Oct 26, In Finland a train collided with a military vehicle at an unguarded railroad crossing in southern Finland, killing four people and injuring 11 others.
(AP, 10/26/17)
2017 Oct 26, Nordea Bank AB, the Nordic region's largest bank, said it plans to cut at least 6,000 jobs over the next four years to stay competitive as its retail banking operations increasingly become digital and automation hits the financial industry. The cuts will spread across its home markets of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
(AP, 10/26/17)
2017 Nov 15, Slovakia's government approved plans to build military armored vehicles with the Finnish defense industry company Patria to replace the NATO member's outdated armored personnel carriers.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 16, A fireball lit up the skies of Arctic Finland with a glow of 100 full moons. Experts scrambled to find where the meteorite landed.
(SSFC, 11/19/17, p.A4)
2017 Nov 30, A Finnish court banned neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement (PVL), saying there was an "urgent social need" to shut down the group which it said spread hate speech and incited violence.
(Reuters, 11/30/17)
2017 Dec 9, Finnish Border Guards said two people have been found dead inside a pilot boat that capsized and sank off southern Finland.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2018 Jan 8, Finnish researchers said they were to launch a study to see if gambling addiction can be treated with a fast-working nasal spray.
(AFP, 1/8/18)
2018 Jan 28, Finland held presidential elections. President Sauli Niinisto (69) was poised to win another six-year term.
(AFP, 1/28/18)
2018 Feb 7, A feasibility study by Estonia and Finland said the world's longest undersea rail tunnel (103 kms) between the two countries could cost up to 20 billion euros ($24.7 billion) and be opened for traffic by 2040.
(AP, 2/7/18)
2018 Mar 14, The World Happiness Report ranked Finland at the top of 156 countries in its annual global happiness index; the US was ranked 18th, down from 14th last year.
(SFC, 3/15/18, p.A5)
2018 Mar 30, Russia ordered new cuts to the number of British envoys in the country, escalating a dispute with the West over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain. Scores of foreign ambassadors streamed into the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow to receive the notices given to 23 nations: Albania, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine.
(AP, 3/30/18)
2018 Apr 10, The Newport Arctic Scholars Initiative convened in Newport, Rhode Island, with representatives from the Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and the US.
(AP, 4/10/18)
2018 Apr 25, Finland said the Nordic country's trailblazing basic income experiment is going ahead as planned, denying media reports that the trial has fallen flat.
(AP, 4/25/18)
2018 Jun 8, In Finland US Gen. Joseph Dunford, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Russia's chief of the military's General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, met in Konigstedt Manor to exchange views on US-Russia military relations, Syria and the current international security situation.
(AP, 6/8/18)
2018 Jun 15, A Finnish court sentenced Abderrahman Bouanane (23), a Moroccan asylum seeker, to life in prison for killing two women and injuring eight others in a stabbing spree in Turku last August 18, described as the nation's first terror attack.
(AFP, 6/15/18)(SFC, 6/16/18, p.A2)
2018 Jun 20, The Finnish border guard said five people have entered Finland illegally with the help of soccer World Cup fan identity papers and then applied for asylum.
(Reuters, 6/20/18)
2018 Jul 15, In Finland about 2,500 protesters demonstrated in support of human rights, democracy and the environment in Helsinki, a day before US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a summit in the Finnish capital.
(Reuters, 7/15/18)
2018 Jul 16, In Finland activists used today's summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold a 2nd day of high-profile protests in Helsinki over a variety of grievances.
(AP, 7/16/18)
2018 Jul 16, Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held a historic summit vowing their determination to forge a reset of troubled relations between the world's greatest nuclear powers as they met in Helsinki, Finland. Trump's news conference alongside Putin, where he discounted US intelligence assessments that Russia meddled with the 2016 election, drew fire from members of both political parties, who said he put Russia above US interests.
(AFP, 7/16/18)(Reuters, 7/17/18)
2018 Aug 24, In central Finland a bus plunged about 10 meters (33 feet) from a bridge onto railway tracks in Kuopio, killing four people and injuring more than 20.
(AP, 8/24/18)
2018 Oct 3, Finland's parliament voted to add new exceptions to a clause in the constitution that guarantees the right to privacy, to enable swift approval of an intelligence bill aimed at combating terrorism and spying by foreign governments.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Norway Russian businessman Boris Rotenberg, under US sanctions over the Ukraine conflict due to his close ties with President Vladimir Putin, filed suit against four Nordic banks, accusing them of discrimination. Rotenberg also holds a Finnish passport and is not subject to European sanctions over Russia's role in Ukraine, but European banks must comply with the US sanctions in order to do business with American banks.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Nov 12, Russia denied being behind the recent disruption to GPS signals across Lapland which put civil aviation at risk, after Finland's PM Juha Sipila said the interference was "almost certainly deliberate".
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 19, Social media in Finland was ablaze with bemused comments after US President Donald Trump claimed the forest-covered nation prevents wildfires by raking its forest floors.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 20, Malaysian police detained two women and two men from Finland at their hotel after police received complaints about their distributing Christian materials at public places. He said police seized 47 pens with Bible verses and 336 notebooks containing texts from the Bible.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Zimbabwe a small plane en route to the popular tourist site of Victoria Falls crashed in Masvingo killing four people from Finland.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Malaysia four Finnish tourists, arrested last week for distributing Christian materials in public places on a resort island, were deported home.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Dec 14, It was reported that scientists in Finland have developed what they believe is the world's first vaccine to protect bees against disease, raising hopes for tackling the drastic decline in insect numbers which could cause a global food crisis.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2019 Jan 14, It was reported that a Finnish citizens' initiative to withdraw asylum from people convicted of sex crimes received tens of thousands of signatures over the weekend and has become an important political issue ahead of this year's parliamentary elections.
(Reuters, 1/14/19)
2019 Feb 4, The UN Human Rights Committee ruled that Finland has breached the political rights of its Sami population, charging that Helsinki had violated the indigenous people's right to "internal self-determination." According to the Finnish Sami parliament, there are 10,000 Sami in Finland.
(AFP, 2/4/19)
2019 Feb 8, The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) said a nationwide experiment with basic income in Finland has not increased employment among those participating in the two-year trial, but their general well-being seems to have increased.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Finland an independent 248-page investigative report in English, commissioned by the Finnish government, was released. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served within the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them aged between 17 and 20 years old. The report concluded that the country's volunteer battalion, which served with Nazi Germany's Waffen-SS, took part in atrocities during World War II, including participating in the mass murder of Jews.
(AP, 2/10/19)
2019 Mar 8, Finland's coalition government resigned a month ahead of a general election, saying it could not deliver on a healthcare reform package that is widely seen as crucial to securing long-term government finances. President Sauli Niinisto accepted PM Sipila's resignation but asked his government of his Center party and the National Coalition Party to continue in a caretaker capacity until a new cabinet has been appointed.
(Reuters, 3/8/19)
2019 Mar 20, Finland topped the UN index of the happiest nations for the second consecutive year, with researchers saying the small Nordic country of 5.5 million has succeeded in generating a happiness recipe for a balanced life not simply dependent on economic and material wealth. Denmark, Norway and Iceland took the next spots. The remaining top ten nations were The Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada and Austria. The United States dropped from the 18th to 19th place.
(AP, 3/20/19)
2019 Apr 14, Finns voted in a general election where anti-austerity sentiment looked set to propel the opposition Social Democratic Party back to the head of government for the first time in 16 years. The Social Democrats, led by former finance minister and union leader Antti Rinne, took 17.7% of the votes and 40 seats. The Finns Party followed with 17.5% and 39 seats and the National Coalition Party with 17% of the votes and 38 seats. The Center Party of outgoing Prime Minister Juha Sipila was fourth with 13.8% of the vote and the Green Party came in with 11.5%.
(AFP, 4/14/19)(AP, 4/15/19)
2019 Jul 31, Finland's Orion and Germany's Bayer said the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved prostate cancer drug daroluramide, which the two companies have been developing together.
(Reuters, 7/31/19)
2019 Aug 19, Finland's PM Antti Rinne told his British counterpart Boris Johnson that the European Union would not renegotiate the Brexit deal.
(Reuters, 8/20/19)
2019 Aug 23, Finland, which currently holds the presidency of the EU, raised the idea of banning Brazilian meat imports in response to Bolsonaro’s lax stewardship of the Amazon.
(Bloomberg, 8/24/19)
2019 Oct 1, In Finland a man killed a woman and wounded nine other people while wielding a sword and a firearm inside a classroom at a vocational school in Kuopio. Police shot and wounded the subject, who was hospitalized.
(SFC, 10/3/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 3, Finland's PM Antti Rinne resigned after a key coalition partner withdrew from his five-party government following a strike at the country's postal service that spread to the national flag carrier Finnair.
(SFC, 12/4/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 8, Finland's transport minister, Sanna Marin (34), was tapped by the ruling Social Democratic Party to be the new prime minister. When she takes the reins of the country, most likely on Dec. 10, she will become the world’s youngest sitting head of government.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 10, Finland's new PM Sanna Marin (34) took office as the world's youngest national leader.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 10, Finland, which holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of the year, said it aims to teach 1% of all Europeans basic skills in artificial intelligence through a free online course.
(Reuters, 12/10/19)
2020 Feb 10, Finland's paper workers union agreed a pay deal with the forestry industry association, ending a two week strike that halted production of one of the country's main exports.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Mar 12, A Finnish court jailed in a custody hearing Gibril Ealoghima Massaquoi (50), a Sierra Leone man suspected of committing serious war crimes and crimes against humanity from 1999 through 2003 during Liberia's bloody second civil war. Massaquoi has lived in Finland for more than 10 years.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 13, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal agreed to take in at least 1,600 migrant children in Greece traveling without their parents.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 15, Finland had a total of 240 coronavirus cases.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 20, Finland recorded its first death from coronavirus. It has 521 confirmed cases, though it was only testing severely ill people and health-care professionals.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Experts at the UN declared Finland to be the world's happiest nation for the third year running. The US fell to No. 18.
(AFP, 3/20/20) (NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Apr 7, Finland said it will start tracking the spread of the coronavirus in its population with randomized antibody tests.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Jun 29, Finnish telecoms equipment maker Nokia Oyj said it has won a 5G contract worth about 400 million euros ($449.48 million) from Taiwan Mobile to build out the telecom operator's next-generation network as the sole supplier.
(Reuters, 6/29/20)
2020 Aug 23, Finland's PM Sanna Marin assumed the leadership of her Social Democratic Party eight months after taking the top job in the Nordic nation in December, when she became the world’s youngest serving head of government at 34. She was the only candidate running for the post and no vote was needed.
(AP, 8/23/20)
2020 Aug 31, Finland's health authorities launched the country's own and long-waited contact tracing smartphone app to combat the spread of COVID-19.
(Reuters, 8/31/20)
2020 Oct 5, Finland reported its highest daily number of infections since the pandemic began, exceeding the rate Helsinki sets for citizens of other countries to visit without quarantine.
(Reuters, 10/5/20)
2020 Oct 8, Finland's public health authority THL said the country likely had up to five times more COVID-19 cases than its official numbers showed during the first wave of the pandemic between March and May.
(AP, 10/8/20)
2020 Oct 29, Finland's government said it would ease its restrictions on opening hours for restaurants serving mainly food but kept stricter rules on bars and nightclubs in place, as the COVID-19 pandemic showed signs of slowing down in the Nordic country. The new rules will take effect on November 1.
(Reuters, 10/29/20)
2020 Nov 12, The government of Finland said it was preparing legislation that would allow citizens to change their personal identity codes in cases of gross data breaches that carry a high risk of identity theft.
(AP, 11/12/20)
2020 Dec 20, The Finnish government said the repatriation of its citizens from the al-Hol camp in Syria was done for humanitarian reasons and because of the country's legal obligations for its citizens. Finnish media said two returning women, both known to be radicalized IS sympathizers, will face thorough screening by security officials upon return.
(AP, 12/20/20)
2020 Dec 21, It was reported that International Business Machines (IBM) will acquire Finland-based startup Nordcloud, the latest in a series of acquisitions for the 109-year old firm preparing a mega spin-off to focus on cloud computing.
(Reuters, 12/21/20)
2020 Dec 28, Finnish authorities said email accounts belonging to some lawmakers were compromised during a cyberattack on parliament last autumn.
(AP, 12/28/20)
2021 Jan 11, Sweden's Telecoms operator Tele2 said it will partner with Finland's Nokia for the deployment of its 5G core network in Sweden and the Baltics.
(Reuters, 1/11/21)
2021 Jan 13, Thousands of households across southern Finland and northern Sweden were without power after a heavy snowfall, and forecasters warned that particularly icy temperatures lay ahead for the Baltic Sea region.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2021 Jan 22, The Finnish government said it would put in place stricter regulations from Jan. 27 for entering the country, due to new variants of the coronavirus spreading within its borders.
(Reuters, 1/22/21)
2021 Mar 1, The Finnish government declared a state of emergency due to rising COVID-19 infections, a step that would allow the Nordic country to shutter restaurants and to impose other measures to blunt the pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/1/21)
2021 Mar 17, It was reported that Finland-based Nokia plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs as it tries to cement its role as a key supplier of 5G technology. Nokia said the restructuring should reduce costs by $715 million by 2023.
(SFC, 3/17/21, p.B2)
2021 Mar 18, Finland’s domestic security agency said that the cybergroup APT31, which is generally linked to the Chinese government, was likely behind a cyberspying attack on the information systems of the Nordic country’s parliament.
(AP, 3/18/21)
2021 Mar 19, Denmark, Sweden and Norway said they needed more time to decide whether to use AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine while Finland joined them in putting the shots on hold, even though the EU drug watchdog said the benefits outweighed any risks.
(Reuters, 3/19/21)
2021 Apr 14, Finland said people aged under 65 who got a first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot may get a different vaccine for their second dose, as authorities warned about delays to the country's roll-out.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, Finland held local elections.
(AP, 6/13/21)
dGo to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Finland
End of file
Return to home
Kruhse History: http://www.histdoc.net/history/history.html
Lonely Planet: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/dest/eur/fin.htm
The Kalevala, 12,078 verses, is the national epic.
(SFC, 2/3/99, p.A9)
7000BC The Sami people began herding reindeer in northern Europe about this time as the last Ice Age ended. They were later considered to be Europe’s only indigenous people. By 2013 they numbered about 80,000 including 8,000 in Finland, 50,000 in Norway, 20,000 in Sweden and 2,000 in Russia.
(SFC, 8/30/13, p.A2)
1475 The Olavinlinna castle was founded by the governor of Viipuri on the border between Sweden-Finland and Russia.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, p.T4)
1550 Helsinki was founded by the Swedes.
(SFEM, 8/8/99, p.44)
1743 Aug 17, By the Treaty of Abo, Sweden ceded southeast Finland to Russia, ending Sweden's failed war with Russia.
(HN, 8/17/98)
1751 A treaty between Finland and Norway defined a strait-line border along the side of the Halti mountain, depriving the Fins of the crest. In 2016 Norway PM Erna Solberg suggested that her government might cede some 15,000 sq. meters of Halti mountain as a birthday gift to Finland in 2017, making it the highest point in Finland.
(Econ, 8/6/16, p.40)
1806 May 12, J.V. Snellman, Finnish journalist, statesman and nationalist, was born. The day is remembered in Finland as Snellman day.
(SC, internet, 5/12/97)
1809 Finland broke free of Sweden to become a Grand Duchy of Russia. Finland fell into Russian hands after Europe's Napoleonic wars, though it was allowed to develop as an autonomous part of the Czarist empire until 1917.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, p.T4)(AP, 12/6/17)
1809-1917 Finland was an autonomous grand duchy under the Czar of Russia.
(WSJ, 12/17/98, p.A1)
1812-1840 Carl Ludvig Engel, a Prussian architect, redesigned and rebuilt Helsinki as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland-Russia.
(SFEM, 8/8/99, p.44)
1852 In Finland the Lutheran Helsinki Cathedral was completed.
(SSFC, 6/3/12, p.H4)
1854 May 5, English pirate Plumridge robbed along pro-English Finnish coast.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1862 Jul 10, Helene Schjerfbeck (d.1946), Finnish painter, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helene_Schjerfbeck)
1865 Dec 8, Jean Sibelius (d.1957), composer (Valse Triste, Finlandia), was born as Johan Julius Christian in Tavastehus, Finland: “Pay no attention to what critics say. There has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.
(SFC,10/14/97,p.B3)(WUD,1994, p.1323)(SFEC,11/16/97, Z1 p.5)(MC, 12/8/01)
1865 In Finland the Nokia Co. began making wood and paper products. Later it diversified to cellular phones.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(Econ, 12/6/08, p.85)
1867 Jun 4, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, president of Finland, was born.
(HN, 6/4/98)
c1890s In the late 1800s Rosvo-Ronkainen, a notorious Finnish brigand, recruited only men who proved their worth by carrying heavy weight on a challenging track. This practice later developed into the sport of wife carrying.
(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.A1)
1893 Jean Sibelius composed “Karelia."
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B3)
1898 Feb 3, Alvar Aalto (d.1979), Finnish architect, was born.
(HN, 2/3/01)
1900 Urho Kekkonen, later president, was born in a sauna.
(SFCM, 1/14/01, p.6)
1902 Mar 8, The 1st performance of Jean Sibelius' 2nd Symphony.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1903 Dec 2, The play “Kuolema" (Death), a drama by Finnish writer Arvid Järnefelt, was first performed. It included incidental music by Jean Sibelius. The opening number, Valse Triste (Sad Waltz), was later adapted into a separate concert piece.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuolema)
1906 Oct 1, In Finland the Parliament Act came into force. It replaced the old Diet dating back to the 17th century with a 200-seat unicameral Parliament and introduced universal suffrage.
(http://web.eduskunta.fi/Resource.phx/parliament/aboutparliament/presentation/history.htx)
1907 Mar 15-1907 Mar 16, Finland held elections and Finnish women became the first in the world to attain full political rights.
(http://electionresources.org/fi/)
1908 At the Olympic games in England, Russia objected to separate medal totals and flag-flying for athletes from Finland, die to its control over Finland. The Finns marched with no flag.
(WSJ, 4/12/08, p.R2)
1910 Aug 20, Eero Saarinen (d.1961), Finnish-US architect (IBM Building, MIT Chapel), was born in Rantasalmi, Finland.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1915 Dec 8, Jean Sibelius' 5th Symphony in E, premiered.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1917 Dec 6, Finland declared independence from the Russian Empire (National Day).
(SFEM, 8/8/99, p.44)(AP, 12/6/17)
1917 Dec 9, New Finnish Republic demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1917 Dec 18, The Soviet regiment under Stalin and Lenin declared Finland Independent.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1918 Jan 6, Germany acknowledged Finland’s independence.
(HN, 1/6/99)
1918 Jan 27, Communists attempted to seize power in Finland.
(HN, 1/27/99)
1918 Feb 22, Germany claimed the Baltic states, Finland and Ukraine from Russia.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1918 Mar 7, Finland signed an alliance treaty with Germany.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1918 Jun 3, The Finnish Parliament ratified its treaty with Germany.
(HN, 6/3/98)
1918 Gustaf Mannerheim led a Finnish victory over much larger Bolshevik and Finnish Red Guard forces.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1918 Idel-Ural (Volga-Ural), a 1917 union of Finno-Ugric people in the middle of Russia, was crushed by the Bolsheviks. Its foreign minister Sadri Maqsudi Arsal was welcomed in Finland and then Estonia.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.73)
1919 Jun 6, Finland declared war on Bolsheviks.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1919 In Finland the Helsinki Central Station, designed by Eliel Saarinen, was completed.
(SSFC, 6/3/12, p.H4)
1920 Oct 14, In the Dorpart Treaty the Soviet Bolsheviks reaffirmed Finnish independence, gave Finland the ice-free port of Pechenga towards the Arctic Ocean and put the Finnish border 18 miles west of Leningrad. The treaty, signed by Stalin, was precipitated by Gustaf Mannerheim’s victory over much larger Bolshevik and Finnish Red Guard forces in 1918.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1921 The League of Nations granted the Aland Island group to the new Finnish Republic. Aland was populated by native Swedes. Under the accord Aland was given veto power in international treaties signed by Finland.
(WSJ, 12/5/97, p.A1)
1923 Aug 22, Paavo Nurmi of Finland ran a world record mile (4:10.4).
(MC, 8/22/02)
1924 The US dominated the summer Olympics in Paris and Finland ranked a distant 2nd.
(Ind, 2/16/02, 6A)
1926 Apr 3, 1st performance of Jean Sibelius' 7th Symphony in C.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1926 May 24, Paavo Nurmi ran world record 3000 meters in 8:25.4.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1928 Finland signed the Berne Convention on Copyright (1886).
(Econ, 2/18/12, ILp.21)
1930-1955 Finland engaged in a forced sterilization program that sterilized some 1,460 people over this period.
(SFC, 8/28/97, p.A12)
1935 Feb 4, Martti Talvela, operatic basso, was born in Hiitola, Karelia, Finland.
(MC, 2/4/02)
1939 Aug 23, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav M. Molotov signed a Treaty of Non-Aggression, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland. Secret protocols, made public years later, were added that assigned Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia to be within the Soviet sphere of influence. Poland was partitioned along the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. Germany retained Lithuania enlarged by the inclusion of Vilnius. Just days after the signing, Germany invaded Poland, and by the end of September, both powers had claimed sections of Poland.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A16)(AP, 8/23/97) (HNPD, 8/22/98)(HN, 8/23/98)
1939 Oct 5, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov invited the Finnish Foreign Minister, Elias Erkko, to come to Moscow for political discussions. The Finns delayed the meeting until Oct 12. Field Marshall Gustaf Mannerheim prepared Finland for war.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Oct 9, Full scale mobilization for war was called.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Oct 12-Nov 8, Finnish special envoy, Juho Paasikivi, began negotiations in Moscow. The Finns refused to allow the establishment of Soviet military bases.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Nov 10-Mar 13,1940, Finland began to wage a defensive war against the Soviet Union for 104 days.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Nov 26, Soviets charged Finland with an artillery attack on border leading to a 105-day Winter War. Soviet Foreign Minister V.M. Molotov accused Finnish troops of firing at the Russians across the 800-mile (1,300km) border near the southeastern village of Mainila.
(AP, 11/26/02)(AP, 11/30/09)
1939 Nov 28, USSR scraped its non-aggression pact with Finland.
(HN, 11/28/98)
1939 Nov 29, Soviet planes bombed an airfield at Helsinki, Finland.
(HN, 11/29/98)
1939 Nov 30, The Russo-Finnish war began when Stalin attacked Finland with 4 armies, 540,000 men, 2485 tanks, and 2000 guns. Finnish troops were led by Field Marshall Gustaf Mannerheim. Over the next two weeks, a greatly outnumbered Finnish army resisted the invasion of nearly fifty Red Army divisions--over one million men. The Finnish used forest combat to inflict heavy damage on the Russian invaders. The British and French came to the Finnish defense in mid-December but by March, the "Peace of Moscow" treaty was signed, and Finland ceded 16,000-square miles of land to the Soviet Union, including the city of Vyborg and the Karelian Isthmus.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)(AP, 11/30/99)(MC, 12/30/01)
1939 Dec 6, Britain agreed to send arms to Finland.
(HN, 12/6/98)
1939 Dec 9, A Russian air raid was made on Helsinki.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1939 Dec 25, Finnish troops entered Soviet territory.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1940 Jan 12, Soviet bombers raided cities in Finland.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1940 Mar 2, Soviet armies conquered Tuppura Island, Finland.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1940 Mar 12, Finland surrendered to Russia. Finland and the Soviet Union concluded an armistice during World War II. Fighting between the two countries flared again the following year.
(HN, 3/12/98)(AP, 3/12/98)
1940 Mar 13, The 105-day war between Russia and Finland ended with the signing of a treaty in Moscow. Finland capitulated conditionally to Soviet terms, but maintains its independence. Some 27,000 Finnish soldiers were killed and 43,000 wounded in a population of 3.7 million. The Soviet Union put its losses at 217,500 dead or wounded.
(HN, 3/13/01)(AP, 11/30/09)
1941 Jun 22, Finland invaded Karelia. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in summer 1941, Finland joined in and began re-taking the lost territory.
(www.publiscan.fi/cu13e-9.htm)
1941 Jun 25, Finland declared war on the Soviet Union.
(HN, 6/25/98)
1941 Jun 26, Finland entered WW II against Russia.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1941-1943 In 2019 an independent 248-page investigative report in English, commissioned by the Finnish government, was released. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served within the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them aged between 17 and 20 years old. The report concluded that the country's volunteer battalion, which served with Nazi Germany's Waffen-SS, took part in atrocities during World War II, including participating in the mass murder of Jews.
(AP, 2/10/19)
1943 Feb 3, Finland began talks with the Soviet Union.
(HN, 2/3/99)
1944 Mar 21, Finland rejected a Soviet armistice.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1944 May 28, Katri Vala (42), Finnish poet, died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1944 Sep, Finland concluded a truce with Moscow, with the country finding itself beaten and impoverished - but free.
(AP, 12/6/17)
1944 Sep, Finland began fighting Nazi Germany in the Lapland War and continued to April 1945.
(Econ, 3/30/13, p.54)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapland_War)
1944 Retreating German troops burned Rovaniemi to cinders. The town was redesigned by Alvar Aalto, Finland's patron saint of modern design.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.T8)
1945 Mar 3, Finland declared war on the Axis.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1945 Jul 7, Matti Salminen, operatic basso (King Philip-Don Carlos), was born in Turku, Finland.
(MC, 7/7/02)
c1945 Karelia was ceded to the Soviet Union as part of the peace terms following the 2 Finnish-Soviet wars from 1939-1944.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B4)
1946 Jan 28, Helene Schjerfbeck (b.1862), Finnish painter, died. She did a 5 painting series of self-portraits that represented herself at various ages.
(Econ, 11/24/07, p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helene_Schjerfbeck)
1948 Neste Corporation, an oil refining and marketing company, was founded in Espoo, Finland, as the state petrol company. By 2017 it had operations in 14 countries.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neste)
1948 The Soviet Union imposed a “Friendship Treaty" that limited Finnish sovereignty. It was abandoned in 1992.
(Econ, 7/9/16, p.43)
1949 Aug-Sep, In Finland a wave of Communist strikes were defeated by firm government action and the loyalty of non-Communist workers.
(EWH, 1968, p.1203)
1951 Armi Ratia, Finnish designer, expanded her husband's printing business into a fashionable "total work of art" business (Gesamtkunstwerk) that became "Marimekko."
(WSJ, 1/6/04, p.D10)
1952 Aug 3, The 15th Olympic Games concluded in Helsinki. US competitors won 40 gold medals.
(SFC, 8/2/02, p.E4)(SC, 8/3/02)
1952 Czech runner Emil Zatopek (1922-2000) won three gold medals at the Olympic games in Helsinki.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Z%C3%A1topek)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.84)
1952 Yvette Williams (1930-2019) of New Zealand won the long jump gold medal at the Helsinki Olympics with a jump of 6.24m, an Olympic record and only 1 cm short of the world record then held by Dutch athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen. She set a new world mark of 6.29m in the New Zealand city of Gisborne in February, 1954.
(AP, 4/14/19)
1956 Finland’s conservative party rule ended.
(AP, 2/6/12)
1957 Sep 20, Jean Julius Christian Sibelius (b.1865), Finnish composer (Finlandia), died. He had published no music for the last three decades of his life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Sibelius)(Econ, 2/18/12, ILp.20)
1958 Jun 30, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor (Giro), was born in Helsinki, Finland.
(MC, 6/30/02)
1960 Aug 7, Vaino Hannikainen (60), Finnish composer, died.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1957 Sep 20, Jean Julius Christian Sibelius (b.1865), Finnish composer (Finlandia), died.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B3)(WUD, 1994, p.1323)(AP, 9/20/07)
1960 In Finland 3 teenage camping companions were found stabbed to death inside a tent by Lake Bodom. A 4th survived with multiple stab wounds. In 2005 Nils Gustafsson (63), the survivor, was charged with murdering his 3 companions.
(AP, 8/16/05)
1961 May 29, Uuno Kalervo Klami (60), composer, died.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1961 Sep 1, Eero Saarinen (51), Finnish-US architect (Dulles Airport), died.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1964-1966 Johannes Virolainen (d.2000 at 86) served as prime minister.
(SFC, 12/12/00, p.B4)
1965 Martti Ahtisaari, a primary school teacher, joined the Foreign Ministry.
(SFC, 6/4/99, p.A10)
1967 Emil Petaja (d.2000 at 85), American science fiction writer, authored “Lord of the Green Planet." His 13 novels included a series based on the Kalevala, a Finnish epic poem. These included “Saga of Lost Earth" and “Tramontane."
(SFC, 8/19/00, p.A19)
1972 May 18, Eero Aukusti Sipila (53), Finnish composer, died.
(http://meteli.net/eerosipila)
1972 Finland introduced comprehensive schools, a merger of specialist academic and vocational institutions, in the north and into the rest of the country over the next 4 years. In 2006 Finland ranked at the top in OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.66)
1973 Jul 3, The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) opened in Helsinki with 35 states sending representatives.
(http://tinyurl.com/4wq42s)
1973 Oct 2, Paavo "Flying Finn" Nurmi (b.1897), Finnish runner, died. He won a total of 9 Olympic gold medals and 3 silver medals between 1920 and 1928.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paavo_Nurmi)
1974 In Finland the home of composer Jean Julius Christian Sibelius, near Lake Tuusula, opened as a museum.
(Econ, 2/18/12, ILp.20)
1975 Jul 30, Representatives of 35 countries convened in Finland for a conference on security and human rights that resulted in the Helsinki accords.
(AP, 7/30/00)
1975 Aug 1, A 35-nation summit in Helsinki, Finland, concluded with the signing the Helsinki Accords, dealing with European security, human rights and East-West contacts. The Helsinki Final Act, signed by 35 states, was an attempt to improve the relations between the Communist bloc and the West. The Soviet Union reluctantly signed as a token of East -West détente.
(AP, 8/1/00)(www.hri.org/docs/Helsinki75.html)(Econ, 4/11/20, p.66)
1975 Joonas Kokkonen (1921-1996), Finnish composer, had his opera "The Last Temptations" first performed by the Finnish National Opera. He also composed 4 symphonies and numerous chamber and choral pieces.
(http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=26983)(SFC, 10/3/96, p.C6)
1976 May 11, Alvar Aalto (b.1898), Finnish architect, died. A show in 1998 featured his work and an accompanying book was published that covered his Nordic classicism of the 1920s to the completion of his Finlandia Hall in Helsinki in 1971.
(WSJ, 7/28/00, p.W11C)(www.imdb.com/name/nm2043227/bio)
1987 Jul 28, Klaus Schelkle (20) was killed and his girlfriend Bettina Taxis (22) severely injured in a brutal attack while they were sleeping on the outer deck of the Viking Sally, en route from Stockholm in Sweden to the Finnish port of Turku. Viking Sally was later sold to an Estonian shipping company and sailed under the name of M/S Estonia.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Viking_Sally_murder)(AP, 6/30/21)
1987 In Finland the conservative party broke 21 years of being in the opposition when it joined the Social Democrats in government.
(AP, 2/6/12)
1989 Oct 25, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev began a three-day visit to Finland.
(AP, 10/25/99)
1989 Nov 1, A Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) and Finnair ban on smoking took effect for all Nordic flights.
(http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/13/suppl_1/i20)
1989 Finland’s YLE radio launched a five-minute weekly news program in Latin to a small group of committed listeners around the globe. It inspired Latin students, academics and language lovers around the globe, from China and Vietnam all the way to Belgium and the United States. In 2017 YLE leadership agreed to extend it until at least its 30th anniversary in 2019.
(AP, 12/29/17)
1989 The Finnish ministry of Public health suggested a sex vacation to thwart stress.
(www.sexpo.fi/briefhistory.htm)
1991 Aug 25, Linus Torvalds (b.1969), Finnish software engineer, asked other software developers to comment on a computer operating system he had written, which became known as Linux.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds)(Econ, 8/27/16, p.46)
1991 In Finland government action to rescue banks began with assistance to Skopbank.
(http://tinyurl.com/26dosm)(Econ, 3/22/08, p.88)
1992 Mar 5, In Copenhagen the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden, in the presence of the representative from the European Commission, opened a 2-day meeting and decided to establish a Council of the Baltic Sea States to serve as a forum for guidance and overall coordination among the participating states. Iceland joined the CBSS in 1995
(Econ, 6/7/08, p.63)(www.bmwi.de/English/Navigation/European-policy/baltic-market.html)
1992 Mar 18, Finland formally applies to join the European Communities.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)
1992 Mar, In Finland the US signed the Open Skies Treaty with 26 other nations to promote openness by allowing countries to gather information about each other through unarmed observation flights.
(SFC, 8/5/97, p.A2)
1992 Apr, A state guarantee fund was set up in Finland. When this was restructured in February 1993, parliament resolved that the government would guarantee payments by Finnish banks. At its peak, Finland’s financial assistance to its banks was equivalent to 10% of GDP, offset by collection of receivables and proceeds from the sale of assets. The banks continued to produce operating losses until 1996.
(http://tinyurl.com/26dosm)
1992 The Wife Carrying contest was initiated to revive a 200 year old tradition from when Ronkainen the Robber tested aspiring members of his gang by making them carry huge sacks on their backs through an obstacle course. Cash prizes and the wife’s weight in beer was awarded to the winners.
(SFEC, 7/5/98, p.A2)
1994 Mar 1, Martti Ahtisaari was inaugurated as President of Finland.
(SFC, 6/4/99, p.A10)(SC, 3/1/02)
1994 Finland’s parliament banned the import and export of spent nuclear fuel. It later planned to isolate its own stockpile in the Onkalo repository on the island of Olkiluoto.
(Econ, 4/15/17, p.51, 52)
1995 Jan 1, Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the European Union. Sweden held their elections to the parliament later that year on 17 September. Austria held its elections on 13 October, 1996 and Finland on 20 October, 1996.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_European_Union)(Econ, 5/1/04, p.26)
1995 Mar 19, Finnish voters throw out the center-right coalition government and give the opposition Social Democratic Party its biggest election victory since World War II.
(AP, 3/19/02)
1995 In Finland the eurosceptic, nationalist and anti-immigration Finns Party was co-founded by Timo Soini. He took over as its leader in 1997, a position he held for 20 years. In the 2011 elections it won 19 percent of the vote, but refused at the time to enter the government, which it deemed too pro-European.
(AP, 6/13/17)
1995 Finnish hunting regulations began protecting wolverines. The increasing wolverine population soon began impacting the reindeer population.
(Econ, 12/24/16, p.26)
1996 Mar, Motorcycle gang Bandido leader Jarkko Kokko was shot dead on a central Helsinki street.
(SFEC, 8/11/96, p.A13)
1996 May, The Finnish food company Raisio Group has invented a new product that blocks the body’s absorption of cholesterol. The new “pharmafood" is called benecol and based on a plant extract known as beta sitostanol, a plant sterol extracted from Nordic pine trees.
(WSJ, 5/31/96, p.B3C)
1996 Jun, Finland’s latest unemployment rate was 16.7%.
(SFC, 6/9/96, Par, p.9)
1996 Sep 19, The Arctic Council was founded to promote joint scientific research and to study pollution, conservation and mapping. The Ottawa Declaration named eight members of the Arctic Council: Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the United States, Sweden and Finland. The first step towards the formation of the Council occurred in 1991 when eight Arctic countries signed the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS).
(Econ, 3/24/12, p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Council)
1997 Mar 20, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin met in Helsinki for talks on arms control and NATO expansion. They agreed to negotiate a new arms accord to reduce strategic warheads, and to give Russia a more formal role in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations.
(WSJ, 3/21/97, p.A1)(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A1)(AP, 3/20/98)
1997 Mar 21, President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin wrapped up their summit in Helsinki, Finland, still deadlocked over NATO expansion, but able to agree on slashing nuclear weapons arsenals.
(AP, 3/21/02)
1998 May, The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by Steven Holl, opened in Helsinki. The name was taken after the Greek word for intersection, the x shape of the letter chi, and meant it to stand for a synthesis of building and landscape.
(WSJ, 5/14/98, p.A20)
1998 Jul 4, In the annual Wife Carrying World Championships, 2 Estonian couples won top honors in the 278 yard course in Sonkajarvi.
(SFEC, 7/5/98, p.A2)
1998 Jun, The Tampere Convention was negotiated in Finland to end excessive import duties and minimize barriers across national borders for telecommunications under emergency situations.
(SFC, 11/18/98, p.C5)
1998 Dec, Martii Ahtisaari served as president.
(WSJ, 12/17/98, p.A10)
1999 Jan 1, The Maastricht Treaty specified that a monetary union will be established by this date, and laid down several criteria that EU nations must fulfill in order to join. Some of the criteria included: maximum budget deficits of 3% of GDP, a cap on government debt of 60% of GDP. The European economic and monetary union (EMU) was scheduled to start with a new "Euro" currency. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain made the transition. Public use was set for Jan 1, 2002.
(WSJ, 9/25/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 12/5/95, p.A-14)(SFC, 11/16/96, p.A1)(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A8)
1999 Feb 12, In Finland the parliament voted 171 to 4 to reduce the president's influence on foreign affairs and government formation.
(SFC, 2/13/99, p.A5)
1999 Mar 21, In Finland the ruling social Democrats under Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen lost 12 seats but kept 51 in the 200-member Eduskunta. The Center Party gained 4 seats with voter frustration over unemployment.
(SFC, 3/22/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/22/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 27, Maria Butyrskaya of Russia won the World Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki, Finland; defending champion Michelle Kwan of the United States finished second.
(AP, 3/27/00)
1999 May 17, Pres. Martti Ahtisaari, appointed as the new Balkans mediator, consulted with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
(SFC, 5/18/99, p.A8)
1999 Aug 7, In Finland the village of Kutemajarvi planned a sex fair for people over age 45 to commemorate the UN designation of 1999 as the Int'l. Year of Older Persons.
(SFC, 1/16/99, p.A12)
1999 Dec 9, European leaders gathered in Helsinki for an EU summit. On the agenda was the creation of a defense force, expansion to 28 members and clearing the path for Turkey to join.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.D4)
1999 The Finnish film "Juha" by Aki Kaurismaki was a silent black and white work based on a classic 1911 novel. It starred Sakari Kuosmanen and Kati Outinen.
(SFC, 4/22/99, p.E4)
1999 Finland’s government began issuing electronic ID cards.
(Econ, 2/9/13, p.60)
1999 Finland’s government updated some laws on fines for traffic violations and based fines on net income rather than gross income.
(WSJ, 1/02/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 6, In Finland Tarja Halonen was elected as the 1st woman Prime Minister over Esko Aho 51.5-48.4%.
(SFC, 2/7/00, p.A14)
2000 Mar 1, Tarja Halonen assumed office as Finland’s first female president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarja_Halonen)
2000 Mar, Annikki Luukela, a light artist, designed and installed 45 moving lamps in the Washington DC Metro station under a commission by Helsinki Mayor Eva-Riita Siitonen.
(SFEC, 4/2/00, p.T3)
2000 Martti Ahtisaari founded the Helsinki-based Crisis Management Initiative, a non-governmental conflict resolution organization.
(Econ, 7/2/11, p.50)
2001 Jun 27, Tove Jansson (b.1914), writer and creator of the Moomin family of trolls, died in Finland. She began her 1st Moomin book in 1939. The Swedish-speaking Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966. In 2014 Tuula Karjalainen’s “Tove Jansson: Work and Love" became available in English.
(SFC, 7/17/01, p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tove_Jansson)
2001 Aug 26, The 6th Annual Air Guitar World Championship was held in Oulu.
(WSJ, 8/29/01, p.A1)
2002 Oct 11, In Vantaa, Finland, a blast in the Myyrmanni shopping mall of suburban Helsinki killed 7 people, including chemistry student Petri Gerdt (19), the suspected bomber. 80 others were injured.
(AP, 10/12/02)(SSFC, 10/12/02, p.A20)(SFC, 10/16/02, p.A14)
2003 Apr 14, In Finland 3 political parties agreed to form a center-left government led by Anneli Jaatteenmaki.
(AP, 4/14/03)
2003 Apr 15, Finnish lawmakers appointed Anneli Jaatteenmaki the country's first female prime minister, making Finland the only state in Europe with women as president and premier.
(AP, 4/15/03)
2003 Jun 18, In Finland PM Anneli Jaatteenki resigned amid accusations that she lied about sensitive political information during her election campaign.
(SFC, 6/19/03, p.A14)
2003 Jun 24, Finland's parliament elected Matti Vanhanen as PM.
(SFC, 6/25/03, p.A3)
2003 Jul 6, The annual Wife Carrying World Championship took place in Sonkajarvi, Finland.
(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.A1)
2003 Finland commissioned a new nuclear reactor. It was the 1st order in Western Europe in 13 years.
(WSJ, 9/22/05, p.B6)
2004 Jan 16, Kalevi Sorsa (73), Finland's longest serving prime minister, died. Sorsa headed four coalition governments from 1972 to 1987 and led the Social Democrats, Finland's largest party, for 12 years.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Feb 17, Finnish technology group Setec said it won the first order for passports with new biometric technology required by international aviation authorities and the U.S. government.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Feb 28, In Finland hundreds of trucks prepared to roll onto frozen roads at midnight, stocked with beer and hard cider for a population that eagerly awaits a historic government measure that will cut alcohol prices by nearly 40 percent.
(AP, 2/28/04)
2004 Mar 19, In southern Finland a bus crashed into a truck in icy conditions, killing 24 people and injuring 15.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 22, The Finnish Foreign Ministry said two Finnish businessmen were shot and killed in Baghdad.
(AP, 3/22/04)
2004 Apr 15, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, became the 1st recipient of Finland’s $1.2 million Millennium Technology Prize.
(Econ, 5/14/05, p.84)(www.infoworld.com/article/04/04/16/HNbernerslee_1.html)
2004 Nov 2, More than 3,000 workers walked out of 22 UPM-Kymmene forest industry plants throughout Finland, in a 24-hour strike to protest the timber and paper products company's planned layoffs and closures.
(AP, 11/2/04)
2005 Jan 1, Finland was forecast for 3% annual GDP growth with a population at 5.3 million and GDP per head at $37,740.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.88)
2005 Apr 16, A Finnish mediator said Aceh rebels and Indonesian government delegates have made a "breakthrough" at peace talks on the tsunami-ravaged province, and will continue negotiations in Finland May 26-31.
(AP, 4/16/05)
2005 May 20, The Finnish paper industry, which accounts for 15% of world production, remained at a standstill after labor talks between unions and employers ended without resolution.
(AP, 5/20/05)
2005 Jul 16, In Finland Indonesia's government and Aceh rebels reached a tentative peace deal to end a 29-year insurgency in the tsunami-devastated province. They agreed to sign a peace accord on Aug 15 in exchange for more autonomy.
(AP, 7/17/05)(WSJ, 7/18/05, p.A1)
2005 Aug 6-2005 Aug 14, Helsinki, Finland, hosted the 10th IAAF World Championships. The International Amateur Athletic Federation was founded in 1912 by 17 national athletic federations who saw the need for a governing authority, for an athletic program, for standardized technical equipment and world records.
(www.helsinki2005.fi/index.php?&Lang=eng)
2005 Nov 16, Nokia Corp. said it is paying $430 million to acquire Intellisync Corp., a provider of wireless e-mail service for cellular carriers, adding to the mobile phone maker's growing arsenal of products to compete with BlackBerry.
(AP, 11/16/05)
2005 Dec 2, A Finnish man was jailed for 11 years for sexually abusing dozens of boys during trips to Thailand in what the court called the biggest pedophile case in Finland's history. Jouko Jaatinen (43) was detained in April on suspicion of molesting at least 445 Thai boys aged 13 or younger over the last 15 years and creating massive amounts of pornography.
(AP, 12/02/05)
2005 In Olkiluoto, Finland, construction began on a 1,630-megawatt reactor, the first generation 3 European Pressurized Water Reactor, a joint venture between France's nuclear plant builder Areva SA and Germany's Siemens AG. Completion was expected in 2009. Soaring costs and delays pushed the opening date to 2018.
(www.hightechfinland.com/2006/energy/energy/en_GB/tvo/)(Econ, 10/24/15, p.64)
2006 Jan 15, Finnish President Tarja Halonen won the first round of the country's presidential election, but failed to obtain an absolute majority and will be forced into a runoff.
(AP, 1/15/06)
2006 Jan 29, Finland's first female president said she was confident of re-election in a runoff vote. Polls suggested a close race after a steady surge in support for her conservative challenger. Pres. Tarja Halonen clinched a narrow re-election victory over a rival with a pro-alliance agenda. She won a new six-year term with 51.8 percent of the vote.
(AP, 1/29/06)(AFP, 1/30/06)
2006 Feb 14, Sanyo and Nokia announced they will set up a joint venture to make advanced cell phones, underlining the ambitions of the Japanese and Finnish manufacturers to grow globally in the competitive mobile market.
(AP, 2/14/06)
2006 Mar 25, It was reported that Finnish 15-year-olds have the highest level of mathematical skills, scientific knowledge and reading literacy of any rich industrialized country.
(Econ, 3/25/06, p.58)
2006 May 20, Lordi, a Finnish metal band with monster masks and apocalyptic lyrics, won the Eurovision contest in Greece.
(AP, 5/21/06)
2006 Jun 1, Jorma Ollila stepped down as chief of Finland’s Nokia Corp. He was succeeded by Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. The new Nokia Nseries included the N73 camera-phone; the N91 phone, which doubled as an iPod-style music player; the N92, a mobile TV; and the N93, a mobile video camera.
(Econ, 5/27/06, p.64)
2006 Jul 1, Finland began its 6-month rotating presidency of the EU.
(www.government.fi/eu/suomi-ja-eu/2006/en.jsp)
2006 Sep 9, In Finland leaders and top officials from 38 Asian and European nations gathered in Helsinki for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). The agenda included security issues, trade and global warming.
(AFP, 9/10/06)
2006 Sep 11, In Helsinki, Finland, European and Asian leaders representing nearly half the world's population promised to work to reduce global warming, to get world trade talks back on track and to keep up the battle against terrorism. They pledged to set new carbon dioxide emissions targets that go beyond those now set for 2012 under the UN's Kyoto Protocol.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 Oct 20, In Lahti, Finland, 25 EU leaders held a one-day summit on energy. Russian President Vladimir Putin defended his government's tough stance on Georgia and dodged EU leaders' demands that he commit to a legally binding energy charter that would guarantee better access to Russia's oil and gas fields.
(AP, 10/20/06)
2006 Oct 25, In Finland the US and the EU ended a 2-day meeting on cleaner energy. They agreed on tighter cooperation on renewable energy and other environmental policies despite splits over the UN’s Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
(WSJ, 10/26/06, p.A6)
2006 Nov 6, Transparency International, a watchdog group, reported that nearly three-quarters of 163 countries ranked in a new survey suffer from a perception of serious corruption, while in nearly half it is seen as rampant. Finland, Iceland and New Zealand ranked as the least corrupt, while Haiti, Guinea and Myanmar ranked as most corrupt.
(AP, 11/6/06)(Econ, 11/11/06, p.69)
2006 Dec 4, The Estlink cable connected power grids of the Baltic States with Finland. The cost of Estlink, which measures 100 kilometers (60 miles), was around 110 million euros (132 million dollars). It was built by Swiss-Swedish group ABB.
(AP, 12/4/06)
2006 Dec 8, In Finland officials said alcohol is now the leading killer of Finnish adults, with consumption reaching an all-time high last year.
(AP, 12/9/06)
2007 Jan 8, In Finland 2 newspaper editors were fined for publishing a letter that said violence against Jews was justified and that the Holocaust was acceptable.
(AP, 1/9/07)
2007 Feb 15, Nokia, the world's leading maker of mobile phones, said it would shed some 700 jobs, with Finland taking the brunt of the cuts.
(AFP, 2/15/07)
2007 Feb, In Finland "The Prime Minister's Bride," a book by Susan Kuronen (36), a twice-divorced mother of three and the former girlfriend of PM Matti Vanhanen, was released as parliamentary campaigning began. It immediately hit the country's nonfiction best seller list.
(AP, 3/15/07)
2007 Mar 18, Finns voted in a parliamentary election in a tight race between PM Matti Vanhanen's Center Party, its left-leaning coalition partner and the Conservative opposition. The ruling centrist party of PM Matti Vanhanen retained power. The Center Party won 23.1% of the vote while the Conservatives had 22.3% and the Social Democrats 21.4%, according to provisional results.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 May 12, In Finland Bosnia-Herzegovina opened this year's Eurovision Song Contest. Marija Serifovic from Serbia won the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest at the Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, early Sunday May 13, 2007 with a song entitled 'Prayer.'
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 23, A bomb in northern Afghanistan killed a Finnish soldier and an Afghan civilian, while a suicide attacker in Kabul killed two people, including a policeman. Two operations in southern Afghanistan killed 18 suspected militants, including seven "foreigners," while six people died when a stash of ammunition exploded in the east.
(AP, 5/23/07)(AP, 5/24/07)
2007 Jun 2, Iran detained 3 Finns for allegedly straying into its territorial waters during a fishing trip in the Persian Gulf. In June 6 Iran agreed to release them.
(AP, 6/6/07)
2007 Aug 31, In Finland representatives of feuding Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq began a 2-day meeting at a seminar behind closed doors to discuss ways of ending the bloodshed.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2007 Sep 26, Transparency International's 2007 index ranked Myanmar and Somalia as the most corrupt nations. Both received the lowest score of 1.4 out of 10. Denmark, Finland and New Zealand were ranked the least corrupt, each scoring 9.4.
(AP, 9/26/07)
2007 Oct 1, Nokia Corp. said it is buying US navigation-software maker Navteq Corp. for around $8.1 billion as the world's largest mobile phone maker continues to expand services and content.
(AP, 10/1/07)
2007 Oct 5, Finland’s justice ministry said PM Matti Vanhanen is suing his ex-girlfriend for revealing details of their relationship in a tell-all book published earlier this year.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2007 Nov 7, In southern Finland 8 people were killed and 11 wounded after Pekka-Eric Auvinen (18) opened fire at Jokela High School in Tuusula. He then shot himself in the head and died hours later in a hospital.
(AP, 11/7/07)(AP, 11/8/07)
2007 Nov 8, Nordic countries again dominated the World Economic Forum's ranking of gender-equal countries. New Zealand squeezed into the top five and the US fell to 31st place. Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland retained the top four spots in the 2007 Gender Gap Index released by the Swiss-based think tank.
(Reuters, 11/8/07)
2007 Nov 9, Finland said it will raise the minimum age for buying guns from 15 to 18 in the wake of the Nov 7 rampage by a teenage student.
(SFC, 11/10/07, p.A3)
2008 Jan 15, Finland's Nokia, the top global mobile phone manufacturer, said that it planned to close a factory in Germany by mid-year which employs 2,300 workers.
(AFP, 1/15/08)
2008 Feb 1, Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient's upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen.
(Reuters, 2/1/08)
2008 Apr 8, Chilean police said Marko Kulju (26), a Finnish tourist who chipped an earlobe off an ancient Moai on Easter Island, is being allowed to go home after paying a US$17,000 (euro10,830) fine and agreeing not to return for three years.
(AP, 4/9/08)
2008 Apr 19, In southern Spain a crash of a bus filled with Finnish tourists left nine people dead near the resort town of Benalmadena. Police arrested the driver of the other vehicle, who was not seriously injured, after he failed a blood alcohol test.
(AP, 4/20/08)
2008 Jun 15, In northern Finland an 88-year-old man killed his two disabled adult daughters and shot his bedridden wife before turning the gun on himself.
(AP, 6/16/08)
2008 Sep 1, Some three weeks before the Slovenian parliamentary elections, allegations were made in Finnish TV in a documentary broadcast by the Finnish national broadcasting company YLE that Slovenia’s PM Jansa had received bribes from the Finnish defense company Patria (73.2% of which is the property of the Finnish government) in the so-called Patria case. Jansa rejected all accusations as a media conspiracy concocted by left-wing Slovenian journalists, and asked YLE to provide evidence or to retract the story. Jansa's naming of individual journalists, including some of those behind the 2007 Petition Against Political Pressure on Slovenian Journalists, and the perceived use of diplomatic channels in an attempt to coerce the Finnish government into interfering with YLE editorial policy, drew criticism from media freedom organizations such as the International Press Institute.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janez_Jan%C5%A1a)
2008 Sep 23, In western Finland Matti Juhani Saari (22), whose violent YouTube postings made police bring him in for questioning, opened fire at his trade school, killing 8 women and 2 men before shooting himself.
(AP, 9/23/08)(AP, 9/24/08)
2008 Oct 10, Finland's ex-president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to build a lasting peace from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Middle East. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it honored Ahtisaari for important efforts over more than three decades to resolve international conflicts.
(AP, 10/10/08)
2008 Oct 21, Top US and Russian military officers held an unannounced meeting in Helsinki in an effort to maintain dialogue after Moscow's crushing defeat of American ally Georgia.
(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2008 Nov 20, Finland's Finance Ministry said four Nordic countries will lend Iceland $2.5 billion (euro1.98 billion) to help the country recover from its economic meltdown.
(AP, 11/20/08)
2009 Mar 4, The Finnish Parliament approved controversial legislation that allows employers to track workers' e-mails.
(AP, 3/4/09)
2009 Jul, Slovenian prosecutors charged a Finnish journalist who had quoted unnamed sources alleging that former PM Janez Jansa (2004-2008) had taken bribes.
(Econ, 10/24/09, p.62)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janez_Jan%C5%A1a)
2009 Sep 8, Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom SA said they intend to combine their British mobile phone units, shaking up the country's intensely competitive market and forming the country's biggest mobile operator. Analysts said Nokia Siemens Networks, the key equipment vendor to British operations of Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, had most to lose in the merger.
(AP, 9/8/09)(Reuters, 9/8/09)
2009 Oct 30, The 16-deck Oasis of the Seas, the world's largest cruise liner, began its maiden voyage to Florida, gliding out from a shipyard in Finland with an amphitheater, basketball courts and an ice rink on board. The ship cost euro1 billion ($1.5 billion) and took two and a half years to build at the STX Finland Oy shipyard in Turku.
(AP, 10/30/09)
2009 Nov 3, Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture between Finland's Nokia Corp. and Siemens AG of Germany, said it will lay off up to 5,700 workers globally as part of a move to cut annual costs by euro500 million ($740 million).
(AP, 11/3/09)
2009 Nov 5, Finland and Sweden approved a Baltic Sea pipeline project that would ship Russian natural gas to Germany, clearing two key obstacles for construction to begin next year.
(AP, 11/5/09)
2009 Dec 31, In Finland Ibrahim Shkupolli (43) shot himself at his home in Espoo after going on a rampage that killed his ex-girlfriend, then four other people at a local shopping mall where she also worked.
(AP, 12/31/09)
2010 Jan 21, Finland’s Nokia Corp. said it will offer free navigation services globally for users of its smart phones, in a drive to counter a similar move by Google Inc.
(AP, 1/21/10)
2010 Feb 15, Nokia, the world's biggest maker of mobile handsets, said it would merge its Linux Maemo software platform, used in its flagship N900 phone, with Intel's Moblin, which is also based on Linux open-sourced software, to create a new platform, MeeGo. The software deal was set to boost Intel's chances of getting its chips into the cellphones of the Finnish company, which controls around 40% of the global phone market.
(Reuters, 2/15/10)
2010 Mar 26, In Finland Juha Turunen, a corporate lawyer, was convicted of kidnapping heiress Minna Nurminen (26) and holding her captive for two weeks in 2009 until her family paid a multimillion euro (dollar) ransom. He had admitted during the trial that he had kidnapped Nurminen and held her captive at an apartment in Turku, western Finland. She was released unharmed and police recovered the ransom money.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 26, In Finland Juha Turunen, a corporate lawyer, was convicted of kidnapping heiress Minna Nurminen (26) and holding her captive for two weeks in 2009 until her family paid a multimillion euro (dollar) ransom. He had admitted during the trial that he had kidnapped Nurminen and held her captive at an apartment in Turku, western Finland. She was released unharmed and police recovered the ransom money.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Jun 9, The Technology Academy of Finland awarded Michael Graetzel of Switzerland, a German-born chemist, the international Millennium Technology Prize for inventing low-cost solar cells used in renewable energy. The prize included euro800,000 ($960,000).
(AP, 6/9/10)
2010 Jun 11, A Finnish court sentenced former Rwandan pastor, Francois Bazaramba, to life imprisonment for committing genocide against the Tutsi minority in his home country in 1994.
(AP, 6/11/10)
2010 Jun 18, Finnish PM Matti Vanhanen resigned to allow the ruling Center Party's new leader, Mari Kiviniemi (41) to succeed him as the head of the country's coalition government.
(AP, 6/18/10)(SFC, 6/19/10, p.A2)
2010 Jul 13, Divers found bottles of champagne in a wreck near the Aland Islands between Finland and Sweden. 5 bottles of dark, foamy beer wee later recovered while salvaging the champagne. The shipwreck was believed to be from the early 19th century. In 2011 Finnish scientists said they hoped to re-brew an old ale after studying the ancient beer found in the shipwreck. On June 8, 2012, 11 bottles of the champagne were auctioned for over $156,000.
(http://tinyurl.com/4kawd2n)(AP, 2/8/11)(SFC, 6/9/12, p.D3)
2010 Sep 3, Finland and Sweden urged the European Union to create an independent peace institute to broaden the scope of the bloc's peacekeeping efforts around the world.
(AP, 9/3/10)
2010 Sep 10, Finland’s Nokia Corp. said it is replacing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with top Microsoft executive Stephen Elop as the world's top handset maker aims to regain lost ground in the fiercely competitive smartphone market.
(AP, 9/10/10)
2010 Sep 11, In Finland Hossein Alizadeh (45), a senior official at the Iranian embassy, said that he has resigned from his post to join the political opposition against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Alizadeh's mission in Finland had ended on August 20.
(AP, 9/11/10)(AFP, 9/11/10)
2010 Sep 14, Nokia, the Finnish phone giant, unveiled of 3 new touchscreen smartphones.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/20100914/tc_ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc3609)
2010 Oct 1, In Finland tobacco sales were pushed under shop counters as a new law, set to progress in stages, came into effect. Finland is the first country to target an end to smoking through legal means.
(AP, 10/2/10)
2010 Oct 21, Finland’s Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, announced 1,800 jobs cuts right on the heels of stellar third-quarter results and just one month after a new chief executive took the helm.
(AFP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 29, In Finland the Allure of the Seas, the second in a pair of the largest cruise liners in the world, set sail for its new home port in Florida. Sister ship, the Oasis of the Seas, was also delivered to Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines last year with a price tag of about $1.5 billion.
(AP, 10/29/10)
2011 Feb 11, Finland’s Nokia corp. announced plans to make Microsoft Windows its primary software in the competition for smart-phone customers.
(SFC, 2/12/11, p.D1)
2011 Mar 29, Finland’s Nokia said it is suing Apple in the United States for allegedly infringing patents in "virtually all" of its mobile phones, portable music players, tablets and computers.
(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Apr 17, Finns turned out in droves for a parliamentary vote marked by the meteoric rise of the nationalist True Finns party, which could tip the political scale to the right and even block Finnish approval of EU bailouts. The pro-EU conservative National Coalition Party topped the vote with 44 seats but the coalition it previously belonged to no longer held a parliamentary majority. As a result, the party is expected to begin difficult negotiations on forming a new government with at least one euroskeptic party. The nationalist True Finns gained 33 seats to 39 vs 42 for the Social Democrats.
(AFP, 4/17/11)(AP, 4/18/11)(SFC, 4/18/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 17, In Finland 6 parties across the political spectrum united to form a government, saving Finland from the embarrassment of having no prime minister at a key European Union summit next week.
(AP, 6/17/11)
2011 Jul 8, A 225-page international review showing wide variances of Internet freedom gave Finland the best marks for making citizens' access to a broadband connection a legal right. The report was presented at OSCE headquarters in Vienna.
(AP, 7/8/11)
2011 Aug 18, Four EU countries (Austria, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia) said they want hundreds of millions of euros in collateral as security for a bailout of Greece. Finland had just struck a deal with Greece for cash collateral on Aug 16.
(SFC, 8/19/11, p.A2)
2011 Sep 7, Finland arrested two Somali people, a man (34) and a woman (28), on suspicion of financing terrorism and performing terror recruitment activities. They had foreign backgrounds and their alleged actions were not aimed at Finland. The woman, released in October, was ordered not to leave the country.
(AP, 9/17/11)(AP, 10/7/11)
2011 Dec 21, Finnish officials said they have found around 160 tons of explosives and 69 surface-to-air Patriot missiles on a cargo ship bearing a British flag and ultimately destined for China. They didn't know the origin of the missiles or who was supposed to receive them.
(AP, 12/21/11)
2011 Dec 26, A British-registered ship, the M/S Thor Liberty, held in a Finnish port after authorities discovered 69 surface-to-air missiles and 160 tons of explosives onboard, received permission to travel again, but without those materials or its captain. The Patriot missiles were an official shipment from Germany to South Korea. Finnish authorities said the explosives were a legitimate shipment for China, but the missiles lacked proper transit documents, and the explosives weren't safely stored. On Jan 4 the Finnish government authorized the transport.
(AP, 12/26/11)(AP, 1/4/12)
2011 Finland's population was about 5.3 million.
(AP, 4/17/11)
2012 Jan 22, Finns voted for a new president. The front-runner, ex-finance minister Sauli Niinisto, won 37% setting up a 2nd round on Feb 5. Pekka Haavisto of the Greens Party was second with 18.8%. Finland's 12th president since independence from Russia in 1917 will replace Tarja Halonen.
(AP, 1/22/12)(SFC, 1/23/12, p.A2)
2012 Feb 5, Finland voters chose a leader in a runoff between a veteran conservative and the first openly gay candidate from the small Greens party. Former Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto (63) won the runoff election with 63 percent of the votes against Greens candidate Pekka Haavisto (53) with 37 percent. This restored the National Coalition Party to the presidency after 56 years and giving it the nation's two top posts for the first time.
(AP, 2/5/12)(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 May 26, In Finland police arrested an 18-year-old gunman who killed two people and wounded seven others in what appeared to be a random shooting in the southern town of Hyvinkaa. Finland has some 650,000 officially recognized gun owners in a population of 5.4 million people, with strong hunting traditions.
(AP, 5/26/12)
2012 Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen (b.1977) authored “When the Doves Disappeared." It was set in Estonia as the country was caught between Stalin’s hammer and Hitler’s anvil. In 2015 it was translated to English by Lola Rogers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofi_Oksanen)(Econ, 5/2/15, p.74)
2013 Feb 8, Finnish customs officers confiscated a container on a Finnish freighter, en route to Syria from Russia, because it did not have a transit license and found 9.6 tons of tank spare parts.
(AP, 2/15/13)
2013 Mar 9, Max Jakobson (89), a former Finnish diplomat, died. He helped shape his country's policy of neutrality during the Cold War.
(AP, 3/21/13)
2013 Sep 2, Microsoft Corp. announced that it is buying Nokia Corp.'s line-up of smartphones and a portfolio of patents and services for 5.44 billion euros ($7.2 billion) in an attempt to strengthen its fight with Apple Inc. and Google Inc. to capture a slice of the lucrative mobile computing market.
(AP, 9/3/13)
2013 Oct 10, In western Finland Thursday a 16-year-old boy stabbed and seriously injured four people at a vocational training college in Oulu. Three of the victims were women under the age of 20 and the fourth was the school's caretaker, a 21-year-old man.
(AFP, 10/10/13)
2013 Oct 22, Finland-based Nokia showed off its first tablet in Abu Dhabi, the Lumia 2520, at its last launch party as much of the company faced acquisition by Microsoft.
(Econ, 10/26/13, p.73)
2014 Mar, In Finland a man and a woman were arrested for plotting to kill about 50 people in an attack at the University of Helsinki. They were also charged with weapons possession. The suspects had met online and discussed the massacre using encrypted emails.
(AP, 5/26/14)
2014 Apr 9, Stuart Parkin (58) won the Finnish 1 million-euro ($1.3 million) Millennium Technology Prize for discoveries leading to a thousand-fold increase in digital data storage on magnetic disks. The British-American physicist directed the IBM-Stanford spintronic science center in California.
(AP, 4/9/14)
2014 Apr 25, Finland-based Nokia said it has completed the 5.44 billion-euro ($7.5 billion) sale of its troubled cellphone and services division to Microsoft Corp.
(AP, 4/25/14)
2014 Jun 3, Finnish police officers found the bodies of 5 dead babies in packages in a basement cupboard of an apartment building in the western city of Oulu after they were alerted to the scene by emergency services. A woman (35) was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
(AP, 6/4/14)
2014 Jun 24, In Finland former European affairs minister Alexander Stubb took over as the head of the conservative-led government after PM Jyrki Katainen resigned to pursue a position in the European Commission.
(AP, 6/24/14)
2014 Jul 24, In western Afghanistan gunmen riding on a motorcycle opened fire and killed two Finnish women aid workers in Herat.
(AP, 7/24/14)
2014 Aug 15, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto told his counterpart Vladimir Putin that Western sanctions against Moscow and the food ban Russia introduced in response were damaging bilateral ties and proposed to seek ways to end the Ukraine crisis.
(Reuters, 8/15/14)
2014 Sep 18, Finland’s government extended a license to Finnish-Russian consortium Fennovoima to build a nuclear reactor in Pyhajoki. In response the environmentalist Green Party said it's dropping out of the coalition government.
(AP, 9/18/14)
2014 Sep 26, The head of Interpol, based in Lyon, France, said an international database of foreign would-be jihadis joining extremists in Iraq and Syria that started 18 months ago with little fanfare, and just three countries participating, has expanded to include 33 countries and 1,300 names.
(AP, 9/26/14)
2014 Oct 30, Researchers in Sweden said they have identified genetic variations at two key sites the human genome that may distinguish extremely violent individuals following a study of some 794 convicts in Finland.
(SFC, 10/31/14, p.A7)(Econ, 11/1/14, p.75)
2014 Nov 13, Eight northern European nations (Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden) agreed to step up cooperation to counter an increase in Moscow's military activity that has included a tripling of NATO intercepts of Russian jets this year.
(Reuters, 11/13/14)
2015 Apr 15, Finland-based Nokia said it is to buy ailing French telecom company Alcatel-Lucent for around 15.6 billion euros ($16.5 billion) through a public exchange of shares in France and the United States.
(AP, 4/15/15)
2015 Apr 19, Finland held elections. A three year recession has put Juha Sipila, a self-effacing millionaire businessman and leader of the opposition Center Party, in a clear lead in all recent opinion polls. The Center Party took 49 seats of 200 seats. The Eurosceptic True Finns party took 19% of the vote and 38 seats.
(AP, 4/19/15)(Econ., 4/25/15, p.50)
2015 Apr 28, The Finnish military fired handheld underwater depth charges as a warning against a suspected submarine in waters near Helsinki.
(Reuters, 4/28/15)
2015 May 7, Finland's likely next prime minister Juha Sipila said that he plans to form a government coalition with the populist, eurosceptic The Finns Party, which wants a tougher line on eurozone bailouts and tighter immigration restrictions.
(Reuters, 5/7/15)
2015 Aug 8, Finland detained a Russian citizen, Maxim Senakh, at the request of US federal authorities on computer fraud charges. Senakh was accused in the state of Minnesota of infecting computer servers with malware, resulting in criminal gains worth millions of dollars. Russia later called the move illegal.
(Reuters, 8/27/15)
2015 Sep 5, Finnish PM Juha Sipila offered to host refugees at his country home.
(AFP, 9/5/15)
2015 Sep 10, Finland proposed increasing capital gains tax and income tax on high earners to help pay for a 10-fold increase in refugees expected to arrive this year.
(Reuters, 9/10/15)
2015 Sep 18, In Finland a one-day strike halted public transportation and shut down ports nationwide as workers protested against government cutbacks aimed at trying to drag the Nordic country out of a three-year economic downturn.
(AP, 9/18/15)
2015 Sep 19, Finland started border checks for asylum seekers arriving from Sweden in the northern town of Tornio, while people there demonstrated against a growing influx of refugees.
(Reuters, 9/19/15)
2015 Sep 25, Finland's government condemned a racist protest in which demonstrators -- including one dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit -- attacked a bus transporting asylum seekers in the early hours today.
(AFP, 9/25/15)
2015 Oct 12, In Finland Iraqi asylum seekers rallied in central Helsinki and signed a petition against plans to negotiate a deal with Baghdad that could lead to their deportation, arguing that their country should not be considered safe.
(Reuters, 10/12/15)
2015 Oct 30, Coast Guard leaders from the US, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden signed an agreement setting up the Arctic Coast Guard Forum dedicated to stewardship of Arctic waters.
(SFC, 10/31/15, p.A4)
2015 Nov 4, Finland said it has suspended its decision-making process for Afghani asylum claims due to an ongoing assessment of the security situation in the country. It said it would also review EU practices and the possibility of returning people to Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 11/4/15)
2015 Nov 12, Finland became the first country in the world to give a construction license for a permanent underground nuclear waste repository. It approved Posiva Oy's plan to construct a spent nuclear fuel encapsulation plant and disposal facility at the island of Olkiluoto. Up to 6,500 tons of uranium may be deposited in the facility.
(Reuters, 11/12/15)
2015 Dec 10, Finnish police said they have arrested two Iraqi brothers believed to have been members of the Islamic State group in Iraq and suspected of fatally shooting "11 unarmed and defenseless prisoners" in June 2014.
(AP, 12/10/15)
2016 Jan 23, Finland began a 2nd government sanctioned trial wolf hunt permitting the cull of 46 wolves until Feb 21. In 2015 17 wolves were killed. Wolf hunting was banned in the country from 2007 to 2015.
(SFC, 1/23/16, p.A2)
2016 Mar 11, In Finland over 3,000 farmers with some 600 tractors gathered on a central Helsinki square in a protest urging the government to support the country's agricultural sector suffering on decreasing food prices and EU's Russia sanctions.
(AP, 3/11/16)
2016 Mar 22, Finland's Defense Ministry said its website had come under a cyberattack that forced it divert web traffic to a temporary site. The latest incident coincided with talks in Moscow between Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on cross-border cooperation and international issues including Ukraine and Syria.
(Reuters, 3/22/16)
2016 Apr 29, An expert panel told the Finnish government that Finland could expect "harsh" reactions from Russia if it decided to join NATO, but would be better off doing so together with neighboring Sweden.
(AP, 4/29/16)
2016 May 13, President Barack Obama welcomed a group of Nordic leaders to the White House and celebrated the five Nordic nations (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) as models of reliability, equality, generosity, responsibility, even personal happiness. Obama said that he and the five Nordic nations agreed on the need to maintain sanctions against Russia.
(AP, 5/13/16)(Reuters, 5/13/16)
2016 Jun 17, Finland police in Vihti, northwest of Helsinki, dispatched several officers to a property late today. They were targeted by gunfire as they approached the house and one shot fatally wounded a policeman (30) and seriously wounded another. The shooter (73) committed suicide.
(AP, 6/18/16)
2016 Jul 2, In Finland eight Cuban volleyball players were arrested following allegations that a woman was raped at a hotel where the team was staying in Tampere, 170 km (105 miles) north of Helsinki. Two were later released. On June 30, 2017, a Finnish court of appeal cut the prison sentences of five Cuban volleyball players jailed for aggravated rape in the southwestern city of Turku.
(AP, 8/29/16)(AFP, 9/20/16)(AFP, 6/30/17)
2016 Jul 8, Leaders of the NATO military alliance met in Warsaw and began a landmark summit that will order ambitious actions against a daunting array of dangers to the security of their nations and citizenry, including a rearmed and increasingly unfriendly Russia to Europe's east and violent Islamic extremism to the south. Finland and Sweden joined NATO leaders at the top table for the first time as Russia's military build-up pushed the two countries closer to the western military alliance.
(AP, 7/8/16)(Reuters, 7/8/16)
2016 Sep 10, In Finland Jesse Torniainen (26), a neo-Nazi activist, kicked Jimi Joonas Karttunen (28) in the chest during a demonstration in Helsinki. Karttunen died of his injuries six days later. On Dec 30 Torniainen was sentenced to two years in prison for assaulting Karttunen.
(AP, 12/30/16)
2016 Oct 7, Estonia said a Russian jet violated its airspace, hours after neighboring Finland said two similar planes passed over its territory as it prepared to sign a defense pact with the United States.
(Reuters, 10/7/16)
2016 Dec 3, In Finland a lone gunman shot dead a local official and two journalists, all of them women, in a night-time attack in the small town of Imatra. A 23-year-old suspect was swiftly arrested after the shooting.
(AFP, 12/4/16)
2016 Dec 14, Two Finnish journalists quit public broadcaster Yleisradio (YLE), saying the company had suppressed critical reporting on politicians including PM Juha Sipila.
(Reuters, 12/14/16)
2016 Dec 29, A Finnish court sentenced Jari Aarnio (59), the former chief detective of the Helsinki police drug squad, to ten years in prison for taking part in a drug smuggling ring. He reportedly played a key role in helping a gang smuggle nearly 800 kg (1,750 pounds) of hashish from the Netherlands into Finland in 2011 and 2012.
(AFP, 12/29/16)
2017 Feb 17, Finnish lawmakers rejected a petition from more than 100,000 people demanding the repeal of a law allowing same-sex marriage effective on March 1.
(AP, 2/17/17)
2017 Apr 5, China and Finland will increase cooperation under the China-European Union framework, President Xi Jinping said after arriving in Finland for his first visit as head of state.
(Reuters, 4/5/17)
2017 Apr 11, Several EU and NATO countries signed up to establish a center in Helsinki to research how to tackle tactics such as cyber-attacks, propaganda and disinformation. The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania signed the Memorandum of Understanding for the membership. More countries were due to come on board in July.
(Reuters, 4/11/17)
2017 May 4, Finland's government held its weekly cabinet meeting in front of the glare of a live audience for the first time, part of celebrations for the Nordic country's first hundred years of independence.
(Reuters, 5/4/17)
2017 Jun 12, Finland's government was brought to the verge of collapse as centrist and conservative parties both said the populist The Finns party cannot stay in the three-member government coalition after it elected an anti-EU and anti-immigration hardliner as its chairman last week.
(AP, 6/12/17)
2017 Jun 13, Finland’s PM Juha Sipila said his coalition would carry on with a new populist faction that emerged at the last minute. The Finns Party split in two, with Sipila welcoming the more moderate faction to stay on in his government.
(AFP, 6/13/17)
2017 Jun 20, Finland's government survived a no-confidence vote after a coalition partner split in two following a leadership battle.
(AP, 6/20/17)
2017 Jun 30, Finland and Sweden joined a British-led military rapid reaction force that can either operate alone or jointly with the UN, NATO or the EU.
(AP, 6/30/17)
2017 Jul 10, In Finland Japanese PM Shinzo Abe pledged to increase cooperation with Finland in Arctic issues and on furthering Russian relations, after talks with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.
(AP, 7/10/17)
2017 Jul 29, The Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica set a new record for the earliest transit of the fabled Northwest Passage after 24 days at sea and a journey spanning more than 10,000 km (6,214 miles).
(AP, 7/29/17)
2017 Aug 18, Police in Finland shot a Moroccan asylum-seeker in the leg after he was suspected of stabbing several people in the western city of Turku. Two women were killed and seven other people wounded. Police over the next hours arrested five people in a Turku apartment overnight in their investigation into the stabbings. The attacker was later identified as Abderrahman Bouanane (18). Police later said he had become radicalized some three months before the attack, and although he acted alone, he thought of himself as an IS fighter.
(AP, 8/18/17)(AP, 8/19/17)(AFP, 8/19/17)(AP, 8/21/17)(AP, 2/7/18)
2017 Sep 27, Finnish energy group Fortum offered to buy all the shares in German utility Uniper in an 8.05 billion-euro ($9.5 billion) deal that aims to boost Fortum's gas, hydroelectric and nuclear assets. Fortum offered to buy the 46.65 percent stake that Germany's E.ON holds and the rest of the shares for 22 euros each. E.ON has until early 2018 to decide whether to sell its stake.
(AP, 9/27/17)
2017 Oct 26, In Finland a train collided with a military vehicle at an unguarded railroad crossing in southern Finland, killing four people and injuring 11 others.
(AP, 10/26/17)
2017 Oct 26, Nordea Bank AB, the Nordic region's largest bank, said it plans to cut at least 6,000 jobs over the next four years to stay competitive as its retail banking operations increasingly become digital and automation hits the financial industry. The cuts will spread across its home markets of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
(AP, 10/26/17)
2017 Nov 15, Slovakia's government approved plans to build military armored vehicles with the Finnish defense industry company Patria to replace the NATO member's outdated armored personnel carriers.
(Reuters, 11/15/17)
2017 Nov 16, A fireball lit up the skies of Arctic Finland with a glow of 100 full moons. Experts scrambled to find where the meteorite landed.
(SSFC, 11/19/17, p.A4)
2017 Nov 30, A Finnish court banned neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement (PVL), saying there was an "urgent social need" to shut down the group which it said spread hate speech and incited violence.
(Reuters, 11/30/17)
2017 Dec 9, Finnish Border Guards said two people have been found dead inside a pilot boat that capsized and sank off southern Finland.
(AP, 12/9/17)
2018 Jan 8, Finnish researchers said they were to launch a study to see if gambling addiction can be treated with a fast-working nasal spray.
(AFP, 1/8/18)
2018 Jan 28, Finland held presidential elections. President Sauli Niinisto (69) was poised to win another six-year term.
(AFP, 1/28/18)
2018 Feb 7, A feasibility study by Estonia and Finland said the world's longest undersea rail tunnel (103 kms) between the two countries could cost up to 20 billion euros ($24.7 billion) and be opened for traffic by 2040.
(AP, 2/7/18)
2018 Mar 14, The World Happiness Report ranked Finland at the top of 156 countries in its annual global happiness index; the US was ranked 18th, down from 14th last year.
(SFC, 3/15/18, p.A5)
2018 Mar 30, Russia ordered new cuts to the number of British envoys in the country, escalating a dispute with the West over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain. Scores of foreign ambassadors streamed into the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow to receive the notices given to 23 nations: Albania, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine.
(AP, 3/30/18)
2018 Apr 10, The Newport Arctic Scholars Initiative convened in Newport, Rhode Island, with representatives from the Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and the US.
(AP, 4/10/18)
2018 Apr 25, Finland said the Nordic country's trailblazing basic income experiment is going ahead as planned, denying media reports that the trial has fallen flat.
(AP, 4/25/18)
2018 Jun 8, In Finland US Gen. Joseph Dunford, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Russia's chief of the military's General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, met in Konigstedt Manor to exchange views on US-Russia military relations, Syria and the current international security situation.
(AP, 6/8/18)
2018 Jun 15, A Finnish court sentenced Abderrahman Bouanane (23), a Moroccan asylum seeker, to life in prison for killing two women and injuring eight others in a stabbing spree in Turku last August 18, described as the nation's first terror attack.
(AFP, 6/15/18)(SFC, 6/16/18, p.A2)
2018 Jun 20, The Finnish border guard said five people have entered Finland illegally with the help of soccer World Cup fan identity papers and then applied for asylum.
(Reuters, 6/20/18)
2018 Jul 15, In Finland about 2,500 protesters demonstrated in support of human rights, democracy and the environment in Helsinki, a day before US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a summit in the Finnish capital.
(Reuters, 7/15/18)
2018 Jul 16, In Finland activists used today's summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold a 2nd day of high-profile protests in Helsinki over a variety of grievances.
(AP, 7/16/18)
2018 Jul 16, Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held a historic summit vowing their determination to forge a reset of troubled relations between the world's greatest nuclear powers as they met in Helsinki, Finland. Trump's news conference alongside Putin, where he discounted US intelligence assessments that Russia meddled with the 2016 election, drew fire from members of both political parties, who said he put Russia above US interests.
(AFP, 7/16/18)(Reuters, 7/17/18)
2018 Aug 24, In central Finland a bus plunged about 10 meters (33 feet) from a bridge onto railway tracks in Kuopio, killing four people and injuring more than 20.
(AP, 8/24/18)
2018 Oct 3, Finland's parliament voted to add new exceptions to a clause in the constitution that guarantees the right to privacy, to enable swift approval of an intelligence bill aimed at combating terrorism and spying by foreign governments.
(Reuters, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 4, In Norway Russian businessman Boris Rotenberg, under US sanctions over the Ukraine conflict due to his close ties with President Vladimir Putin, filed suit against four Nordic banks, accusing them of discrimination. Rotenberg also holds a Finnish passport and is not subject to European sanctions over Russia's role in Ukraine, but European banks must comply with the US sanctions in order to do business with American banks.
(Reuters, 10/22/18)
2018 Nov 12, Russia denied being behind the recent disruption to GPS signals across Lapland which put civil aviation at risk, after Finland's PM Juha Sipila said the interference was "almost certainly deliberate".
(AFP, 11/12/18)
2018 Nov 19, Social media in Finland was ablaze with bemused comments after US President Donald Trump claimed the forest-covered nation prevents wildfires by raking its forest floors.
(AFP, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 20, Malaysian police detained two women and two men from Finland at their hotel after police received complaints about their distributing Christian materials at public places. He said police seized 47 pens with Bible verses and 336 notebooks containing texts from the Bible.
(AP, 11/21/18)
2018 Nov 23, In Zimbabwe a small plane en route to the popular tourist site of Victoria Falls crashed in Masvingo killing four people from Finland.
(AP, 11/24/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Malaysia four Finnish tourists, arrested last week for distributing Christian materials in public places on a resort island, were deported home.
(AP, 11/28/18)
2018 Dec 14, It was reported that scientists in Finland have developed what they believe is the world's first vaccine to protect bees against disease, raising hopes for tackling the drastic decline in insect numbers which could cause a global food crisis.
(AFP, 12/14/18)
2019 Jan 14, It was reported that a Finnish citizens' initiative to withdraw asylum from people convicted of sex crimes received tens of thousands of signatures over the weekend and has become an important political issue ahead of this year's parliamentary elections.
(Reuters, 1/14/19)
2019 Feb 4, The UN Human Rights Committee ruled that Finland has breached the political rights of its Sami population, charging that Helsinki had violated the indigenous people's right to "internal self-determination." According to the Finnish Sami parliament, there are 10,000 Sami in Finland.
(AFP, 2/4/19)
2019 Feb 8, The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) said a nationwide experiment with basic income in Finland has not increased employment among those participating in the two-year trial, but their general well-being seems to have increased.
(AP, 2/8/19)
2019 Feb 8, In Finland an independent 248-page investigative report in English, commissioned by the Finnish government, was released. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served within the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them aged between 17 and 20 years old. The report concluded that the country's volunteer battalion, which served with Nazi Germany's Waffen-SS, took part in atrocities during World War II, including participating in the mass murder of Jews.
(AP, 2/10/19)
2019 Mar 8, Finland's coalition government resigned a month ahead of a general election, saying it could not deliver on a healthcare reform package that is widely seen as crucial to securing long-term government finances. President Sauli Niinisto accepted PM Sipila's resignation but asked his government of his Center party and the National Coalition Party to continue in a caretaker capacity until a new cabinet has been appointed.
(Reuters, 3/8/19)
2019 Mar 20, Finland topped the UN index of the happiest nations for the second consecutive year, with researchers saying the small Nordic country of 5.5 million has succeeded in generating a happiness recipe for a balanced life not simply dependent on economic and material wealth. Denmark, Norway and Iceland took the next spots. The remaining top ten nations were The Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada and Austria. The United States dropped from the 18th to 19th place.
(AP, 3/20/19)
2019 Apr 14, Finns voted in a general election where anti-austerity sentiment looked set to propel the opposition Social Democratic Party back to the head of government for the first time in 16 years. The Social Democrats, led by former finance minister and union leader Antti Rinne, took 17.7% of the votes and 40 seats. The Finns Party followed with 17.5% and 39 seats and the National Coalition Party with 17% of the votes and 38 seats. The Center Party of outgoing Prime Minister Juha Sipila was fourth with 13.8% of the vote and the Green Party came in with 11.5%.
(AFP, 4/14/19)(AP, 4/15/19)
2019 Jul 31, Finland's Orion and Germany's Bayer said the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved prostate cancer drug daroluramide, which the two companies have been developing together.
(Reuters, 7/31/19)
2019 Aug 19, Finland's PM Antti Rinne told his British counterpart Boris Johnson that the European Union would not renegotiate the Brexit deal.
(Reuters, 8/20/19)
2019 Aug 23, Finland, which currently holds the presidency of the EU, raised the idea of banning Brazilian meat imports in response to Bolsonaro’s lax stewardship of the Amazon.
(Bloomberg, 8/24/19)
2019 Oct 1, In Finland a man killed a woman and wounded nine other people while wielding a sword and a firearm inside a classroom at a vocational school in Kuopio. Police shot and wounded the subject, who was hospitalized.
(SFC, 10/3/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 3, Finland's PM Antti Rinne resigned after a key coalition partner withdrew from his five-party government following a strike at the country's postal service that spread to the national flag carrier Finnair.
(SFC, 12/4/19, p.A2)
2019 Dec 8, Finland's transport minister, Sanna Marin (34), was tapped by the ruling Social Democratic Party to be the new prime minister. When she takes the reins of the country, most likely on Dec. 10, she will become the world’s youngest sitting head of government.
(AP, 12/9/19)
2019 Dec 10, Finland's new PM Sanna Marin (34) took office as the world's youngest national leader.
(Reuters, 12/11/19)
2019 Dec 10, Finland, which holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of the year, said it aims to teach 1% of all Europeans basic skills in artificial intelligence through a free online course.
(Reuters, 12/10/19)
2020 Feb 10, Finland's paper workers union agreed a pay deal with the forestry industry association, ending a two week strike that halted production of one of the country's main exports.
(Reuters, 2/10/20)
2020 Mar 12, A Finnish court jailed in a custody hearing Gibril Ealoghima Massaquoi (50), a Sierra Leone man suspected of committing serious war crimes and crimes against humanity from 1999 through 2003 during Liberia's bloody second civil war. Massaquoi has lived in Finland for more than 10 years.
(AP, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 13, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal agreed to take in at least 1,600 migrant children in Greece traveling without their parents.
(SSFC, 3/15/20, p.A3)
2020 Mar 15, Finland had a total of 240 coronavirus cases.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 20, Finland recorded its first death from coronavirus. It has 521 confirmed cases, though it was only testing severely ill people and health-care professionals.
(Bloomberg, 3/21/20)
2020 Mar 20, Experts at the UN declared Finland to be the world's happiest nation for the third year running. The US fell to No. 18.
(AFP, 3/20/20) (NY Times, 3/20/20)
2020 Apr 7, Finland said it will start tracking the spread of the coronavirus in its population with randomized antibody tests.
(Reuters, 4/7/20)
2020 Jun 29, Finnish telecoms equipment maker Nokia Oyj said it has won a 5G contract worth about 400 million euros ($449.48 million) from Taiwan Mobile to build out the telecom operator's next-generation network as the sole supplier.
(Reuters, 6/29/20)
2020 Aug 23, Finland's PM Sanna Marin assumed the leadership of her Social Democratic Party eight months after taking the top job in the Nordic nation in December, when she became the world’s youngest serving head of government at 34. She was the only candidate running for the post and no vote was needed.
(AP, 8/23/20)
2020 Aug 31, Finland's health authorities launched the country's own and long-waited contact tracing smartphone app to combat the spread of COVID-19.
(Reuters, 8/31/20)
2020 Oct 5, Finland reported its highest daily number of infections since the pandemic began, exceeding the rate Helsinki sets for citizens of other countries to visit without quarantine.
(Reuters, 10/5/20)
2020 Oct 8, Finland's public health authority THL said the country likely had up to five times more COVID-19 cases than its official numbers showed during the first wave of the pandemic between March and May.
(AP, 10/8/20)
2020 Oct 29, Finland's government said it would ease its restrictions on opening hours for restaurants serving mainly food but kept stricter rules on bars and nightclubs in place, as the COVID-19 pandemic showed signs of slowing down in the Nordic country. The new rules will take effect on November 1.
(Reuters, 10/29/20)
2020 Nov 12, The government of Finland said it was preparing legislation that would allow citizens to change their personal identity codes in cases of gross data breaches that carry a high risk of identity theft.
(AP, 11/12/20)
2020 Dec 20, The Finnish government said the repatriation of its citizens from the al-Hol camp in Syria was done for humanitarian reasons and because of the country's legal obligations for its citizens. Finnish media said two returning women, both known to be radicalized IS sympathizers, will face thorough screening by security officials upon return.
(AP, 12/20/20)
2020 Dec 21, It was reported that International Business Machines (IBM) will acquire Finland-based startup Nordcloud, the latest in a series of acquisitions for the 109-year old firm preparing a mega spin-off to focus on cloud computing.
(Reuters, 12/21/20)
2020 Dec 28, Finnish authorities said email accounts belonging to some lawmakers were compromised during a cyberattack on parliament last autumn.
(AP, 12/28/20)
2021 Jan 11, Sweden's Telecoms operator Tele2 said it will partner with Finland's Nokia for the deployment of its 5G core network in Sweden and the Baltics.
(Reuters, 1/11/21)
2021 Jan 13, Thousands of households across southern Finland and northern Sweden were without power after a heavy snowfall, and forecasters warned that particularly icy temperatures lay ahead for the Baltic Sea region.
(AP, 1/13/20)
2021 Jan 22, The Finnish government said it would put in place stricter regulations from Jan. 27 for entering the country, due to new variants of the coronavirus spreading within its borders.
(Reuters, 1/22/21)
2021 Mar 1, The Finnish government declared a state of emergency due to rising COVID-19 infections, a step that would allow the Nordic country to shutter restaurants and to impose other measures to blunt the pandemic.
(Reuters, 3/1/21)
2021 Mar 17, It was reported that Finland-based Nokia plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs as it tries to cement its role as a key supplier of 5G technology. Nokia said the restructuring should reduce costs by $715 million by 2023.
(SFC, 3/17/21, p.B2)
2021 Mar 18, Finland’s domestic security agency said that the cybergroup APT31, which is generally linked to the Chinese government, was likely behind a cyberspying attack on the information systems of the Nordic country’s parliament.
(AP, 3/18/21)
2021 Mar 19, Denmark, Sweden and Norway said they needed more time to decide whether to use AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine while Finland joined them in putting the shots on hold, even though the EU drug watchdog said the benefits outweighed any risks.
(Reuters, 3/19/21)
2021 Apr 14, Finland said people aged under 65 who got a first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot may get a different vaccine for their second dose, as authorities warned about delays to the country's roll-out.
(Reuters, 4/14/21)
2021 Jun 13, Finland held local elections.
(AP, 6/13/21)
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Subject = Finland
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