NEWS November 2001
on 4 November, the film adaptation of Harry Potter
And The Philosopher’s Stone premiered at the odeon in Leicester Square, London. Warner bros had paid £1 million for the rights to the film in 1999, and spent $125 million creating it. The film made a whopping $974.8 million dollars at the box office worldwide, making it the second-highest grossing film of all time.
George Harrison, the lead guitarist for The Beatles, passed away on 29 November at the age of 58. It had been revealed that the musician had been suffering from cancer earlier in the year, which had begun in the lung and spread to his brain. Harrison passed at a friend’s home, and had his ashes scattered in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India following his cremation.
On 30 November, police in Renton, Washington arrested Gary Ridgway for the murders of four women. Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, had killed an unconfirmed number of women (believed to be at least 71) in the Eighties and Nineties. In 2003, Ridgway agreed to a plea bargain that saw him confess to a number of the murders to avoid the death sentence. He was ultimately convicted of 49 murders and received multiple life sentences without parole.