By: HISTORY.com Editors

2000

AOL-Time Warner merger announced

AFP via Getty Images

Published: November 13, 2009Last Updated: December 17, 2025

On January 10, 2000, in one of the biggest media mergers in history, America Online Inc. announces plans to acquire Time Warner Inc. for some $182 billion in stock and debt. The result was a $350 billion mega-corporation, AOL Time Warner, which held dominant positions in every type of media, including music, publishing, news, entertainment, cable and the Internet.

The AOL Time Warner merger came at the height of the so-called “Internet bubble,” when dot-com businesses were on a meteoric rise and their future seemed limitless. The idea was to combine Time Warner’s impressive book, magazine, television and movie production capabilities with AOL’s 30 million Internet subscribers to form the ultimate media empire. Under the terms of the merger, which was cleared by the Federal Trade Commission in December 2000 and formally completed in January 2001, AOL shareholders owned 55 percent of the new company while Time Warner shareholders owned 45 percent. AOL’s co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer, Steve Case, became chairman of the new company, while Time Warner chairman and CEO Gerald Levin was named its CEO.

The Invention of the Internet

By: HISTORY.com Editors

The potential windfall promised by the plan to sell Time Warner content through the AOL network never materialized, and when the Internet bubble burst in 2001, the company’s losses reached record proportions. Levin, widely blamed by shareholders for allowing Time Warner and its stable old-media assets to be effectively taken over and dragged down by the ailing new-media division, resigned in December 2001. He was replaced by Richard Parsons, a decision that later contributed to increasing internal tensions and the departure of chief operating officer Bob Pittman, who had been passed over in favor of Parsons.

In 2002, as investors pulled out en masse of many Internet-related stocks, AOL Time Warner reported a quarterly loss of $54 billion, the largest ever for a U.S. company. In 2003, the company announced that it was removing "AOL" from its name, and in 2009, Time Warner spun off AOL. In 2018, AT&T acquired Time Warner.

Timeline

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Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on January 10th

1776

Thomas Paine publishes “Common Sense”

On January 10, 1776, writer Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet “Common Sense,” setting forth his arguments in favor of American independence. Although little used today, pamphlets were an important medium for the spread of ideas in the 16th through 19th centuries. Originally published anonymously, “Common Sense” advocated independence for the American colonies from Britain and […]

1843

Outlaw Frank James born in Missouri

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1901

Gusher signals new era of U.S. oil industry

A drilling derrick at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas produces an enormous gusher of crude oil, signaling the start of the American oil industry.

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1920

League of Nations instituted

On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations formally comes into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, takes effect. In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the most costly war ever fought to that […]

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1923

President Harding orders U.S. troops home from Germany

Four years after the end of World War I, President Warren G. Harding orders U.S. occupation troops stationed in Germany to return home. In 1917, after several years of bloody stalemate along the Western Front, the entrance of America’s fresh, well-supplied forces into the Great War—a decision announced by President Woodrow Wilson in April and […]

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1941

FDR introduces the lend-lease program

On January 10, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt introduces the lend-lease program to Congress. The plan was intended to help Britain beat back Hitler’s advance while keeping America only indirectly involved in World War II. As Roosevelt addressed Congress, the Battle of Britain was in its full destructive swing and Hitler seemed on the verge of invading […]

1946

First meeting of the United Nations

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1962

Operation Ranch Hand initiated

On January 10, 1962, the United States Air Force launches Operation Ranch Hand, a “modern technological area-denial technique” designed to expose the roads and trails used by the Viet Cong. Flying C-123 Providers, U.S. personnel dumped an estimated 19 million gallons of defoliating herbicides over 10-20 percent of Vietnam and parts of Laos between 1962-1971. […]

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1962

Avalanche kills thousands in Peru

On January 10, 1962, an avalanche on the slopes of an extinct volcano kills more than 4,000 people in Peru. Nine towns and seven smaller villages were destroyed. Mount Huascaran rises 22,000 feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains. Beneath it laid many small Peruvian communities, the inhabitants of which farmed in the Rio […]

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1967

President Johnson asks for more funding for Vietnam War

On January 10, 1967, during his State of the Union speech, President Lyndon B. Johnson asks Congress for more money to support the Vietnam War. Lyndon’s War, a war Johnson actually inherited from President John F. Kennedy, had achieved nothing by 1967. The North Vietnamese use of guerrilla warfare tactics resulted in approximately 14,000 American […]

2008

World’s cheapest car debuts in India

At the New Delhi Auto Expo in India, Tata Motors debuts the Nano, billing it as the world’s cheapest car. The anticipated price tag is around $2,500. Tata, India’s largest automaker, called the four-door, bubble-shaped mini-vehicle (it was just 5 feet wide and 10 feet long) the “People’s Car” and declared that it would be […]

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