103 YEARS!!!

On this day in history in the year of our Lord, 1909, my grandmother, Margaret Ostrander, was born. She is 103 years old. She still lives independently and is as sharp as a tack. She even has a Facebook account which she uses to keep track of all of her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great great grandchildren. I started thinking about all the changes that must have occurred in her life ... and so "googled" it. Taking from a couple of lists on Wikipedia, I put together the following:
 
1900s
1909 - The U.S. penny is changed to the Abraham Lincoln design
1909 - William Howard Taft becomes President
1909 - Robert Peary claims to have reached the North Pole
1909 - NAACP founded by W. E. B. Du Bois
1909 - Payne-Aldrich tariff
1909 - Taft implements Dollar Diplomacy
1909 - Pinchot-Ballinger controversy
1909 - Independence of Panama. 
1909 - United States troops leave Cuba.
1910s
1910 - Boy Scouts of America chartered
1910 - Mann-Elkins Act
1910 - Mann Act
1910 - Beginning of the Mexican Revolution. 
1910 - George V becomes King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India. 
1910 - Union of South Africa created. 
1910 - Portugal abolishes its Monarchy. 
1911 - Supreme Court breaks up Standard Oil
1911 - First ever Indianapolis 500 is staged; Ray Harroun is the first winner
1911 - Roald Amundsen first reaches the South Pole. 
1911 - New Delhi becomes the capital of British India. 
1911 - Ernest Rutherford identifies the atomic nucleus
1912 - RMS Titanic sinks
1912 - New Mexico and Arizona become states
1912 - Girl Scouts of the USA was started by Juliette Gordon Low
1912 - Theodore Roosevelt shot, but not killed, while campaigning for the Bull Moose Party
1912 - Republic of China established and ends the Chinese Empire. 
1912 - The African National Congress is founded. 
1912 - Morocco becomes a protectorate of France. 
1912 - Balkan Wars begin. 
1912 - Woodrow Wilson is elected 28th President of the United States. 
1912 - Arizona becomes the last state to be admitted to the continental Union.
1913 - Woodrow Wilson becomes President
1913 - Federal Reserve Act
1913 - 16th Amendment, establishing an income tax
1913 - End of the Philippine-American War
1913 - The Armory Show opens in New York City introducing Modern art both American and European to the American public.
1913 - 17th Amendment, establishing direct election of U.S. Senators.
1913 - Underwood tariff
1913 - Henry Ford develops the modern assembly line
1913 - Niels Bohr formulates the first cohesive model of the atomic nucleus, and in the process paves the way to quantum mechanics. 
1913 - Balkan Wars end. 
1913 - George I of Greece is assassinated.
1914 - Mother's Day established as a national holiday
1914 - Federal Trade Commission created
1914 - Clayton Antitrust Act
1914 - ABC Powers
1914 - Gavrilo Princip assassinates the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, triggering World War I. 
1914 - Panama Canal opens. 
1914 - Benedict XV becomes Pope.
1915 - The Birth of a Nation opens
1915 - RMS Lusitania sunk
1915 - The United States occupation of Haiti begins. 
1915 - Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
1916 - U.S. acquires Virgin Islands
1916 - Jeannette Rankin first woman elected to U.S. congress
1916 - Louis Brandeis appointed to Supreme Court
1916 - Adamson Railway Labor Act
1916 - Federal Farm Loan Act
1916 - Jone Act
1916 - Easter Rising in Ireland. 
1916 - The implementation of daylight savings time. 
1916 - Warlord Era begins in China. 
1916 - David Lloyd George becomes the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 
1916 - The Gallipoli Campaign fails. 
1916 - Battle of the Somme. 
1916 - Grigory Rasputin is assassinated by H.H. Prince Felix Youssoupov
1917 - Zimmermann telegram
1917 - Espionage and Sedition Acts
1917 - Lansing-Ishii Agreement
1917 - U.S. Virgin Islands purchased from Denmark
1917-1920 - First Red Scare, marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism
1917 - Russian Revolution; beginning of Russian Civil War. 
1917 - USA join the Allies for the last 17 months of World War I. 
1917 - Independence of Poland recognised. 
1917 - The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded.
1918 - President Wilson's Fourteen Points, which assures citizens that the Great War was being fought for a moral cause and for postwar peace in Europe
1918 - End of World War I; 
1918 - Spanish flu pandemic. 
1918 - Murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. 
1918 - Poland, Ukraine and Belarus are among a number of states to declare independence from Russia. 
1918 - Finnish Civil War. 
1918 - Mehmed VI becomes last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. 
1918 - The Kingdom of Iceland and The State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs are established. 
1918 - The British occupy Palestine.
1919 - Treaty of Versailles ends World War I
1919 - United States Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations
1919 - 18th Amendment, establishing Prohibition
1919 - Black Sox Scandal during the that year's World Series, wherein the fallout lasts for decades
1919 - Treaty of Versailles redraws European borders and establishes the Weimar Republic in Germany. 
1919 - Victory for Estonia in the Estonian War of Independence. 
1919 - League of Nations founded in Paris. 
1919 - Polish-Soviet War begins. 
1919 - The Italian National Fascist Party is established by Benito Mussolini.
1919 - Comintern established. 
1919 - Egyptian Revolution of 1919. 
1919 - Turkish War of Independence begins. 
1919 - The International Labor Organisation is established. 
1919 - Ernest Rutherford discovers the proton. 
1919 - First experimental evidence for the General theory of relativity obtained by Arthur Eddington.
1920s
1920 - 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote
1920 - Sacco and Vanzetti arrested
1920 - First radio broadcasts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Detroit, Michigan
1920 - Volstead Act
1920 - Esch-Cummins Act
1920 - Mexican Revolution ends. 
1920 - Greece restores its monarchy after a referendum.
1921 - Warren G. Harding becomes President
1921 - Washington Disarmament Conference of 1921
1921 - Emergency Quota Act
1921 - Irish Free State is established, while the Province of Northern Ireland is created within The United Kingdom. 
1921 - Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of the Nazi Party as hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic begins. 
1921 - Russia invades Georgia. 
1921 - End of Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War. 
1921 - Coup brings the Pahlavi dynasty to power in Iran.
1922 - Fordney-McCumber tariff
1922 - The Italian reconquest of Libya begins. 
1922 - The union of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador is dissolved. 
1922 - Egypt gains independence. 
1922 - March on Rome brings Benito Mussolini to power in Italy.
1922 - Howard Carter discovers Tutankhamen's tomb. 
1922 - The Irish Civil War begins. 
1922 - Ottoman Empire is abolished. 
1922 - Gabriel Narutowicz, President of Poland is assassinated. 
1922 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is formed. 
1922 - Pius XI becomes Pope. 
1922 - James Joyce publishes Ulysses.
1923 - President Warren G. Harding dies; Calvin Coolidge succeeds him
1923 - Teapot Dome Scandal
1923 - Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic ends with the introduction of the Rentenmark. 
1923 - Time Magazine is first published. 
1923 - Irish Civil War ends. 
1923 - The Beer Hall Putsch, a failed attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic, ends in failure and brief imprisonment for Adolf Hitler but brings the Nazi Party to national attention. 
1923 - A military coup ousts and kills Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski. 
1923 - The Great Kantō earthquake kills at least 105,000 people in Japan. 
1923 - Ankara replaces Istanbul as the capital of Turkey, while Kemal Atatürk becomes the first President of the newly established Republic of Turkey. 
1923 - The Walt Disney Company is founded.
1924 - Immigration Act Basic Law
1924 - J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation — predecessor to the FBI.
1924 - Death of Vladimir Lenin. 
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation founded under J. Edgar Hoover. 
1924 - The August Uprising in Georgia against Soviet rule. 
1924 - George Gershwin composes Rhapsody In Blue.
1925 - Scopes trial, whose outcome found that the teaching of evolution in the classroom "does not violate church and state or state religion laws but instead, merely prohibits the teaching of evolution on the grounds of intellectual disagreement"
1925 - Nellie Tayloe Ross elected governor of Wyoming
1925 - WSM broadcasts the Grand Ole Opry for the first time.
1925 - Benito Mussolini gains dictatorial powers in Italy. Mein Kampf is published. First televisual image created by John Logie Baird. Locarno Treaties are signed.
1926 - NBC founded as the U.S.'s first major broadcast network
1926 - Hirohito becomes Emperor of Japan. 
1926 - Coups in Greece, Poland and Portugal install new dictatorships.
1927 - Sacco and Vanzetti executed, seven years after they were convicted of murdering two men during an armed robbery in Massachusetts
1927 - Charles Lindbergh makes first trans-Atlantic flight
1927 - The Jazz Singer, the first "talkie" (motion picture with sound) is released
1927 - U.S. citizenship granted to inhabitants of U.S. Virgin Islands
1927 - Columbia Broadcasting System (later called CBS) becomes second national radio network in the U.S.
1927 - Joseph Stalin becomes leader of the Soviet Union. 
1927 - World population reaches 2 billion. 
1927 - Australian Parliament convenes in Canberra for the first time. 
1927 - The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland officially becomes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
1927 - Saudi Arabia gains independence. 
1927 - The BBC is granted a Royal Charter in the United Kingdom.
1928 - Disney's Steamboat Willie opens, the first animated picture to feature Mickey Mouse
1928 - Kellogg-Briand Pact
1928 - Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
1928 - Discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming. 
1928 - Warlord Era ends in China. Malta becomes a British Dominion.
1928 - King Zog I is crowned in Albania. 
1928 - The Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed in Paris. 
1928 - Haile Selassie becomes king of Abyssinia. 
1928 - The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is established.
1929 - Herbert Hoover becomes President
1929 - St. Valentine's Day massacre
1929 - Immigration Act
1929 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets a record 68 points over a two-day period, setting off the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and triggering the Great Depression
1929 - The Museum of Modern Art opens to the public in New York City
1929 - American Samoa officially becomes a U.S. territory
1929 - First people sent to the gulag in the Soviet Union. 
1929 - Pope Pius XI signs the Lateran Treaty with Italian leader Benito Mussolini. 
1929 - Vatican City is recognised as a sovereign state. 
1929 - The first Academy Awards are presented.
1930s
1930 - Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," an iconic image of the Great Depression in the United States
1930 - The Motion Picture Production Code becomes set of industry censorship guidelines governing production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios; is effective for 38 years
1930 - Frozen vegetables, packaged by Clarence Birdseye, become the first frozen food to go on sale
1930: The Nazi Party, aided by the effects of the Great Depression, comes second in the September federal elections, increasing its share of the vote from 2.6% to 18.3%. 
1930 - Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto. 
1930 - Salt March by Mohandas Gandhi and the official start of civil disobedience in British India. 
1930 - Military coups replace governments in Peru and Brazil.
1931 - Empire State Building opens in New York City.
1931 - Japanese invasion of Manchuria
1931 - The Whitney Museum of American Art opens to the public in New York City.
1931 - Floods in China kill up to 2.5 million people. 
1931 - Independence of South Africa. 
1931 - Construction of the Empire State Building.
1931 - "The Star-Spangled Banner" is adopted as the United States's national anthem. 
1931 - The Second Spanish Republic is declared.
1931 - The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed by Mao Zedong. 
1931 - Statute of Westminster creates the British Commonwealth of Nations. 
1931 - Japan invades Manchuria, China and occupies it until the end of World War II.
1932 - Stimson Doctrine
1932 - Norris-La Guardia Act
1932 - Hans Hofmann - influential artist and teacher emigrated to the United States from Germany.
1932 - Bonus Army marches on DC
1932 - Reconstruction Finance Corporation
1932 - Ford introduces the Model B, the first low-priced car to have a V-8 engine
1932 - Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes President of the United States. 
1932 - Éamon de Valera becomes President of the Executive Council (prime minister) of the Irish Free State. 
1932 - The Nazi party becomes the largest single party in the German parliament.
1932 - Military coup in Chile. 
1932 - BBC World Service starts broadcasting. 
1932 - The Neutron is discovered.
1933 - 20th Amendment, establishing the beginning and ending of the terms of the elected federal offices on January 20.
1933 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt sworn in as President; he is the last president to be inaugurated on March 4.
1933 - President Roosevelt establishes the New Deal, a response to the Great Depression, and focusing on what historians call the "3 Rs": relief, recovery and reform
1933 - Sweeping new programs proposed under President Roosevelt take effect: the Agricultural Adjustment Act, Civil Works Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, Farm Credit Administration the Home Owners Loan Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Public Works Administration, the National Industrial Recovery Act
1933 - Giuseppe Zangara assassinates Chicago mayor Anton Cermak; the intended target was President-elect Roosevelt, who was not wounded.
1933 - Frances Perkins appointed United States Secretary of Labor
1933 - 21st Amendment, ending Prohibition
1933 - Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. 
1933 - New Deal begins in America. 
1933 - Japan and Germany announce they are going to leave the League of Nations.
1934 - Glass–Steagall Act
1934 - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission established
1934 - Dust Bowl begins, causing major ecological and agricultural damage to the Great Plains states; severe drought, heat waves and other factors were contributors.
1934 - Federal Housing Administration
1934 - Johnson Act
1934 - Philippine Commonwealth established
1934 - Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act
1934 - Tydings-McDuffie Act
1934 - John Dillinger killed
1934 - Indian Reorganization Act
1934 - Share the Wealth society founded by Huey Long
1934 - Dictatorships begin in Brazil and Bolivia. 
1934 - Mao Zedong begins the Long March. 
1934 - United States occupation of Haiti ends. 
1934 - United States grants more autonomy to the Philippines. 
1934 - Adolf Hitler becomes Fuhrer of Germany.
1935 - Works Progress Administration
1935 - The F.B.I. is established with J. Edgar Hoover as its first director.
1935 - Neutrality Act
1935 - Motor Carrier Act
1935 - Social Security Act
1935 - Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States
1935 - National Labor Relations Act
1935 - Huey Long assassinated
1935 - Congress of Industrial Organizations formed
1935 - Alcoholics Anonymous founded
1935 - Revenue Act of 1935
1935 - Second Italo-Abyssinian War concludes with the exile of Haile Selassie and the conquest of Abyssinia by Benito Mussolini. 
1935 - Persia becomes Iran. 
1935 - William Lyon Mackenzie King is elected Prime Minister of Canada.
1936 - Robinson-Patman Act
1936 - Life magazine publishes first issue
1936 - United States v. Butler, which ruled that the processing taxes instituted under the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act were unconstitutional
1936 - Second London Naval Treaty
1936 - Beginning of the Spanish Civil War. 
1936 - Great Purge begins under Stalin. 
1936 - Edward VIII becomes King of the British Commonwealth and Emperor of India, before abdicating and handing the throne to his brother, George VI. 
1936 - Hoover Dam is completed. 
1936 - Arab Revolt in Palestine against the British begins to oppose Jewish immigration. 
1936 - Italy annexes Ethiopia. 
1936 - "Benjamin", the last known thylacine, dies in Hobart Zoo.
1937 - Neutrality Acts
1937 - Hindenburg disaster, killing 35 people and marking an end to airship travel
1937 - Panay incident, a Japanese attack on the United States Navy gunboat USS Panay while anchored in the Yangtze River outside of Nanjing
1937 - Golden Gate Bridge completed in San Francisco
1937 - Japanese invasion of China, and the beginning of World War II in the Far East. 
1937 - Rape of Nanking. 
1937 - Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 
1937 - The Irish Republican Army attempts to assassinate King George VI of the United Kingdom. 
1937 - Deaths of George Gershwin and Maurice Ravel.
1938 - Wheeler-Lea Act
1938 - Fair Labor Standards Act
1938 - Munich agreement hands Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. 
1938 - Great Purge ends after nearly 700,000 executions. 
1938 - Kristallnacht in Germany, while Time Magazine declares Adolf Hitler as Man of the Year.
1939 - Hatch Act, aimed at corrupt political practices and prevented federal civil servants from campaigning
1938 - Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds broadcast
1939 - Nazi Germany invades Poland; World War II begins
1939 - Cash and carry proposed to replace the Neutrality Acts
1939 - President Roosevelt, appearing at the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair, becomes the first President to give a speech that is broadcast on television. Semi-regular broadcasts air during the next two years
1939 - End of Spanish Civil War; Francisco Franco becomes dictator of Spain. 
1939 - Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. 
1939 - Nazi invasion of Poland triggers the beginning of World War II in Europe. Palestinian revolt against the British ends.
1939 - Pius XII becomes Pope.
1940s
1940 - The USS Arizona, aflame and sinking, on December 7, 1941
1940 - Selective Service Act, establishing the first peacetime draft in U.S. history
1940 - Alien Registration (Smith) Act
1940 - Oldsmobile becomes the first car maker to offer a fully automatic transmission
1940 - Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry make their cartoon debuts
1940 - Billboard magazine publishes its first music popularity chart, the predecessor to today's Hot 100
1940 - U.S. presidential election, 1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt wins reelection to a record third term
1940 - Nazis invade France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. 
1940 - Katyn massacre in Poland. Winter War between Soviet Union and Finland.
1940 - Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 
1940 - Battle of Britain as the British Empire fights alone against the Axis Powers. The Blitz begins.
1941 - Regular commercial television broadcasting begins; NBC television launched.
1941 - Lend-Lease, which supplies the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material during World War II
1941 - Attack on Pearl Harbor; U.S. enters World War II by declaring war on Japan the next day on December 8; and three days later against Germany and Italy.
1941 - Atlantic Charter, drafted by the UK and U.S., to serve as the blueprint for the postwar world after World War II
1941 - Beginning of the Holocaust. 
1941 - Hitler commences the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union
1942 - Japanese American internment begins, per executive order by President Roosevelt; the order also authorizes the seizure of their property.
1942-1945 - Automobile production in the United States for private consumers halted.
1942 - Casablanca released
1942 - Office of Price Administration
1942 - Cocoanut Grove fire kills 492 people, leads to vast reforms in fire codes and safety standards
1942 - Congress of Racial Equality
1942 - Revenue Act of 1942
1942 - U.S.-controlled Commonwealth of the Philippines conquered by Japanese forces
1942 - Battle of Midway. 
1942 - Battle of the Coral Sea. 
1942 - First and second Battles of El Alamein. 
1942 - Guadalcanal Campaign begins. 
1942 - Manhattan Project begins.
1943 - Office of Price Administration established
1943 - Detroit, Michigan race riots
1943 - Cairo Conference
1943 - Casablanca Conference
1943 - Tehran Conference
1943 - Battle of Stalingrad ends with surrender of the German Army. 
1943 - Warsaw Ghetto uprising. 
1943 - Green Revolution begins.
1944 - Dumbarton Oaks Conference
1944 - G.I. Bill
1944 - Bretton Woods Conference
1944 - Battle of the Bulge
1944 - 1944: Franklin D. Roosevelt wins reelection
1944 - D-Day landings. 
1944 - Baltic states are annexed by the Soviet Union. 
1944 - First operational electronic computer, Colossus, comes online
1945 - Yalta Conference
1945 - Battle of Okinawa
1945 - United Nations Conference on International Organization; United Nations established
1945 - Nationwide labor strikes due to inflation; OPA disbanded
1945 - Franklin D. Roosevelt dies; Harry S. Truman becomes President
1945 - Germany surrenders, end of World War II in Europe
1945 - Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Days later, Japan surrenders, ending World War II
1945 - UN founded after World War II replacing the League of Nations
1945–1949 - Nuremberg Trials and Subsequent Nuremberg Trials
1945 - Bombing of Dresden. 
1945 - Battle of Berlin.
1945 - Deaths of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. 1945 - Potsdam Conference divides Europe into Western and Soviet blocs. 
1945 - Chinese Civil War begins. 
1945 - Independence of Korea. 
1945 - Deaths of Anne Frank and Béla Bartók.
1946 - Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech
1946 - Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care published
1946 - Employment Act
1946 - United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946
1946 - President's Committee on Civil Rights
1946 - Philippines regain independence from the U.S.
1946 - Independence of Jordan. 
1946 - First Indochina War begins. 
1946 - First images taken of the Earth from space.
1947 - Presidential Succession Act
1947 - Taft Hartley Act
1947 - U.F.O. crash at Roswell, New Mexico
1947 - National Security Act of 1947
1947 - General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
1947 - The Marshall Plan
1947 - Polaroid camera invented
1947 - Truman Doctrine establishes "the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures"
1947 - Federal Employee Loyalty Program
1947 - Jackie Robinson breaks color barrier in baseball
1947 - Studebaker becomes the first automobile manufacturer to introduce a "post-war" model; most automakers wait until 1948 or 1949
1947 - Jackson Pollock begins painting his most famous series' of paintings called the drip paintings in East Hampton, New York
1947 - Independence of India and Pakistan and beginning of First Indo-Pakistani War. 
1947 - Breaking of the sound barrier. 
1947 - Creation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
1948 - The Texaco Star Theater, starring Milton Berle, becomes the first major successful U.S. television program; The Toast of the Town also debuts
1948 - Berlin Blockade
1948 - President Truman re-elected
1948 - Truman desegregates armed forces
1948 - Selective Service Act of 1948: Passed after first such act expired
1948 - Organization of American States: Alliance of North America and South America
1948 - Alger Hiss Case
1948 - Arab-Israeli War; 
1948 - Berlin Airlift; 
1948 - Marshall Plan
1948 - Assassination of Mohandas Gandhi; 
1948 - the independence of Burma; 
1948 - beginning of apartheid in South Africa; 
1948 - division of North and South Korea. 
1948 - First Indo-Pakistani War ends.
1949 - North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formed
1949 - In China, Communists under Mao Zedong force Chiang Kai-shek's KMT government to retreat to Taiwan
1949 - Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb
1949 - Department of War becomes Department of Defense
1949 - Germany divided into East and West
1949 - Truman attempts to continue FDR's legacy with his Fair Deal, but most acts don't pass
1949 - Partition of Germany and Kashmir; creation of NATO; 
1949 - end of the Chinese Civil War and establishment of the People's Republic of China; 
1949 - independence of Indonesia.
1950s
1950 - Senator Joseph McCarthy gains power, and McCarthyism (1950-1954) begins
1950 - McCarran Internal Security Act
1950 - Korean War begins
1950 - The comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz, is first published
1950 - NBC airs Broadway Open House a late-night comedy, variety, talk show through 1951. Hosted by Morey Amsterdam and Jerry Lester and Dagmar, it serves as the prototype for the Tonight Show
1950 - Failed assassination attempt by two Puerto Rican nationals on President Harry S. Truman while the President was living at Blair House.
1950 - Lhamo Dondrub becomes the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
1951 - 22nd Amendment, establishing term limits for President.
1951 - Mutual Security Act
1951 - General Douglas MacArthur fired by President Truman for comments about using nuclear weapons on China
1951 - The first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, California from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference. One month later, the situation comedy I Love Lucy premieres on CBS, sparking the rise of television in the American home and the Golden Age of Television.
1951 - See It Now, an American newsmagazine and documentary series broadcast by CBS from 1951 to 1958. It was created by Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly, Murrow being the host of the show.
1951 - Colombo Plan comes into effect.
1952 - The debut of the Today show on NBC, originally hosted by Dave Garroway is the fourth longest running talk show on television.
1952 - ANZUS Treaty enters into force
1952 - Immigration and Nationality Act
1952 - United States presidential election, 1952 (Dwight D. Eisenhower elected)
1952 - Detonation of the hydrogen bomb; 
1952 - first scheduled flight by commercial jet. 
1952 - Development of the first effective polio vaccine by Jonas Salk; 
1952 - Mau Mau Uprising begins in Kenya. 
1952 - Queen Elizabeth II becomes Monarch of the Commonwealth realms.
1953 - Dwight D. Eisenhower inaugurated as President
1953 - Rosenbergs executed
1953 - Armistice in Korea
1953 - Shah of Iran returns to power in CIA-orchestrated coup known as Operation Ajax
1953 - Independence of Cambodia. 
1953 - Discovery of DNA. 
1953 - First ascent of Mount Everest; 
1953 - Mohammed Mossadeq deposed in Iran; 
1953 - end of the Korean War. 
1953 - Death of Joseph Stalin.
1954 - The Tournament of Roses Parade becomes the first event televised nationally in color
1954 - Joseph McCarthy discredited in Army-McCarthy hearings
1954 - The CIA organizes the overthrow of Guatemala's democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (Operation PBSUCCESS)
1954 - Saint Lawrence Seaway Act, permitting the construction of the system of locks, canals and channels that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North American Great Lakes, is approved
1954 - Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark decision of the Supreme Court, declares state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students and denying black children equal educational opportunities unconstitutional
1954 - The U.S. becomes a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (or SEATO) alliance
1954 - Geneva Conference, with the U.S. attempting to find a way to unify Korea, and to discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina
1954 - The People's Republic of China lays siege on Quemoy and Matsu Islands; Eisenhower sends in Navy
1954 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at an all-time high of 382.74, the first time the Dow has surpassed its peak level reached just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929
1954 - NBC airs the The Tonight Show the first late-night talk show is originally hosted by Steve Allen
1954 - Supreme Court of the United States decides Brown v. Board of Education, ordering an end to racial segregation in public schools. 
1954 - Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets, brings rock and roll to the American mainstream. 
1954 - The Soviet Union generates first electricity by nuclear power. 
1954 - First Indochina War ends; 
1954 - Algerian War begins.
1955 - Ray Kroc opens a McDonald's fast food restaurant and, after purchasing the franchise from its original owners, oversees its national (and later, worldwide) expansion
1955 - Rosa Parks incites the Montgomery Bus Boycott
1955 - AFL and CIO merge in America's largest labor union
1955 - Warsaw Pact, which establishes a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe (including the USSR)
1955 - Disneyland opens at Anaheim, California
1955 - Jonas Salk develops polio vaccine
1955 - Rock and roll music enters the mainstream, with "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets becoming the first record to top the Billboard magazine pop charts. Elvis Presley also begins his rise to fame around this same time.
1955 - Actor James Dean is killed in a highway collision on his way to a racetrack in Salinas, California, while driving his racing Porsche 550 Spyder.
1955 - Signing of the Warsaw Pact. 
1955 - First Sudanese Civil War begins. 
1955 - Antimatter first produced.
1956 - Interstate Highway Act, which would provide the construction of 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of the Interstate Highway System over a 20-year period
1956 - The U.S. refuses to support the Hungarian Revolution
1956 - Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.
1956 - Marilyn Monroe marries playwright Arthur Miller.
1956 - Jackson Pollock dies in a car crash in Springs, New York
1956 - United States presidential election, 1956 (Eisenhower re-elected)
1956 - Independence of Sudan and Tunisia and full independence of Pakistan. 
1956 - The Hungarian uprising; 
1956 - the Suez crisis. 
1956 - Brasilia constructed.
1957 - Eisenhower Doctrine, wherein a country could request American economic assistance and/or aid from military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state
1957 - Civil Rights Act of 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, becomes the first civil rights legislation enacted by Congress since Reconstruction
1957 - Soviets launch Sputnik; "space race" begins
1957 - Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the first commercial nuclear power plant in the U.S., goes into service
1957 - Little Rock, Arkansas school desegregation
1957 - Independence of Ghana; 
1957 - Treaty of Rome, which would eventually lead to the European Union;
1957 - First prescription of the combined oral contraceptive pill.
1958 - National Defense Education Act
1958 - NASA formed as the U.S. begins ramping up efforts to explore space
1958 - Jack Kilby invents the integrated circuit
1958 - Great Leap Forward begins in China. 
1958 - NASA, the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) founded. 
1958 - CND's symbol, the peace sign, is first used. 
1958 - Invention of the optical disc and the cassette tape.
1959 - The NBC western Bonanza becomes the first drama to be broadcast in color
1959 - Cuban Revolution
1959 - Landrum-Griffin Act, a labor law that regulates labor unions' internal affairs and their officials' relationships with employers, becomes law
1959 - Alaska and Hawaii become the 49th and 50th U.S. states; to date, they are the final two states admitted to the union.
1959 - Cuban Revolution; 
1959 - Independence of Cyprus and Singapore;
1959 - Admission of Alaska and Hawaii into the United States; 
1959 - Dalai Lama exiled from Tibet; 
1959 - First documented AIDS cases;
1959 - Beginning of the Vietnam War;
1959 - First images of the far side of the Moon. 
1959 - By this time, the gulag has been effectively disbanded, after over a million recorded deaths.
1960s
1960 - U-2 incident, wherein a CIA U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union airspace
1960 - Greensboro sit-ins, sparked by four African American college students refusing to move from a segregated lunch counter, spurs similar actions and increases sentiment in the Civil Rights Movement.
1960 - Civil Rights Act of 1960, establishing federal inspection of local voter registration polls and penalties for those attempting to obstruct someone's attempt to register to vote or actually vote
1960 - National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam formed
1960 - United States presidential election, 1960 (John F. Kennedy elected president)
1960 - Year of Africa. 
1960 - Independence of Somalia, Togo and the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). 
1960 - Congo Crisis. 
1960 - Mau Mau Uprising ends; 
1960 - first (and to date only) manned descent to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench; 
1960 - construction of the first laser;
1960 - World population reaches 3 billion. 
1960 - FLQ seizes hostages, causing Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau of Canada to issue the War Measures Act
1960 - US breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba
1961 - Eisenhower gives celebrated "military–industrial complex" farewell address
1961 - John F. Kennedy becomes President
1961 - 23rd Amendment, which grants electors to the District of Columbia
1961 - Peace Corps established.
1961 - Alliance for Progress
1961 - Bay of Pigs Invasion
1961 - Alan Shepard pilots the Freedom 7 capsule to become the first American in space
1961 - Trade embargo on Cuba
1961 - Berlin Crisis of 1961
1961 - Vietnam War officially begins with 900 military advisors landing in Saigon
1961 - OPEC formed
1961 - Great Leap Forward ends in China after the deaths of roughly 20 million people.
1961 - Building of the Berlin Wall
1962 - Trade Expansion Act
1962 - John Glenn orbits the Earth, becoming the first American to do so
1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis, which becomes the closest nuclear confrontation (as of 2010) involving the U.S. and USSR
1962 - Baker v. Carr, enabling federal courts to intervene in and to decide reapportionment cases
1962 - Engel v. Vitale, which determines that it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools
1962 - Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
1962 - Marilyn Monroe dies of an apparent overdose from acute barbiturate poisoning at 36.
1962 - Algerian civil war ends with the independence of Algeria; 
1962 - The Beatles' first record.
1963 - Kennedy's motorcade on November 22, 1963
1963 - Bob Dylan and Columbia Records release The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (his second studio album), which becomes a classic
1963 - Atomic Test Ban Treaty
1963 - March on Washington; Martin Luther King, Jr. "I have a dream" speech
1963 - "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan published, sparking the women's liberation movement
1963 - President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas; Lyndon Johnson becomes President. The man accused of assassinating President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, is shot and killed as he is led to jail by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The assassination marks the first 24-hour coverage of a major news event by the major networks.
1963 - Independence of Kenya; 
1963 - creation of Malaysia; 
1963 - Martin Luther King delivers his "I have a Dream" speech
1963 - launch of the first geostationary satellite.
1964 - The Beatles arrive in the U.S., and subsequent appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, mark the start of the British Invasion (or, an increased number of rock and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular around the world, including the U.S.)
1964 - Tonkin Gulf incident; Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
1964 - 24th Amendment, prohibiting both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax
1964 - President Johnson proposes the Great Society, whose social reforms were aimed at the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were launched later in the 1960s.
1964 - Economic Opportunity Act
1964 - Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing major forms of discrimination against blacks and women, and ended racial segregation in the United States
1964 - Panama Canal Zone riots
1964 - United States presidential election, 
1964 - Independence of Malta, Malawi and Tanzania; 
1964 - Colombian armed conflict begins. 
1964 - First close-up images of Mars
1965 - President Lyndon B. Johnson escalates the United States military involvement in the Vietnam War
1965 - Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights activist group, led the first of several anti-war marches in Washington, D.C., with about 25,000 protesters
1965 - Immigration Act of 1965
1965 - Voting Rights Act
1965 - Medicaid and Medicare enacted
1965 - Higher Education Act of 1965
1965 - Malcolm X an African-American Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist is assassinated in Harlem, New York
1965 - Watts Riot in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, lasts six days and is the first of several major urban riots due to racial issues.
1965 - Deaths of Winston Churchill and Malcolm X. 
1965 - Anti-Communist purge in Indonesia kills up to 500,000 people. 
1965 - Second Indo-Pakistani War.
1966 - Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) established
1966 - Department of Transportation created
1966 - National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act
1966 - Miranda v. Arizona establishes "Miranda rights" for suspects
1966 - Feminist group National Organization for Women (NOW) formed
1966 – The three major American television networks—NBC, CBS and ABC—have full color lineups in their prime-time schedules.
1966 - Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (formerly known as Cassius Clay) declared himself a conscientious objector and refused to go to war. According to a writer for Sports Illustrated, the governor of Illinois called Ali "disgusting" and the governor of Maine said that Ali "should be held in utter contempt by every patriotic American."[1] In 1967 Ali was sentenced to 5 years in prison for draft evasion, but his conviction was later overturned on appeal. In addition, he was stripped of his title and banned from professional boxing for more than three years.
1966 - China's Cultural Revolution begins. 
1966 - Independence of Lesotho, Botswana and Barbados
1967 - Jack Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism, secondary to bronchogenic carcinoma (lung cancer), on January 3, 1967 at Parkland Hospital, where Oswald had died and where President Kennedy had been pronounced dead after his assassination.
1967 – The first Super Bowl is played, with the Green Bay Packers defeating the Kansas City Chiefs 35–10.
1967 – Detroit race riot precipitates the "long hot summer", when race riots erupt in 159 cities nationwide.
1967 - The "Summer of Love" embodies the growing counterculture, with the Monterey Pop Festival and Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" among the highlights.
1967 - 25th Amendment establishes succession to the Presidency and procedures for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President
1967 - American Samoa becomes self-governing under a new constitution
1967 - Summer of Love; 
1967 - Six Day War
1968 - Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy assassinated two months apart
1968 - The National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam launches the Tet Offensive
1968 - Civil Rights Act of 1968, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act
1968 - Shirley Chisholm becomes first black woman elected to U.S. Congress
1968 - Police clashes with anti-war protesters in Chicago, outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention
1968 - U.S. signs Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
1968 - United States presidential election, 1968 (Richard Nixon elected president)
1968 - Prague Spring. 
1968 - May 1968 protests in France. 
1968 - The Troubles begin in Northern Ireland.
1969 - Richard Nixon is inaugurated as President
1969 - "Vietnamization" begins
1969 - Stonewall riots in New York City marks the start of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S.
1969 - Chappaquiddick incident, where Sen. Edward M. Kennedy drives off a bridge on his way home from a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, killing his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne
1969 - Neil Armstrong walks on the Moon
1969 - The Woodstock Festival in White Lake, New York becomes an enormously successful musical and cultural gathering; a milestone for the baby-boom generation
1969 - Warren E. Burger appointed Chief Justice of the United States to replace Earl Warren
1969 - U.S. bombs North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia and Laos
1969 - Sesame Street premieres on National Educational Television.
1969 - Creation of ARPANET, the earliest incarnation of the Internet.
1970s
1970 - The Watergate scandal causes Nixon to be the first U.S. president to resign from office.
1970 - Kent State and Jackson State shootings occur during student protests which grow violent
1970 - The first Earth Day is observed.
1970 - Environmental Protection Agency created
1970 - American Top 40, hosted by radio personality Casey Kasem, becomes the first successful nationally syndicated radio program featuring a weekly countdown.
1970 - The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) begins operations, succeeding National Educational Television (NET).
1970 - The Occupational Safety and Health Act, or OSHA, is signed into law.
1970 - Ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 
1970 - Containerisation adopted globally, massively boosting global trade. 
1970 - Maiden flight of the Boeing 747. 
1970 - Bhola Cyclone kills 500,000 people in East Pakistan. 
1970 - Deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin
1971 - President Richard Nixon ends the United States Gold standard monetary policy known as the Nixon Shock
1971 - A ban on radio and television cigarette advertisements goes into effect in the United States
1971 - The landmark situation comedy, All in the Family, premieres on CBS.
1971 - 26th Amendment ratified, allowing 18-year-olds to vote!!!
1971 - In New York Times Co. v. United States, The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Pentagon Papers may be published, rejecting government injunctions as unconstitutional prior restraint.
1971 - Bangladesh Liberation War ends in independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan and precipitates Third Indo-Pakistani War. 
1971 - Invention of the microchip. 
1971 - Idi Amin comes to power in Uganda
1972 - President Richard Nixon visits China, an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and China.
1972 - Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with USSR
1972 - Watergate scandal: Five men arrested for the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.
1972 - U.S. presidential election, 1972 (President Nixon re-elected)
1972 - Apollo 17 flies to the Moon, and becomes the last manned mission there (as of 2011)
1972 - Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday; 
1972 - First Sudanese Civil War ends. 
1972 - Martial law declared in the Philippines by President Ferdinand E. Marcos.
1973 - Paris Peace Accords ends direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War
1973 - Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling overturns state laws against abortion
1973 - The Senate Watergate hearings begin, highlighted by Fred Thompson's discovery of Nixon's secret tapes
1973 - Skylab launched as the USA's first space station
1973 - Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigns in disgrace as part of a plea bargain. Congressman Gerald R. Ford of Michigan becomes the first person to be appointed Vice President under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution
1973 - Watergate scandal: President Nixon fires three Attorneys General over disposition of the secret tapes and the actions of the Special Prosecutor.
1973–1974 - The United States is affected by the Arab Oil Embargo; gasoline prices skyrocket as supplies of gasoline and heating oil are in short supply. In response, Daylight Savings Time is started in January (nearly four months earlier than usual), and the national speed limit is lowered to 55 mph.
1973 - Death of Pablo Picasso. 
1973 - First close-up images of Jupiter
1974 - The Super Outbreak, the largest series of tornadoes in history (at 149), hits 13 U.S. states and one Canadian province; 315 people are killed and more than 5,000 are injured.
1974 - Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves breaks Babe Ruth's home run record by hitting his 715th career home run.
1974 - Watergate scandal: The House Judiciary Committee votes to impeach the President
1974 - President Nixon resigns, becoming the first (and as of 2011, the only) President to step down. Vice president Ford becomes President, the first to do so by succession rather than election. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York becomes the second person to be appointed Vice President under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution
1974 - Watergate scandal: Ford pardons Nixon for any crimes he may have committed against the United States while President, believing it to be in the "best interests of the country"
1974 - Restrictions removed on holding private gold within the United States
1974 - Turkish occupation of Cyprus. 
1974 - Carnation Revolution in Portugal begins transition to democracy. 
1974 - First close-up images of Mercury. 
1974 - Discovery of "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis) in Ethiopia's Olduvai Gorge. 
1974 - World population reaches 4 billion.
1975 - Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins.
1975 - Fall of Saigon
1975 - Bill Gates founds Microsoft, which in time will dominate the home computer operating system market.
1975 - The Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, where an American Apollo and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock in orbit, marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.
1975 - President Ford survives two assassination attempts in a 17-day time span.
1975 - The television series Wheel of Fortune and Saturday Night Live premiere on NBC.
1975 - Sony's Betamax becomes the first commercially successful home video recording unit
1975 - End of the Vietnam War; 
1975 - Deaths of Francisco Franco and Dmitri Shostakovich. 
1975 - Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia begins.
1976 - The Copyright Act of 1976 makes sweeping changes to United States copyright law
1976 - Americans celebrate the Bicentennial
1976 - U.S. presidential election, 1976 (Jimmy Carter of Georgia defeats President Ford)
1976 - First outbreak of the Ebola virus. 
1976 - Death of Mao Zedong. 
1976 - End of Cultural Revolution
1977 - Jimmy Carter is inaugurated as President
1977 - The first home personal computer, Commodore PET, released for retail sale
1977 - The television miniseries Roots is aired on ABC, to critical acclaim and gaining record audiences
1977 - The New York City blackout of 1977 lasts for 25 hours, resulting in looting and other disorder
1977 - Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll dies in his home in Graceland at age 42. 75,000 fans lined the streets of Memphis for this funeral
1977 - Atari 2600 becomes the first successful home video game system, popularizes the use of microprocessor based hardware and cartridges containing game code
1977 - Introduction of the first mass-produced personal computers;
1977 - Launch of the Voyager spacecraft, currently the most distant man-made objects in the universe. 
1977 - Queen Alia of Jordan is killed in helicopter crash.
1978 - Volkswagen becomes the second (after Rolls-Royce) non-American automobile manufacturer to open a plant in the United States, commencing production of the Rabbit
1978 - Camp David Accords, where Menachem Begin (Israel) and Anwar Sadat (Egypt) begin the peace process at Camp David, Maryland.
1978 - Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act signed into law, adjusting the government's economic goals to include full employment, growth in production, price stability, and balance of trade and budget
1978 - The Senate votes to turn the Panama Canal over to Panamanian control on December 31, 1999
1978 - Harvey Milk is assassinated by Dan White in San Francisco on November 27.
1978 - Invention of artificial insulin;
Discovery of Pluto's moon Charon;
1978 - Independence of Tuvalu; 
1978 - birth of the first test-tube baby. 
1978 - Afghan Civil War begins. 
1978 - Deng Xiaoping commences Economic reform in the People's Republic of China. 
1978 - Spanish transition to democracy is completed. 
1978 - John Paul II becomes Pope.
1979 - Three Mile Island nuclear accident, which is America's most serious nuclear power plant accident in its history.
1979 - Iran hostage crisis begins. In the aftermath, a second energy crisis develops, tripling the price of oil and sending gasoline prices over $1 per gallon for the first time.
1979 - American Airlines Flight 191 crashes after takeoff from O'Hare International Airport killing all 271 aboard and 2 on the ground, making it the deadliest aviation incident on U.S. soil
1979 - Facing bankruptcy, Chrysler receives government loan guarantees upon the request of CEO Lee Iacocca to help revive the company
1979 - Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; 
1979 - Shah Reza Pahlavi forced into exile. 
1979 - Arrival of Pope John Paul II in Poland, eventually sparking the Solidarity movement. 
1979 - First space station, Skylab, is launched. 
1979 - First close-up images of Saturn. 
1979 - Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1979 - 1979 - Implementation of China's One child policy. 
1979 - Idi Amin exiled from Uganda. 
1979 - Smallpox eradicated. 
1979 - Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia ends; 1.4 million people known to have been murdered in The Killing Fields. 
1979 - Nicaraguan Revolution.
1980s
1980 - President Ronald Reagan was the face of the United States during the 1980s
1980 - U.S. boycotts Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, also announces grain embargo against the Soviet Union with the support of the European Commission.
1980 - Refugee Act, which reformed United States immigration law and admitted refugees on systematic basis for humanitarian reasons
1980 - Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington kills 57
1980 - U.S. presidential election, 1980
1980 - John Lennon assassinated
1980 - Independence of Zimbabwe and Vanuatu. 
1980 - Beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, Salvadorian Civil War and Contra War
1981 - Ronald Reagan becomes President, inaugurated on the same day Iran releases hostages
1981 - Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley
1981 - Kemp-Roth Tax Cut
1981 - MTV signs on, becoming the first 24-hour cable network dedicated to airing music videos.
1981 - A hotel walkway collapses in Kansas City, Missouri, killing 114 and injuring over 200; it is the deadliest structural collapse to occur in the United States
1981 - The Space Shuttle Columbia is launched, marking America's first return to space since 1975
1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor becomes first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court
1981–1982 - The killing of 7-year-old Adam Walsh (1981), and the disappearance of Johnny Gosch, a 12-year-old newspaper carrier from Des Moines, Iowa (1982), raise awareness of missing children cases in the United States.
1982 - First Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Falklands War.
1981: Independence of Palau. First orbital flight of the Space Shuttle.
1983 - 241 U.S. Marines killed by suicide bomb in Lebanon
1983 - United States invades Grenada
1983 - Chrysler unveils its minivans - the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager (as 1984 models) - to the public
1983 - End of 1982 Lebanon War. 
1983 - GPS becomes available for civilian use. 
1983 - Independence of Brunei. 
1983 - End of dictatorship in Argentina. 
1983 - Second Sudanese Civil War begins.
1984 - Most of Eastern Bloc boycotts Summer Olympics in Los Angeles
1984 - U.S. presidential election, 1984 (Ronald Reagan is re-elected)
1984 - The drug problem intensifies as crack (a smokeable form of cocaine) is first introduced into the Los Angeles area
1984 - Awareness of child sexual abuse by pedophiles raised through high-profile media coverage on programs such as 60 Minutes and 20/20.
1984 - Beginning of the 1984–1985 famine in Ethiopia
1985 - Bernhard Goetz is indicted in New York on charges of attempted murder after shooting four young men whom he claimed were intent on mugging him
1985 - Professional wrestling hits the mainstream with the World Wrestling Federation's first WrestleMania and the debut of Saturday Night's Main Event, and the WWF's flagship star, Hulk Hogan, becoming a cultural icon.
1985 - World awareness of famine in Third World countries spark "We Are the World" and Live Aid. Also, awareness of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is raised with the death of actor Rock Hudson.
1985 - Country music singer Willie Nelson organizes the first Farm Aid, to raise money for family farmers facing financial crisis
1985 - The Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable (as 1986 models), Nintendo Entertainment System are released to the public.
1985 - Live Aid. 
1985 - Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union. 
1985 - First use of DNA fingerprinting. End of dictatorship in Brazil
1986 - Iran-Contra scandal breaks
1986 - Space Shuttle Challenger accident, killing all seven aboard (inclduing school teacher Christa McAuliffe) and grounding the nation's space program for 2½ years.
1986 - Tax Reform Act of 1986
1986 - Gramm Rudman Hollings Balanced Budget Act
1986 - Marshall Islands become independent
1986 - Fox Broadcasting Company launched, becomes the first network since DuMont to offer nightly programming
1986 - Challenger and Chernobyl disasters. 
1986 - Launch of the space station Mir. 
1986 - First close up images of the planet Uranus. 
1986 - End of dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.Corazon Aquino succeed to presidency. 
1986 - Iran-Contra becomes public.
1987 - Assorted scandals involve popular televangelists, including Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart.
1987 - During a visit to Berlin, Germany, President Reagan challenges Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!" (referring to the Berlin Wall).
1987 - Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 22.6% in single session on Black Monday
1987 - Dennis Conner onboard "Stars & Stripes" returns the America's Cup to America.
1987 - First Intifada between Israel and Palestine begins. 
1987 - World population reaches 5 billion
1988 - Drunk driving awareness raised after a drunk driver's car crashes into a church bus near Carrollton, Kentucky, killing 27.
1988 - Severe droughts and massive heat wave grip the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states. The crisis reaches its peak with the Yellowstone fires of 1988.
1988 - Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois, becomes the last Major League Baseball park to add lights for night games.
1988 - Discovery launched as first post-Challenger space shuttle flight
1988 - U.S. presidential election, 1988 (Vice president George H. W. Bush is elected)
1988 - Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty goes into effect
1988: Perestroika begins. End of the Iran-Iraq War. End of dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Pan Am Flight 103 falls over Lockerbie, Scotland. Myanmar Armed Forces launch a military coup. Construction of the Channel Tunnel begins.
1989 - George H. W. Bush inaugurated as President.
1989 - Time, Inc. and Warner Communications announce plans for a merger, forming Time Warner.
1989 - Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound
1989 - Awareness of stalking is raised with the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer by an obsessed fan
1989 - Hurricane Hugo strikes the East Coast, causing $7 billion in damage.
1989 - Loma Prieta earthquake kills 63 in greater San Francisco Bay Area
1989 - President Bush declares a "War on Drugs."
1989 - The animated comedy The Simpsons debuts
1989 - President Bush and Soviet Premier Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between their nations may be coming to an end. Symbolic elsewhere around the world was the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany
1989 - Fall of the Berlin Wall; 
1989 - 1989 revolution and collapse of Communism in Europe. 
1989 - Tiannanmen Square Massacre in China. 
1989 - End of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 
1989 - End of dictatorship in Paraguay and first direct Presidential election in Brazil since 1960. 
1989 - Death of Emperor Hirohito. 
1989 - Fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie. 
1989 - Exxon Valdez oil spill. 
1989 - First close up pictures of Neptune. 
1989 - First Liberian Civil War begins.
 
1990s
1990 - Hubble Space Telescope launched during Space Shuttle Discovery mission.
1990 - Iraq invades Kuwait leading to the Gulf War.
1990 - Sir Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web. 
1990 - Reunification of Germany. 
1990 - Contra War ends. Myanmar Armed Forces place Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
1991 - The Gulf War is waged in the Middle East, by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from thirty-four nations, led by the U.S. and United Kingdom, against Iraq.
1991 - Supreme Court candidate Clarence Thomas and former aide Anita Hill are interviewed by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee following sexual harassment allegations by Hill. Thomas is eventually confirmed and seated on the Supreme Court.
1991 - Cold War ends as the USSR dissolves.
1991 - Dissolution of the Soviet Union and independence of 15 former Soviet republics. 
1991 - Boris Yeltsin becomes the first democratically elected leader of Russia.
1991 - Ten-Day War in Slovenia begins the Yugoslav Wars. 
1991 - Beginning of the Somali, Sierra Leonian and Algerian Civil Wars. 
1991 - Final end of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia
1992 - Los Angeles riots result in over 50 deaths and $1 billion in damage, spurred by the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King
1992 - 27th Amendment, prohibiting changes to Congress members' salaries from taking effect until after an election of representatives.
1992 - U.S. presidential election, 1992 (Bill Clinton defeats President George H. W. Bush)
1992 - Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 hurricane, kills 65 people and causes $26 billion in damage to Florida and other areas of the U.S. Gulf Coast, and will be the costliest natural disaster until Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
1992 - Maastricht Treaty creates the European Union. 
1992 - End of dictatorship in Albania and South Korea. 
1992 - End of Salvadorian Civil War
1993 - Truck Bomb explodes in the parking garage, under the World Trade Center in New York City, killing 6 people and injuring thousands.
1993 - Branch Davidians standoff and fire in Waco, Texas, resulting in the deaths of 76 people including their leader, David Koresh.
1993 - The "Storm of the Century" strikes the Eastern Seaboard, with blizzard conditions and severe weather, killing 300 people and causing $6 billion in damage.
1993 - Massive flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers kill 50 people and devastate the Midwest with $15 billion in damage
1993 - President Clinton signs 'Don't ask, don't tell' into law which prohibits openly gay or bisexual people from serving in the military.
1993 - Velvet divorce between Czech Republic and Slovakia. 
1993 - Independence of Eritrea. 
1993 - Oslo accords end First Intifada between Israel and Palestine.
1994 - North American Free Trade Agreement goes into effect.
1994 - 1994 Northridge earthquake kills 72 and injures 9,000 in the Los Angeles area and causes $20 billion in damage.
1994 - End of apartheid in South Africa and election of Nelson Mandela.
1994 - First Chechen War begins. 
1994 - Rwandan genocide occurs. 
1994 - Opening of the Channel Tunnel.
1995 - Following the 1994 elections, Republicans gain control of both the House and Senate for the first time since 1955.
1995 - Oklahoma City bombing kills 168 and wounds 800. The bombing is the worst domestic terrorist incident in U.S. history, and the investigation resulted in the arrests of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols
1995 - Retired professional football player O. J. Simpson is acquitted of two charges of first-degree murder in the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. The trial, which lasts nine months, receives worldwide publicity.
1995 - A heat wave kills 750 in Chicago, bringing to attention the plight of the urban poor and the elderly in extreme weather conditions.
1995 - Establishment of the World Trade Organization. 
1995 - Srebrenica massacre; NATO bombing raids in Bosnia; 
1995 - Dayton Accords signed. 
1995 - Assassination of Yitzak Rabin. 
1995 - North Korean famine begins.
1995-1996 - A budget crisis forces the federal government to shutdown for several weeks.
1996 - A snowstorm along the East Coast kills 150 people and causes $3 billion in damage
1996 - TWA Flight 800 explodes off Long Island killing all 230 aboard.
1996 - Khobar Towers bombing leaves 19 U.S. servicemen dead in Saudi Arabia
1996 - Centennial Olympic Park bombing at Summer Olympics in Atlanta kills 1 and injures 111
1996 - First Congo War begins. First Chechen War ends. 
1996 - First Liberian Civil War ends. 
1996 - End of dictatorship in Taiwan. 
1996 - Dolly the sheep becomes first successful cloned mammal. 
1996 - The Taliban government takes control of Afghanistan.
1997 - President Clinton bars federal funding for any research on human cloning.
1997 - Sparked by a global economic crisis scare, the Dow Jones Industrial Average follows world markets and plummets 554.26, or 7.18%, to 7,161.15
1997 - Des Moines, Iowa resident Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies are born alive, and the first in which all survive infancy
1997 - Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 
1997 - Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from UK to China. Lottery Uprising in Albania. 
1997 - Diana, Princess of Wales is killed in a car accident in Paris.
1998 - Former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones accuses President Clinton of sexual harassment
1998-1999 - Lewinsky scandal: President Clinton is accused of having a sexual relationship with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. This leads to the impeachment of Clinton later in the year by the U.S. House of Representatives. Clinton is acquitted of all impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day Senate trial
1998 - 224 killed in 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya
1998 - Gay college student Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered near the University of Wyoming. He becomes a symbol of gay-bashing victims and sparking public reflection on homophobia in the U.S.
1998 - Osama Bin Laden publishes a fatwa against the West. 
1998 - Kenya and Tanzania bombings. 
1998 - Second Congo War begins. 
1998 - Good Friday Agreement brings an end to The Troubles in Northern Ireland. 1998 - North Korean famine kills an estimated 2.5 million people by this point.
1999 - Dennis Hastert of Illinois becomes Speaker of the House, a position he will hold until 2007, making him the longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House
1999 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 10,000 mark for the first time, at 10,006.78
1999 - Two teenage students murder 13 other students and teachers at Columbine High School. It is the deadliest mass murder at a high school in U.S. history, and sparks debates on gun control and bullying.
1999 - A violent tornado outbreak in Oklahoma kills 50 people and becomes the first to produce a tornado that causes $1 billion in damage.
1999 - The first officer deliberately crashes EgyptAir Flight 990 south of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing 217.
1999 - Along with the rest of the world, the U.S. prepares for the possible effects of the Y2K bug in computers, which was feared to cause computers to become inoperable and wreak havoc.
1999 - Euro is introduced. 
1999 - Kosovo War ends the Yugoslav Wars. 
1999 - Hugo Chavez becomes President of Venezuela. 
1999 - Second Chechen War and Second Liberian Civil War begin. 
1999 - Fourth Indo-Pakistani War. 
1999 - Crisis in East Timor leads to 1400 deaths. 
1999 - World population reaches 6 billion.
2000s
2000 - The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the USS Cole (DDG-76) is bombed in Yemeni waters, killing seventeen U.S. Navy sailors.
2000 - U.S. presidential election, 2000; incumbent Texas governor George Walker Bush wins by 537 votes in Florida in a highly contested election against the incumbent Vice President Al Gore. He is thus elected 43rd President of the United States.
2000 - End of Israeli occupation of Lebanon. 
2000 - Second Intifada begins.
2000 - Vincente Fox becomes the first opposition President of Mexico. 
2000 - Vladimir Putin becomes President of Russia. 
2000 - British Army launch Operation Palliser which effectively ends the Sierra Leone Civil War. 
2000 - International Space Station begins operations. 
2000 - First Inter-Korean Summit.
2001 - George W. Bush is inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States.
2001 - Democrats gains narrow control of Senate after James Jeffords defects from the Republican Party.
2001 - No Child Left Behind Act education reform bill passed.
2001 - Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 institutes the largest tax cut in U.S. history.
2001 - September 11th terrorist attacks; 19 terrorists hijack four planes and crash them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people and injuring over 6,000. All civilian air traffic is suspended for 3 days, the first time an unplanned suspension had occurred in U.S. history.
2001 - Congress passes an emergency bailout package for the airline industry as a result of the attacks.
2001 - Afghan War begins. 
2001 - Wikipedia founded. 
2001 - President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines impeached.
2001 - Anthrax attacks kill 5 and infect a further 17 through the U.S. Mail system.
2001 - The United States launches the invasion of Afghanistan marking the start of Operation Enduring Freedom.
2001 - Patriot Act, increasing law enforcement agencies' ability to conduct searches in cases of suspected terrorism. Agencies were enforced.
2001 - American Airlines Flight 587 crashes in Queens, New York, killing 265.
2002 - The Department of Homeland Security is created in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
2002 - The United States withdraws from Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
2002 - 10 people are killed and 3 are injured in the Beltway sniper attacks around the Washington D.C. area.
2002 - Guantanamo Bay detention camp is established. 
2002 - 2002 Bali bombings. 
2002 - Algerian Civil War ends. 
2002 - Rose Revolution in Georgia. 
2002 - Independence of East Timor.
2003 - Republicans retake narrow control of the Senate following 2002 elections.
2003 - Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates upon re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere, killing all 7 astronauts and resulting in a 29-month suspension of the space shuttle program.
2003 - A series of incidents occur that institute a crackdown on building, fire, and safety code violations across the United States, including the E2 nightclub stampede which killed 21, The Station nightclub fire which killed 100, and a porch collapse which killed 13.
2003 - The United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invades Iraq marking the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
2003 - U.S. forces continue fighting an insurgency in Iraq while helping the Iraqis build a new army of their own and develop a democratic form of government
2003 - In Iraq, deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is captured by U.S. special forces.
2003 - 2003 Invasion of Iraq begins, triggering worldwide protests. 
2003 - War in Darfur begins. 
2003 - The Human Genome Project is completed. 
2003 - Second Congo War ends with more than 5 million dead. 
2003 - Second Liberian Civil War ends. 
2003 - Space Shuttle Columbia is destroyed on re-entry.
2004 - The social networking website Facebook is launched.
2004 - The 2004 Atlantic hurricane season produces four deadly and damaging hurricanes which impact Florida, Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne, which kill a combined 100 people in the U.S. and produce over $50 billion in damage
2004 - Massachusetts becomes the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, this in compliance with a ruling from the state's Supreme Court ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health
2004 - Former U.S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan dies from complications resulting from Alzheimer's Disease. He lies in state at the U.S. Capitol building before being interred.
2004 - U.S. presidential election, 2004; George W. Bush re-elected to second-term; Republicans solidify control in both houses of Congress.
2004 - Madrid train bombings. 
2004 - Boxing Day Tsunami occurs in Indian Ocean. 
2004 - Orange Revolution in Ukraine
2005 - George W. Bush is inaugurated to his second-term
2005 - Hurricane Katrina devastates the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama coastlines killing at least 1,836 people and causing $81 billion in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Weeks later, Hurricane Rita causes $10 billion damage along the Louisiana and Texas coastlines. In October, Hurricane Wilma kills 35 and causes $20 billion in damage in Florida.
2005 - Second Intifada ends. 
2005 - Second Sudanese Civil War ends. 
2005 - 7/7 attacks on London Underground. 
2005 - Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan. 
2005 - 80,000 are killed in an earthquake in Kashmir. 
2005 - The Kyoto Protocol comes into effect. 
2005 - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad becomes President of Iran. 
2005 - Benedict XVI becomes Pope.
2006 - The Democratic Party retakes control of both houses of Congress, and gains a majority of state governorships (28-22).
2006 - Independence of Montenegro. 
2006 - Second invasion of Lebanon. Mumbai bombings. 
2006 - Ellen Johnson Sirleaf becomes President of Liberia, and thus Africa's first elected female head of state. 
2006 - Saddam Hussein is executed in Iraq.
2007 - Democrat Nancy Pelosi becomes the first female Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
2007 - George W. Bush orders a troop surge which substantially increases the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and ultimately leads to reductions in casualties and major victories for coalition and Iraqi forces, against the insurgency.
2007 - A South Korean student shoots and kills 32 other students and professors in the Virginia Tech massacre before killing himself. It is the worst mass-shooting in U.S. history and spurs a series of debates on gun control and journalism ethics.
2007 - The I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota collapses, killing 13 people. The bridge collapse brings to national attention the need to rehabilitate the aging U.S. infrastructure system.
2007 - The late-2000s recession officially begins in December.
2007 - Anti-government protests in Myanmar crushed by ruling junta. 
2007 - Spike in food prices and subprime crisis help trigger the Great Recession.
2008 - The Super Tuesday tornado outbreak kills over 60 people and produces $1 billion in damage across Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama.
2008 - A student kills 5, injures 21, and then kills himself in the Northern Illinois University shooting. After this incident, calls are made for more focus on mental health services and interest grows substantially in the group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.
2008 - Hurricane Ike kills 100 people along the Texas coast, produces $31 billion in damage, and contributes to rising oil prices.
2008 - U.S. oil prices hit a record $147 per barrel in the wake of—among other factors—international tensions and the falling U.S. dollar vs. the Euro.
2008 - Global financial crisis in September 2008 begins as the stock market crashes. In response, U.S. President George W. Bush signs the revised Emergency Economic Stabilization Act into law to create a 700 billion dollar Treasury fund to purchase failing bank assets.
2008 - U.S. presidential election, 2008; Barack Obama elected 44th President of the United States.
2008 - End of Monarchy in Nepal. 
2008 - Cyclone Nargis kills 133,000 in Myanmar. 
2008 - Gaza War begins. 2008 - 2008 South Ossetia war. 
2008 - Kosovo declares independence, to mixed reaction.
2009 - Barack Hussein Obama II is inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. He is also the first African-American to hold the office.
2009 - The first of a series of Tea Party protests are conducted across the United States, focusing on smaller government, fiscal responsibility, individual freedoms and conservative views of the Constitution.
2009 - U.S. President Barack Obama obtains Congressional approval for the $787 billion stimulus package, the largest since President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
2009 - Pop icon Michael Jackson dies, creating the largest public mourning for an entertainer since the death of Elvis Presley.
2009 - Nidal Malik Hasan kills 12 servicemen and injures 31 in the Fort Hood shooting
2009 - Nick Saban wins The University of Alabama's award
2009 - Gaza War ends; Gaza blockade continues. 
2009 - Election protests begin in Iran. 
2009 - Second Chechen War ends. 
2009 - Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest skyscraper, is completed.
2009 - Great Recession officially ends.
2010s
2010 - The controversial Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is passed by razor-thin margins in Congress.
2010 - The Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, sending millions of gallons of oil into the sea. The spill becomes the worst oil spill in American history.
2010 - Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act
2010 - A surge of suicides among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual teenagers occurs across the U.S. The It Gets Better Project is created and dedicated to teens suffering from bullying. Speeches are made by several celebrities including U.S. President Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Gunn, Canadian singer Justin Bieber, and American singer Lady Gaga.
2010 - Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives and reduce the Democratic majority in the Senate.
2010 - A series of measures pass through an historic lame-duck session of Congress including an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, the ratification of the New START II treaty with Russia, signing of an agreement to repeal the don't ask don't tell policy concerning gays and lesbians openly serving in the US military, and passage of a 9/11 first responders health-care bill.
2010 -  A 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti kills 230,000. 
2010 -  Flooding in Pakistan kills nearly 2,000 and leaves roughly a million homeless. 
2010 -  Greece defaults on its debts, triggering the European sovereign debt crisis and Ireland's bankruptcy. 
2010 -  Tensions rise between North and South Korea, culimating in the shelling of the island of Yeonpyeong. 
2010 -  The website Wikileaks releases thousands of classified US documents.
2010 -  Self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia triggers the Arab Spring.
2011 - U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords is targeted in an assassination attempt, when a gunman went on a shooting spree, critically injuring Giffords, killing federal judge John Roll and five other people, and wounding at least 13 others, at a "Congress on Your Corner" event Giffords was hosting in suburban Tucson, Arizona.
2011 - The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives caught dealing several thousand guns to mexico.
2011 - The U.S. launches Operation Odyssey Dawn as part of a United Nations military intervention in the Libyan civil war.
2011 - A series of tornadoes cause heavy damage in the South, Alabama being the hardest hit. 344 people are killed in the deadliest natural disaster in the US since Hurricane Katrina.
2011 - Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda and mastermind of the September 11 attacks, is killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan by sailors from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group.
2011 - Flooding devastates the Mississippi River valley causing $2 to $4 billion in damage.
2011 - A tornado devastates Joplin, Missouri, killing 154 and injuring 1,000, making it the deadliest single U.S. tornado since the advent of modern weather forecasting
2011 - STS-135: The Space Shuttle Atlantis touches down at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, ending the 30 year shuttle program, which began with the launch of shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981.
2011 - Hurricane Irene strikes the Atlantic coast causing heavy flooding from North Carolina to eastern Canada, killing 49 and causing over $13 billion in damage.
2011 - After a manhunt that lasted more than two years, during a U.S. military operation in northern Yemen's al-Jawf province, American drones carried out a targeted killing of al-Qaida's leader in the Arabian Peninsula Anwar al-Awlaki while he traveled in a convoy together with his senior aides.
2011
Jan 8th - Attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona at a Safeway grocery store kills 6 and wounds 13, including Giffords
Jan 14th - Stampede near Sabarimala in Kerala, India kills 104 devotees and injures 100 more
Jan 14th - Ben Ali, former Tunisian president, fled the country to Saudi Arabia after popular protests (dubbed as Jasmine Revolution) requesting his departure.
Jan 15th - Wikipedia the free internet encyclopedia turns 10 years old
Jan 24th - At least 35 died and 180 injured in a bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport.
Jan 25th - Egyptian Revolution of 2011 begins in Egypt, with a series of street demonstrations, marches, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, riots, labour strikes, and violent clashes in Cairo, Alexandria, and throughout other cities in Egypt.
Jan 28th - Hundreds of thousands of protesters fill the Egyptian's streets against the Mubarak regime in demonstrations referred to as the "Friday of Anger"
Feb 3rd - All available blocks of IPv4 internet addresses are officially distributed to regional authorities.
Feb 11th - Egyptian Revolution culminates in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the transfer of power to the Supreme Military Council after 18 days of protests.
Feb 14th - The 2011 Bahraini uprising commenced.
Feb 15th - Libyan protests begin opposing Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi's rule
Feb 22nd - An earthquake measuring 6.3 in magnitude strikes Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 181 people
Feb 24th - Final Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery (OV-103).
Feb 25th - In the Irish general election, the Fianna Fáil-led government suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government since the formation of the Irish state in 1921.
Mar 9th - Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights.
Mar 11th - An earthquake measuring 9.0 in magnitude strikes 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people. This event also triggered the second largest nuclear accident in history, and one of only two events to be classified as a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
Mar 12th - A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melts and explodes and releases radioactivity into the atmosphere a day after Japan's earthquake.
Apr 1st - After protests against the burning of the Quran turned violent, a mob attacked a United Nations compound in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan and killed thirteen people, including eight foreign workers.
Apr 9th - A gunman murdered five people, injured eleven, and committed suicide in a mall in the Netherlands.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Apr 11th - Minsk Metro bombing
Apr 19th - Fidel Castro resigns from the Communist Party of Cuba's central committee after 45 years of holding the title.
Apr 23rd - Zach Daniels defeated Rick Michaels to become the new TNT Heavyweight Champion.
Apr 25th - At least 300 people killed in deadliest tornado outbreak in the Southern United States since the 1974 Super Outbreak.
Apr 27th - The deadliest day of the 2011 Super outbreak of tornadoes, the largest tornado outbreak, in United States history.
Apr 29th - Wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Kate Middleton.
May 1st - Pope John Paul II is beatified by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI.
May 2nd - Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man is killed by the United States special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
May 2nd - The 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak strikes Europe, mostly in Germany, leaving more than 30 people dead and many others sick from the bacteria outbreak.
May 16th - Space shuttle Endeavour launches for its final commission in space
May 22nd - An EF5 Tornado strikes the US city of Joplin, Missouri killing at least 158 people, the single deadliest US tornado since modern record keeping began in 1950.
May 25th - Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her twenty five year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Jun 13th - Christchurch, New Zealand is hit by another strong earthquake measuring magnitude 6.3
Jul 7th - Roof of a stand in De Grolsch Veste Stadium in Enschede which was under construction collapsed, one killed and 14 injured.
Jul 8th - Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey Jul 9th - South Sudan gains independence and secedes from Sudan.
Jul 10th - British tabloid News of the World publishes its last edition after 168 years in the wake of a phone hacking scandal.
Jul 11th - Neptune completes its first orbit since its discovery on September 23, 1846.
Jul 13th - Mumbai is rocked by three bomb blasts during the evening rush hour, killing 26 and injuring 130.
Jul 21st - NASA's Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135.
Jul 22nd - Norway is the victim of twin terror attacks, the first being a bomb blast which targeted government buildings in central Oslo, the second being a massacre at a youth camp on the island of Utøya.
Aug 5th - Svalbard Polar Bear Attack (2011) - a rogue Polar Bear attacks and kills a British schoolboy.
Aug 6th - A helicopter containing members of Navy SEAL 6 is shot down in Afghanistan killing 38.
Aug 16th - Beginning of World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid
Aug 18th - The West Memphis Three are released from prison after 18 years in imprisonment
Aug 20th - Socialite and model Kim Kardashian weds basketball player Kris Humphries at a private estate in Montecito, California
Aug 23rd - Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi is overthrown after the National Transitional Council forces take control of Bab al-Azizia compound during the 2011 Libyan Civil War.
Aug 23rd - 5.8 earthquake occurrs in Mineral, Virginia felt as far north as Ontario and as far south as Atlanta, Georgia
Aug 26th - The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Boeing's all-new composite airliner, receives certification from the EASA and the FAA
Sep 7th - Plane crash in Russia kills 43 people, including nearly the entire roster of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl Kontinental Hockey League team
Sep 17th - Occupy Wall Street movement began in Zucotti Park, New York City.
Sep 20th - The United States ends its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, allowing gay men and women to serve openly for the first time.
Sep 22nd - CERN scientists announce their discovery of neutrinos breaking the speed of light
Oct 15th - Global protests break out in 951 cities in 82 countries.
Oct 15th - Legoland Florida in Winter Haven, Florida Opens. This is the world's largest Legoland theme park
Oct 16th - Nikki Reed weds Paul McDonald in Malibu
Oct 18th - Gilad Shalit is released.
Oct 20th - The former leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, and his son Moatassem Gaddafi are killed shortly after the battle of Sirte (2011) while in the custody of NTC fighters.
Oct 23rd - A powerful 7.2 magnitude earthquake strikes Van Province, Turkey, killing 582 people and injuring thousands.
Oct 27th - The Royal Australian Navy announces that they discovered the wreck of a World War II submarine in Simpson Harbour, Papua New Guinea during Operation RENDER SAFE - it is likely to be Japanese.
Oct 29th - Record-breaking snowstorm in the northeastern United States leaves nearly 2 million residents without power for more than 36 hours.
Oct 31st - The world population reaches 7 billion inhabitants according to the United Nations
Oct 31st - Socialite and model Kim Kardashian files for divorce from basketball player Kris Humphries 72 days after getting married
Nov 8th - The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passed 0.85 lunar distances from Earth (about 324,600 kilometres or 201,700 miles), the closest known approach by an asteroid of its brightness since 2010 XC15 in 1976.
Nov 12th - Silvio Berlusconi resigns as Prime Minister of Italy due, in large part, to the European sovereign debt crisis.
Nov 23rd - Arab Spring: After 11 months of protests in Yemen, The Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh Signs a deal to transfer power to the vice president, in exchange for legal immunity.
Nov 25th - Sudden violent storms strike southern Sri Lanka, killing 27 people and drowning many fishermen caught by surprise. Thousands of homes lose their roofs and several more sustain damage. Landslides along with flooding was reported on the mainland.
Nov 26th - 2011 NATO attack in Pakistan: NATO forces in Afghanistan attack a Pakistani checkpost in a friendly fire incident, killing 24 soldiers and wounding 13 others.
2012
Jan 7th - Hot air balloon crashes in Carterton, New Zealand, killing 11
Jan 13th - Cruise ship, Costa Concordia, runs aground at Isola de Giglio, Italy, with at least 15 deaths
Jan 14th - Suicide bomber kills 53 and injures 130 in Basra, Iraq
Jan 14th - Ma Ying-jeou wins re-election as President of the Republic of China with 51% of the vote
Jan 18th - Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) blackout becomes the largest protest in the history of the internet
Jan 19th - FBI shuts down Megaupload.com for alleged copyright infringement, hacker group Anonymous responds by attacking government and entertainment industry websites
Jan 23rd - European Union agrees to embargo Iranian oil in protest against Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program
Jan 28th - Death toll from coordinated bombing attacks in Kano, Nigeria, reaches 185
Feb 1st - At least 73 people are killed in the Egyptian football riots in Port Said
Feb 2nd - Cold snap across Europe kills more than 100 people (over 400 people by 08-02)
Feb 2nd - MV Rabaul Queen sinks off the coast of Papa New Guinea with 246 people saved and 126 missing (100 of these estimated to be trapped inside)
Feb 2nd - NHL player Sam Gagner becomes the first player to scores eight points in one game for the Edmonton Oilers against the Chicago Blackhawks since 1989
Feb 4th - Tens of thousands of people are stranded by floods in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland
Feb 5th - Quarterback Eli Manning wins his second Superbowl Most Valuable Player Award after leading the New York Giants to a 21-17 victory over the New England Patriots in Superbowl XLVI
Feb 6th - 6.9 magnitude quake hits near the central Philipines with 43 confirmed deaths
Feb 6th - Queen Elizabeth II marks her 60th anniversary of becoming Britain's Monarch becoming only the second to do so
Feb 11th - Israel Air Force conducts four air strikes in Gaza Strip
Feb 12th - Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow is re-elected president of Turkmenistan with 97% of the vote
Feb 12th - Zambia defeat Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in the Africa Cup of Nations
Queen Elizabeth II Feb 15th - United Kingdom unemployment rate reaches 17 year high of 8.4%
Feb 15th - Fire at Comayagua prison, Honduras, kills 358
Feb 17th - The President of Germany, Christian Wulff, resigns over a corruption scandal
Feb 17th - Approximately 70 ancient Olympic artifacts are stolen from the Archaeological Museum of Greece
Feb 18th - Kateri Tekakwitha canonized as the first native American saint 
Feb 19th - 44 people killed in prison brawl in Apocada, Mexico, between two rival drug cartels
Feb 20th - Scientists successfully regenerate Silene stenophylla from a 31,800 year old piece of fruit, greatly surpassing the previous record of 2,000 years
Feb 20th - South Korea angers North Korea as it proceeds with live fire drills in disputed Korean sea borders 
Feb 21st - Yemen voters go to the polls for a presidential election where the only candidate on the ballot paper is vice-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi
Feb 22nd - Train crash in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 50 and injures hundreds
Feb 23rd - A series of bomb attacks across 12 Iraqi cities kills 60 and injures 200
Feb 25th - Syrian Army kills 100 civilians in artillery shelling of Homs and Hama
Feb 25th - Al Qaeda suicide bombing kills at least 26 people in Mukalla, Yemen
Feb 25th - World Health Organization removes India from the list of polio endemic countries
Feb 25th - Louisiana Red, American blues musician, dies from stroke at 79
Feb 26th - The film The Artist wins five Academy Awards and becomes the first silent film to win since 1927
Feb 26th - Bus plunges off a cliff in Shanxi, China causing 15 deaths
Feb 26th - Train derailment kills 3 and injures 45 in Burlington, Ontario
Feb 27th - Wikileaks begins disclosing 5 million emails from private intelligence company Stratfor
Feb 28th - Occupy London protesters evicted from St Paul's Cathedral
Feb 28th - Discovery of the largest prehistoric penguin, Kairuku grebneffi, at nearly 5ft tall
Mar 1st - Euro zone unemployment reaches historical high of 10.7%
Mar 2nd - Tornadoes kill at least 27 people in the American states of Indiana and Kentucky
Mar 2nd - The Red Cross is denied access to provide relief to the Baba Amr district in Homs by the Syrian army
Mar 2nd - New fiscal compact to prevent excessive debt is signed by 25 out of 27 European Union members
Mar 3rd - Lorry crash in east Guinea kills 50 and injures 27
Mar 3rd - Two trains crash in Szczekociny, Poland, with 16 people dead and up to 50 injured
Mar 4th - Munitions dump explosions kill at least 250 people in the Republic of Congo
Russian President Vladimir Putin Mar 4th - Vladimir Putin wins Russian presidential election amid allegations of voter fraud
Mar 4th - Over 10,000 Peruvian illegal gold miners clash with police to gain control of Puerto Maldonado
Mar 5th - 27 members of Iraq's security force are killed by gunmen disguised as police in Haditha
Mar 5th - Tropical Storm Irina kills 65 in Madagascar
Mar 6th - 9,000 residents are evacuated from Wagga Wagga, Australia, as the Murrimbidgee River threatens to overflow
Mar 6th - Francisco Xavier do Amaral, East Timorese President, dies at 75
Mar 8th - Greece secures debt-restructuring deal with private lenders
Mar 8th - Toyota recalls 700,000 vehicles over safety concerns
Mar 9th - Senior members of hacking group Lulz Sec are arrested, including one member of the FBI, in the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland
Mar 10th - At least 130 rockets are fired into Israel from Gaza 
Mar 11th - US soldier kills 16 civilians in Afghanistan
Mar 12th - 100 people are killed in ethnic clashes and cattle raids in South Sudan
Mar 12th - 45 people, including children, are massacred by the Syrian Army in Homs
Mar 12th - China records its highest trade deficit in over a decade
Mar 13th - 19 people are shot dead in a bus attack in Ethiopia
Mar 13th - Encyclopedia Britannica announces that it will no longer public printed versions of its encyclopedia 
Mar 13th - 110 people are killed and 63 are missing after a ferry collides with an oil tanker near Dhaka, Bangladesh
Mar 13th - 28 people, including 22 children, are killed in a motorway bus crash near Sierre, Switzerland
Mar 16th - Turkish NATO helicopter crashes into a house killing ten people in the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan
Mar 16th - Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar becomes first cricketer to score 100 international centuries
Mar 17th - Bolton Wanderer footballer Fabrice Muamba collapses and is rushed to hospital during a live football match against Tottenham Hotspur
Mar 17th - Wales defeat France to record their eleventh Grand Slam in the Six Nation's Championship
Mar 17th - John Demjanjuk, convicted Nazi war criminal, dies from natural causes at 91
Mar 18th - Superleague Greece football match between Olympiacos and Panathinaikos is abandoned after fans set fire to Athens' Olympic Stadium
Mar 18th - Joachim Gauck elected President of the Federal republic of Germany by the Federal Assembly
Mar 19th - Wendy's overtakes Burger King to become the second best selling hamburger chain
Mar 20th - 50 people are killed and 240 injured in a wave of terror attacks across 10 cities in Iraq
Mar 20th - Disney movie John Carter records one of the largest losses in cinema history with a $200 million dollar write down
Mar 21st - Greek Parliament votes in favour of an international bailout deal
Mar 21st - Five former Guatemalan paramilitaries are sentenced to 7,710 years in jail for their role in the Plan de Sanchez massacre in 1982
Mar 22nd - Largest protest in Quebec's history occurs in Montreal with over 200,000 people marching against government tuition hikes and for free access to post-secondary education
Mar 22nd - Australia's most wanted man, Malcolm Naden, is captured after seven years on the run in Gloucester, New South Wales
Mar 22nd - Massive fire devours thousands of hectares of ancient forests and threatens wildlife on Mount Kenya
Mar 23rd - African Union suspends Mali's membership following a coup
Mar 24th - African Union deploys 5,000 strong force with the aim of catching or killing warlord Joseph Kony
Mar 25th - Peter Cruddas, treasurer of Britain's Conservative Party, resigns after being caught on film selling access to British Prime Minister David Cameron
Mar 26th - Macky Sall elected as President of Senegal
Writer/Director James Cameron Mar 26th - Canadian Film maker, James Cameron, becomes the first person to visit Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth in over 50 years
Mar 30th - Spanish Government cuts 27 Billion Euros from its budget in one of its toughest austerity driver in history
Mar 30th - Mastercard and Visa announce a massive breach in security with over ten million compromised credit card numbers 
Mar 30th - American Mega Millions lottery hits a world record lottery amount of 640 million dollars
Mar 31st - Fiji Floods kill 2 people and force thousands to be evacuated
Apr 1st - Plane crash in Western Siberia kills at least 31 people ( UTair Aviation ATR-72)
Apr 2nd - Oikos University, Oakland shooting kills seven people and injures 3
Apr 3rd - Spanish unemployment reaches record high, youth unemployment stands at 50%
Apr 3rd - Moscow fire kills 17 migrant workers
Apr 3rd - US President Barack Obama officially secures Democratic presidential nomination
Apr 4th - German Nobel Laureat, Gunter Grass, publishes controversial poem that claims Israel is plotting to wipe out Iran
Apr 4th - Somalia's National Theatre is struck by a suicide bomber killing ten people including the presidents of the Somali Olympic Committee and Football Federation
Apr 4th - Boris Todic, President of Serbia, resigns
Apr 5th - Severe storms in Argentina kill 14 people
Apr 5th - 77 year old pensioner's suicide outside Greece's parliament prompts further protests in Athens
44th US President Barack Obama Apr 5th - International internet group Anonymous hack several Chinese bureaus in opposition to censorship
Apr 6th - US F-18 Hornet crashes into side of apartment building in Virginia with no fatalities
Apr 7th - Joyce Banda becomes President of Malawi 
Apr 7th - 130 Pakistani Army soldiers are buried in an avalanche near the Siachen Glacier
Apr 8th - American actress and television host Ricki Lake weds Christian Evans
Apr 8th - Gunter Grass labelled persona non gratta Israeli internal affairs minister Eli Yishai
Apr 8th - Pope Benedict XVI calls for an end to Syrian blood shed in papal Easter message
Apr 9th - The Lion King becomes highest grossing Broadway show after overtaking The Phantom of the Opera
Apr 10th - United Nations deadline for Syrian troop withdrawal passes as violence continues
Apr 10th - Apple Inc claims a value of $600 billion making it the largest company by market capitalization in the world
Apr 10th - Rick Santorum suspends his candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination making Mitt Romney the overwhelming favourite
Apr 10th - Raymond Aubrac, French Resistance Leader, dies at 97
Apr 11th - 8.6 magnitude earth quack and 8.2 aftershock occurs off the coast of Indonesia
Apr 11th - 2011 London riot looter is jailed for 11 years after starting a fire at a furniture retailer
Apr 11th - South Korean legislative elections result in the governing Saenuri Party retaining governance
Apr 11th - Prime Minister of Greece, Lucas Papademos, resigns and calls an election for May 6
Apr 12th - A ceasefire in the 2011-2012 Syrian uprising comes into effect
Apr 12th - Bodleian, Oxford University and Vatican libraries announce over 1.5 million pages of ancient texts will be made available across the internet
Apr 12th - Civilian rule in Mali is returned after Dioncounda Traore is sworn in as interim president
Apr 13th - North Korean long range rocket testing ends in failure after the rocket broke up after launch
Apr 15th - 400 Islamist Militants escape from a Pakistan prison after an insurgent attack
Apr 15th - China loosens monetary policy and allows the Yuan to fluctuate up to 1% against the US dollar
Apr 15th - US Secret Service inappropriate conduct scandal begins with at least 11 people implicated
Apr 16th - At least 55 people are killed in the Syrian uprising despite UN presence to oversee ceasefire
Apr 16th - For the first time since 1977 no Pulitzer Prize is awarded for fiction
Apr 17th - The St Cuthbert Gospel, Europe's oldest intact book, purchased by the British Library for 9 million pounds
Apr 18th - The Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples begins burning artworks after cultural institution budget cuts
Apr 19th - Levon Helm, American rock musician, dies from throat cancer at 71
Apr 20th - Plane crash near Islamabad, Pakistan, kills 127 people
Apr 20th - 40 people are killed and 27 injured after a tractor trailer collided with a bus in Alamo, Mexico
Apr 21st - Two trains in Sloterdijk, Netherlands, injure 117 people in a head on collision
Apr 21st - Chicago White Sox pitcher, Philip Humber, pitches the 21st MLB perfect game against the Seattle Mariners
Apr 22nd - 30 year old women collapses and dies during London Marathon
Apr 23rd - Netherlands Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, tenders resignation, paving the way for early elections 
Apr 23rd - Rangers F.C. owner, Craig Whyte, is banned for life from any involvement in Scottish football
Apr 23rd - 38,000 London Marathon entrants have their home and email contacts published in a data protection breach
Apr 25th - The United Kingdom dips back into recession after the economy shrunk 0.2% in the first quarter of 2012
Apr 26th - 70 people are killed by rocket attacks by the Syrian Army on the city of Hama
Apr 26th - Indonesia suspends imports of American beef after a confirmed case of mad cow disease in California
Apr 27th - Four explosions in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, kill 27 people
Apr 28th - Tent collapse in St Louis, Missouri, kills one and injures 110 people
Apr 29th - International Chemical Weapons Convention deadline for chemical weapon stockpiles comes into effect 
Apr 30th - The unfinished One World Trade Center overtakes the Empire State building to become the tallest building in New York
Apr 30th - Spain's economy double dips after a 0.3% contraction and 25% unemployment rate
Apr 30th - Overloaded ferry in the Brahmaputra River,India, killing 103 people
Apr 30th - Manchester City defeat Manchester United 1-0 in what is claimed to be the biggest match in the English Premier League's history
May 1st - China and Russia sign $15 billion dollar trade deal
May 1st - Guggenheim Partners make the largest ever purchase of a sports franchise after buying the Los Angeles Dodgers for $2.1 billion
May 2nd - Edvard Munch's famous painting 'The Scream' sells at auction for $119,922,500
May 2nd - Barcelona football player Lionel Messi breaks the European goal-scoring record with 68 goals 
May 4th - 14 decapitated bodies and 9 hung from a bridge are found in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
May 5th - 17 people are killed and 47 missing after a flash flood in Nepal
May 5th - Japan shuts down its nuclear reactors leaving the country without nuclear power for the first time since 1970
May 6th - Francois Hollande elected President of France
May 6th - Greece parliamentary election results in 60% support for parties opposed to austerity measures
May 7th - NATO air strike kills 14 and woulds 6 civilians in Afghanistan's Badghis Province
May 7th - Vladimir Putin sworn in for third six year term as President of Russia
May 7th - Paeleoclimatological research claims dinosaur flatulence may have warmed the earth
May 9th - Mark Rothko's "Orange, Red, Yellow" becomes the most expensive contemporary art piece to be sold at auction for $86.9 million dollars
May 9th - A Russian passenger jet disappears with 45 people on board
May 9th - United States President, Barack Obama, officially states his support for same sex marriage
May 10th - The Red Cross suspends all humanitarian work in Pakistan after a worker was kidnapped and killed 
May 10th - Two bombings in Damascus, Syria, kill 55 people and injure 370
May 11th - Chinese scientists break world record by transferring photons over 97 kilometers using quantum teleportation
May 12th - The discovery of a missing Mayan calender piece disproves 2012 Armageddon
May 13th - 49 dismembered bodies are found on a Mexican highway as part of the Mexican drug war
May 13th - Torrential rain in Hunan Province, China, destroys a bridge, 3,500 homes and displaces 28,000 people
May 13th - Manchester City win the English Premier League for the first time
May 14th - 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons agree to end mass hunger strike
May 14th - Stanford University scientists develop prototype bionic eye
Russian President Vladimir Putin May 15th - Eurozone economy narrowly avoids recession
May 15th - Greece's fifth attempt to a form a coalition government fails and new June elections are scheduled
May 19th - Chelsea defeat Bayern Munich in penalty shootout to win the UEFA Champion's League
May 20th - Tomislav Nikolić elected president of Serbia
May 20th - 6.0 magnitude earthquake kills 6 and injures dozens in northern Italy
May 21st - 120 people are killed and 350 injured by a suicide bomb in Sana'a, Yemen
May 21st - 13 people are killed and 22 people injured after a bus falls 80 metres off a cliff in Albania
May 22nd - 14 people die and 30 are injured in train collision in India 
May 22nd - Philip Philips is crowned the eleventh American Idol
May 25th - Up to 116 people are massacred, including women and children, by the Syrian army in Houla, in the Homs province
May 25th - A SpaceX Dragon becomes the first commercial spacecraft to dock at the International Space Station
May 26th - A gunman in the Finnish town of Hyvink
May 26th - Pope Benedict XVI's butler is arrested for allegedly leaking confidential documents
May 27th - A NATO airstrike kills a family of eight, including six children, in Afghanistan
May 29th - Thousands march in protest in Johannesburg against Brett Murray's controversial painting The Spear 
May 29th - Facebook's problematic public listing could cost those involved $115 million from technical glitches 
May 29th - A 5.9 magnitude earthquake kills 24 people near Bologna, northern Italy
May 29th - Indonesian police make the biggest drug bust in ten years after seizing over a million ecstasy pills valued at $45 million
May 30th - A number of nations including Germany, Turkey and Canada, expel Syrian diplomats following the Houla massacre
May 30th - Vishwanathan Anand wins his fifth World Chess Championship
May 31st - Egypt formally ends its 31 year state of emergency
Jun 1st - New York Mets pitcher Johan Santana pitches a no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals
Jun 3rd - Suicide car bombing kills 15 and inures 42 people in Bauchi, Nigeria
Jun 3rd - Plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, kills all 152 passengers and 40 people on the ground
Jun 3rd - Tiger Woods' 73rd PGA tour victory equals Jack Nicklaus's record
Jun 4th - US drone attack kills 15 militants in Pakistan, including high ranking al-Qaeda official, Abu Yahya al-Libi
Jun 4th - Car bomb kills 26 and injures 190 people in central Baghdad, Iraq
Jun 4th - Japan's stock market plummets to record lows with the S&P/TOPIX 150 reaching its lowest level since 1983
Jun 4th - Wedding party bus crashes killing 23 and injuring 60 people in Islamabad, Pakistan
Jun 6th - Transit of Venus (between Earth & Sun) occurs
Jun 6th - The Solar Impulse completes the world's first intercontinental flight powered by the sun
Jun 7th - 16th century archaeology remains of the Curtain Theatre, where some of Shakespeare's plays were first performed, were found under a pub in London
Jun 7th - Credit rating agency Fitch downgrades Spain's credit rating to BBB in the wake of international bailout speculation
Jun 7th - A bus falls into a ravine in La Paz, Bolivia, killing 16 and injuring 32 people
Jun 8th - A bus bombing in Pakistan kills 18 and injures 35 people
Jun 9th - It is announced that up to $125 million dollars in loans will be given to aid Spain's struggling banks
Jun 9th - Burma riots kill 20 people and burn down 300 houses
Jun 10th - A Helicopter crash near Nairobi, Kenya, kills five people, including George Saitoti, a Kenyan cabinet minister
Jun 11th - Five people are killed after an ambulance hits a roadside bomb in Afghanistan
Jun 11th - 23 people are killed after two villages are attacked in northern Nigeria
Jun 11th - The Nobel Prize is reduced by 20% to prevent any future undermining of capital
Jun 11th - Two earthquakes in Afghanistan trigger landslides that kill more than 80 people
Jun 11th - Los Angeles Kings defeat New Jersey Devils 6-1 in game 6 to win the NHL's Stanley Cup
Jun 12th - The chemical compound NOTT-202, which is capable of selectively absorbing carbon dioxide, is created
Jun 12th - An Australian coroner's report rules that a dingo was responsible for the death of a baby in 1980
Jun 12th - The World Health Organization concludes that diesel exhaust causes cancer
Jun 13th - A series of bombings across Iraq kill 93 and wound 300 people 
Jun 13th - San Francisco Giants' Matt Cain pitches first perfect game in the franchise's history against the Houston Astros
Jun 14th - An explosion at an Indian steel plant kills 11 people and severely injures 16
Jun 14th - The world's first stem-cell assisted vein transplant is undertaken by Swedish doctors on a 10 year old girl
Jun 15th - Apple I computer sells for a record $374,500
Jun 15th - Five Dutch banks, including ING, receive one and two notch downgrades 
Jun 16th - 32 people are killed by a car bomb in Baghdad
Jun 16th - Coca-Cola begins business in Myanmar after 60 years
Jun 16th - A collapse of a stage at a Toronto Radiohead concert kills one person
Jun 16th - 30 people are killed and 15 injured after a bus falls into a gorge in Osmanabad, India
Jun 17th - France's Socialist Party wins a majority in the legislative election
Jun 17th - Greek voters return to the polls after the failed May 6 election
Jun 17th - American golfer, Webb Simpson, wins the US Open
Jun 18th - 15 people are killed and 40 injured in a suicide attack in Baquba, Iraq
Jun 19th - A man in Saudi Arabia is beheaded for witchcraft and sorcery
Jun 19th - Antonis Samaras, the leader of the New Democracy party in Greece, forms a coalition government
Jun 20th - Western Libyan tribal clashes kill 105 people and injure 500
Jun 20th - A Syrian fighter pilot lands in Jordan and defects from the Syrian uprising
Jun 21st - Moody's downgrades 15 major banks in the UK, US, Canada and Europe
Jun 21st - A boat of 200 asylum seekers headed to Australia capsizes and 110 survivors are rescued
Jun 21st - Miami Heat win the 2012 NBA finals after defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder 4 games to one
Jun 22nd - Two Baghdad market bombings kill 14 people and injure 106
Jun 23rd - Greece proposes to slow down austerity measures by two years
Jun 23rd - A bus of Czech tourists crashes in Croatia killing 8 and injuring 44
Jun 23rd - 76 monks are hospitalized in Thailand following an attack by a swarm of bees
Jun 24th - Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood becomes President of Egypt
Jun 24th - Female athletes will be allowed to compete for Saudi Arabia at the Olympics for the first time
Jun 25th - 33 Syrian army officers defect to Turkey
Jun 27th - Queen Elizabeth II shakes hands with former IRA commander and Sinn F
Jun 28th - A series of car bombs in Iraq kills 14 and injures 50 people
Jun 29th - 16 Naxalite Maoist insurgents in India are killed by police
Jun 29th - Three bombs in Balid, Iraq, kill 6 people and injure 45
Jun 29th - 15,000 Japanese anti-nuclear protesters blockade the Japanese Prime Minister's office in Tokyo
Jun 30th - 30 people attending a funeral in Zamalka, Syria, are killed on a day that saw 83 civilian deaths
Jun 30th - Mid-Atlantic storms in the United States kill 13 and leave millions without power in Ohio, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
Jun 30th - Mohamed Morsi is sworn in as President of Egypt
Jul 1st - 17 people are killed and 45 injured in an attack on two churches in Garissa, Kenya
Jul 1st - Spain's football team crush Italy 4-0 to win UEFA Euro 2012
Jul 2nd - GlaxoSmithKline settle the largest healthcare fraud case in history for US$3 Billion
Jul 2nd - Monsoon rain in East India kills at least 79 people and leaves 2.2 million homeless
Jul 3rd - Truck bombing kills 25 people and wounds 40 in Diwaniyah, Iraq
Jul 3rd - Antonio Esfandiari wins a record $18.3 million in poker after winning the 2012 World Series of Poker $1,000,000 Buy-In
Jul 5th - The Shard, the tallest building in Europe, is opened and stands at 309.6 metres (1,016 ft)
Jul 5th - South Korea announce plans to begin "scientific' whaling of minke whales
Jul 5th - Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party is elected President of Mexico after a recount following irregularities
Jul 6th - Gunmen kill 18 people in Turbat, Pakistan
Jul 7th - Floods in the Krasnodar region, Russia, kill 140 people
Jul 8th - Roadside car bomb kills 14 civilians in Afghanistan's Kandahar Province
Jul 8th - Tens of thousands protest over election corruption in Mexico City after Enrique Pe
Jul 10th - The American Episcopal Church becomes the first to approve a rite for blessing gay marriages 
Jul 11th - POliciy academy suicide bombing kills 20 in Sana'a, Yemen
Jul 11th - S/2012 P 1, the fifth moon of Pluto is discovered
Jul 12th - 200 people are killed by the Syrian army in Tremseh
Jul 12th - Tongan Crown Prince Tupouto'a 'Ulukalala marries his second cousin Sinaitakala Fakafanua
Jul 12th - 90-155 people are killed after an oil tanker crashes and explodes in Okogbe, Rivers State, Nigeria
Jul 13th - China's economic growth drops to 7.6%, its lowest level for three years
Jul 13th - 19-30 people are killed after a train collides with a truck in Malelane, South Africa
Jul 13th - Financially troubled Scottish football club, Rangers, is voted into the third division
Jul 14th - Suicide bomber attacks a wedding reception and kills 22 people and inures 22 in northern Afghanistan
Jul 14th - Floods on the Japanese island of Kyushu kill 20 and displace 250,000<br>
Jul 15th - 39 pilgrims are killed in a bus crash in Parasi, Nepal
Jul 15th - A Russian Soyuz rocket with an international team launches for a mission to the International Space Station
Jul 17th - 17 people are wounded in a bar shooting in Jasper, Alabama
Jul 18th - 6 Israeli tourists are killed and 30 injured after a bomb explodes on a tourist bus at Burgas Airport, Bulgaria
Jul 18th - 14 people are killed after a bomb explosion at Pakistan's Orakzai Agency
Jul 18th - Violence across Syria results in 97 deaths
Jul 18th - Syrian suicide bombing kills three high profile government officials, including Syria's Minister of Defence
Jul 18th - 24 people are killed after a ferry sinks off the coast of Zanzibar
Jul 18th - Kim Jong-un is officially appointed Supreme Leader of North Korea and given the rank of Marshal in the Korean People's Army
Jul 20th - 12 people are killed and 59 injured after a gunman opens fire at a Dark Knight movie premier in Aurora, Colorado,
Jul 20th - 21 people are killed and 29 injured in a bus accident in Nayarit, Mexico
Jul 22nd - Car bombs kills 20 people and injures 80 in Madaen and Najaf, Iraq
Jul 22nd - Pranab Mukherjee is elected President of India
Jul 22nd - At least 77 people are killed by torrential rain in Beijing, China
Jul 23rd - A series of attacks across Iraq kill 103 people
Jul 23rd - testing update
Jul 24th - John Dramani becomes President of Ghana after the death of President John Atta Mills
Jul 24th - Four barrels containing 248 human fetuses are found in Sverdlovsk, Russia
Jul 25th - The 2012 Summer Olympics begin
Jul 25th - Ivica Dačić is sworn in as Prime Minister of Serbia
Jul 25th - Italy's credit rating is downgraded to CCC+ by Egan-Jones 
Jul 26th - At least 200 people are killed in a day of violence in Syria
Jul 26th - Insurgent attack kills 19 people and destroys a helicopter at Baqubah, Iraq
Jul 26th - North Korea is hit by Tropical Storm Khanun, killing 88 people and leaving 60,000 people homeless
Jul 27th - Queen Elizabeth II announces the opening of the London 2012 Olympics at the opening ceremony
Jul 28th - Ye Shiwen of China sets world record in the women's 400m individual medley in 4:28.43
Jul 28th - 18 people are killed and 11 injured in ethnic clashes in Ethiopia
Jul 29th - Tropical Storm Khanun kills 88 people and leaves 60,000 homeless in North Korea
Jul 30th - Train fire kills 32 and injures 27 people in Andhra Pradesh, India
Jul 30th - Indian power grid failure leaves over 300 million without power
Jul 31st - Two car bombs kill 21 people in Baghdad, Iraq
Jul 31st - A second power grid failure in two days leaves 670 million people in India without power
Aug 1st - Typhoon Saola kills elven people and displaces over 150,000 in the Philippines
Aug 1st - 8 Women's badminton doubles players are disqualified from the 21012 summer Olympics for "not using one's best efforts to win a match"
Aug 2nd - 23 people are killed after two blasts in a fruit market in Lahore, Pakistan
Aug 3rd - United Nations General Assembly c reproaches The United Nations Security Council over its lack of action in Syria
Aug 4th - 45 people are killed by a suicide bombing in Abyan, Yemen
Aug 4th - South African Oscar Pistorius becomes first amputee to compete at the Olympics
Aug 5th - Gunman opens fire on Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin killing six people and committing suicide
Aug 5th - 19 people are killed by Kurdish rebels in Hakk
Aug 5th - General Motors signs a record breaking $559 million marketing deal with Manchester United
Aug 6th - Mount Tongariro, New Zealand, erupts for the first time in a century 
Aug 7th - 21 people are killed by a gun attack in a church in Okene, Nigeria
Aug 7th - Heavy rain forces 20,000 people to flee their homes in Manila, Phillipines
Aug 7th - 200,000 people are evacuated from Shanghai in anticipation of Typhoon Haikui
Aug 8th - China announces that it plans to close 23 rare earth mines and up to 50 smelting companies
Aug 8th - 16 people are killed from flooding from heavy rain in Manilla, Philippines
Aug 9th - The death toll from the Philippines' floods rise to 70
Aug 9th - Usain Bolt becomes the first person to win the 100m and 200m sprint in back to back Olympics
Aug 11th - 153 people are killed and 1300 injured in Tabriz and Ahar, Iran after two earthquakes of up to 6.4 magnitude 
Aug 11th - 13 people are killed and 15 injured by a lightning strike at a Mosque in Bangladesh
Aug 12th - The 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony completes the games
Aug 13th - Nadzeya Ostapchuk of Belarus is stripped of her shot-put gold medal after failing a doping test
Aug 14th - 46 people are killed and 80 injured after a series of suicide bombings in Afghanistan
Aug 15th - Seattle Mariner, F
Aug 16th - Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, is granted political asylum by Ecuador
Aug 16th - 113 people are killed and over 200 wounded in a series of attacks across Iraq
Aug 16th - South African police open fire on striking mine workers and kill at least 34 people
Aug 17th - Three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot are jailed for two years 
Aug 17th - Gay pride events are banned for a century in Moscow
Aug 18th - Al-Qaeda militants kill 14 people in an attack in Aden, Yemen
Aug 18th - NATO air strikes kill at least 13 militants in Afghanistan
Aug 19th - 32 people are killed after a plane crash in Talodi, Sudan
Aug 20th - 20 people are killed in a riot in Caracas, Venezuela
Aug 20th - South Africa become the top-ranked test cricket nation after defeating England
Aug 21st - 20 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo die from the Ebola virus
Aug 22nd - 47 people are killed in the Syrian civil war
Aug 22nd - 48 people are killed in Kenyan tribal wars between the Pokomo and Orma
Aug 22nd - Russia and Vanuatu become members of the World Trade Organization
Aug 23rd - Four people are killed and 28 injured in a hot air ballooning accident in Slovenia
Aug 23rd - At least 30 are killed as a result of monsoon rain in Rajasthan, India
Aug 24th - Monsoon rains and floods kill 26 people in Pakistan
Aug 24th - Yangmingtan Bridge collapses in China killing three people
Aug 24th - Both Apple and Samsung are found guilty of patent infringement in a South Korean court
Aug 24th - A US jury in California finds that Samsung is guilty of patent infringement and awards over US$1 billion in damages to Apple
Aug 25th - 330 people are killed as a result of conflict in the Syrian civil war
Aug 25th - 39 people are killed and 80 are injured after a gas leak in North Venezuelan refinery
Aug 25th - 85,000 people are displaced by severe floods in Myanmar
Aug 26th - 15 year-old New Zealand golfer, Lydia Ko, becomes the youngest LPGA Tour event winner and the first amateur winner since 1969
Aug 26th - 36 people are killed in a bus crash in Yan'an,China
Aug 26th - 17 villagers in Afghanistan's Kajaki district are beheaded by an unknown organization
Aug 26th - A Legionellosis outbreak in Quebec City, Canada, kills 8 and infects 104
Aug 27th - First interplanetary human voice recording is broadcast from the Mars Rover Curiosity
Aug 28th - Mitt Romney is officially nominated as the United States Republican Party's candidate 
Aug 29th - Georgian hostage crisis results in 3 police officers and 10 militants being killed
Aug 29th - Operation Eagle, undertaken by the Egyptian Army, results in the deaths of 11 suspected terrorists and the arrest of another 23
Aug 29th - Banana Spider venom is found to be effective in relieving erectile dysfunction
Professional Road Cyclist and Testicular Cancer Survivor Lance Armstrong Aug 29th - The USADA claims to have stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles
Aug 30th - Cholera outbreak kills 229 people in Sierra Leone
Aug 30th - A blast in the in the Xiaojiawan coal mine, China, kills 26 miners with 21 missing
Aug 31st - Apple loses its patent dispute with Samsung in Tokyo, Japan
Sep 1st - The People
Sep 1st - Islamist rebels seize Douentza, Mali
Sep 1st - Grenade injures 41 festival celebrants in Paquibato, Philippines
Sep 1st - Two suicide bombings kill 12 people and wound 50 in a NATo base in Afghanistan's Sayed Abad district 
Sep 1st - US drone strike kills 5 people in North Waristan, Pakistan 
Sep 2nd - A decades-long ban on veiled female news presenters is lifted from State television in Egypt
Sep 2nd - 15 people are killed by a car bomb attack at a refugee camp in Sbeineh, Palestine
Sep 3rd - 3 people are killed and 19 wounded by a car bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan
Sep 3rd - Typhoon Bolaven kills 48 people in North Korea
Sep 3rd - New Zealand announces its withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan
Sep 4th - 42 people are killed and 25 injured as a passenger bus falls down a ravine in Morocco
Sep 4th - 25 people are killed at a funeral suicide bombing in Nangarhar, Pakistan
Sep 4th - Pauline Marois becomes the first female premier of Quebec
Sep 4th - Carpet that can help prevent falls in elderly by warning them after detecting unusual footsteps is developed
Sep 5th - 54 people are killed and 50 injured after a firecracker factory explodes in Nadu
Sep 5th - Austerity measure requires Greece to increase its maximum working days to six per week
Sep 5th - 25 are killed and 4 wounded after an ammunition store exploded in Afyon, Turkey
Sep 6th - 61 illegal immigrants die after a fishing boat capsizes off the coast of Turkey
Sep 6th - Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for President
Sep 7th - US drone attack kills 8 people in Kismayo, south Somalia
Sep 7th - 64 people are killed and 715 injured after a series of earthquakes in south-west China
Sep 7th - Canada closes its Iranian embassy and expels Iranian diplomatic staff out of Canada
Sep 8th - 6 people are killed by a Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan
Sep 8th - 8 people are killed after a tractor is hut by a train in Romania
Sep 9th - 17 people are killed and at least 40 injured after two car bombs explode in Aleppo, Syria
Sep 9th - 100 people are killed and 350 injured after a wave of attacks across Iraq
Sep 9th - Armenia win the 40th FIDE Chess Olympiad
Sep 9th - Serena Williams wins her fourth women's tennis singles at the US Open
Sep 10th - 16 people are killed by a suicide bombing n Kunduz, Afghanistan
Sep 10th - Teachers in Chicago strike effecting 350,000 students
Sep 10th - 10,000 miners demonstrate at Lonmin mines in Marikana, South Africa
Sep 10th - 29 people are killed by floods and heavy rain in Vietnam
Sep 10th - A left over bazooka grenade in Cambodia explodes and kills three children
Sep 11th - 50 Al-Shabaab fighters are killed in conflict with the Somali National Army
Sep 11th - The US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is stormed, looted and burned down, killing five people, including the US ambassador
Sep 11th - The US is warned by Moody
Sep 11th - 29 people are killed and 11 injured after a bus runs off a mountain highway in Nepal
Sep 11th - Japan nationalizes three of the disputed Senkaku Islands
Sep 12th - 18 soldiers are killed by a rebel car bomb in Syria
Sep 12th - 314 people are killed in factory fire in Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan
Sep 12th - Apple unveils its iPhone 5 and iOS 6
Sep 13th - 19 people are killed after a freight elevator crashes from 100 meters in Wuhan, China
Sep 13th - 33,000 people are evacuated after Guatemala's Volcano of Fire erupts
Sep 13th - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev calls for Russian punk band Pussy Riot to be freed
Sep 13th - Dr Mustafa Abushagur is elected as Prime Minister of Libya
Sep 14th - 21 people are killed after a ferry sank in Indonesia
Sep 15th - Japan announces that it will phase out nuclear energy by the 2030s
Sep 16th - 8 female civilians are killed by a NATO airstrike in Laghman, Afghanistan
Sep 16th - 8 police officers are killed by a roadside bombing by Kurdistan Workers' Party militants in Turkey
Sep 16th - 14 people are killed and 7 wounded by a roadside bomb Jandol, Turkey
Sep 16th - Anti-Japanese protesters set fire to Panasonic plant in Qingdao, China
Sep 16th - Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, seeks a court order to resolve a week long teachers strike
Sep 16th - NHL locks out its players after the expiry of the collective bargaining agreement
Sep 17th - Panasonic suspends operations at its three factories in China
Sep 17th - China dispatches 1,000 fishing boats to Senkaku Islands 
Sep 17th - 13 people are killed in a bus accident in Jubail, Saudi Arabia
Sep 17th - Swedish forensic scientists find no conclusive evidence of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's DNA in a torn condom
Sep 17th - United States and Japanese government officials agree to put a second missile defence system in Japan
Sep 18th - 10 soliders are killed and 70 injured by a missile attack by Kurdish militants in Bingol, Turkey
Sep 18th - 26 people are killed in a fire in a Pemex gas facility in Reynosa, Mexico
Sep 18th - The Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools reach a deal that ends an 8-day strike.
Sep 18th - World's first mother-to-daughter uterus transplant undertaken at the University of Gothenburg 
Sep 19th - 9 people are killed and 20 wounded by a car bombing in Peshawar, Afghanistan
Sep 20th - 14 people are killed in a cafe suicide bominbg in Somalia
Sep 20th - AU Optronics fined $500 million for a LCD screen price-fixing
Sep 21st - Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, wins a leadership ballot
Sep 21st - The Mus
Sep 22nd - 7 pedestrians are killed by a drunk driver who hit a bus stop at 200km an hour in Moscow
Sep 23rd - Iran blocks the use of Google as a search engine
Sep 23rd - 20 Iranian US Visas are denied, including diplomats and two ministers, ahead of the UN general assembly meeting in New York
Sep 23rd - Scientists discover four genetically distinct types of breast cancer
Sep 24th - Books by Japanese authors or about Japan are suspended by Chinese bookstores
Sep 25th - 50 Taiwanese ships clash with the Japan Coast Guard in waters off the Senkaku Islands
Sep 25th - Anouchka van Miltenburg is elected President of the Netherlands
Sep 26th - Syrian army massacres 40 civilians in Thiabieh, Damascus
Sep 26th - Greek trade unions call a general strike to protest austerity measures
Sep 26th - Japanese automakers suspend operations in China
Sep 27th - UN publicly releases documents from China and Japan detailing their contesting claims for the Senkoku Islands
Sep 27th - The Mars Curiosity rover discovers what evidence of a fast-moving streambed-in Mars
Sep 27th - The 2004 Japanese discovery of the 133th element has been confirmed
Sep 28th - Aircraft crash kills 16 people in Kathmandu, Nepal
Sep 28th - Nigeria suspends flights to Saudi Arabia after hundreds of Nigerian women travelled without a male escort
Sep 30th - Two opposition Venezuelan politicians are shot dead a week before the presidential election
Sep 30th - Car bomb blasts kill at least 32 people across Iraq
Sep 30th - Melbourne Storm defeat the Canterbury Bulldogs in the 2012 NRL Grand Final
Sep 30th - Europe defeat the US 14.5-13.5 in the 39th Ryder Cup
Oct 1st - California becomes the first US state to ban 
Oct 1st - 36 people are killed in a ferry collision in Hong Kong
Oct 1st - 3 Nato soldiers and 16 Afghan police are killed by a suicide bombing in Khost, Afghanistan
Oct 2nd - 20 students are gunned down in Mubi, Nigeria
Oct 2nd - 10 people are killed after a minibus and truck collide in Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Oct 3rd - 34 people are killed by a series of bombings in Aleppo, Syria
Oct 4th - Turkey’s parliament approves cross-border military operations in Syria
Oct 4th - 19 people are killed after being buried by a landslide in Yunnan, China
Oct 4th - Jordan’s King Abdullah dissolves parliament in preparation for new elections
Oct 4th - Formula One legend, Michael Schumacher, retires
Oct 5th - Anglo Platinum Limited fires 12,000 striking workers in South Africa
Oct 6th - Paolo Gabriele, Pope Benedict XVI's butler, is found guilty of leaking confidential documents and is sentenced to 18 months imprisonment
Oct 6th - The Leeds Rhinos defeat the Warrington Wolves 26-18 to win the 2012 Super League grand final
Oct 7th - 13 people are killed after a Sudanese military aeroplane crashes near Khartoum
Oct 7th - Sébastien Loeb wins the World Rally Championship for the ninth consecutive year
Oct 8th - 35 people are killed by a Nigerian military bomb struck a convoy in Maiduguri
Oct 8th - Hugo Chávez is re-elected as president of Venezuela for a fourth term
Oct 8th - Mustafa A.G. Abushagur, the first elected Libyan Prime Minister, is voted out of office by the Libyan parliament
Oct 8th - Mustafa A.G. Abushagur, the first elected Libyan Prime Minister, is voted out of office by the Libyan parliament
Oct 8th - John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka win the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work on reprogramming end stage cells to become pluripotent
Oct 9th - 25,000 people in Athens protest German Chancellor Angela Merkel
Oct 9th - Serge Haroche and David Wineland win the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on quantum optics
Oct 10th - Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka win the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on G protein-coupled receptors
Oct 11th - A further 83 people are killed throughout Syria by the Syrian army 
Oct 11th - A US appeal court overturns a district court ruling banning the sale of Samsung
Oct 11th - Mo Yan, a hallucinatory realist writer, wins the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature
Oct 12th - The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves of an African-led force to oust Islamist militants in northern Mali
Oct 12th - The European Union wins the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, sparking a series of critical commentary
Oct 13th - 15 people are killed by a market suicide bombing in Darra Adam Khel, Pakistan
Oct 13th - Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild sells for $34 million, the highest sold artwork by a living artist
Oct 14th - 20 people are gunned down in a mosque in Dogo Dawa, Nigeria
Oct 15th - China sends warships close to Japan
Oct 14th – Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner becomes the first person to break the sound barrier without any machine assistance during a record space dive out of the Red Bull Stratos helium-filled balloon from 24 miles (39 kilometers) over Roswell, New Mexico in the United States.
Oct 15th - Hilary Mantel wins the 2012 Man Booker Prize for her novel Bring Up the Bodies
Oct 16th - Conflict in Maiduguri, Nigeria, leads to 24 militant deaths and several structures set ablaze
Oct 17th - The exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb is discovered orbiting Alpha Centauri
Oct 17th - Lance Armstrong loses a host of endorsements in the wake of his doping scandal
Oct 17th - Tens of thousands protest austerity measures in Greece
Oct 18th - Syrian military airstrikes kill 40 people in Maaret al-Numan
Oct 18th - Google stock trading is suspended after a premature release of a quarterly report indicating a 20% drop in profits and a 9% fall in share price
Oct 19th - 8 people are killed and 78 injured by a car bomb in Beirut, Lebanon
Oct 20th - 30 people are killed and dozens injured after a gas station bombing by the Syrian Army in Ain Issa
Oct 22nd - 6 Italian scientists are convicted of manslaughter for their failure to predict the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake
Oct 22nd - Hurricane Sandy forms in the Western Caribbean Sea
Oct 23rd - Skyfall, the 23rd Bond film, d
Oct 23rd - 12 people are killed and 40 are injured in a hospital fire in Tainan, Taiwan
Oct 24th - Libyan militias capture Bani Walid resulting in 130 civilian deaths
Oct 24th - 3 people are shot dead and two critically wounded after being shot by an unknown gunman in Downey, California
Oct 24th - Hurricane Sandy makes landfall in Jamaica killing 1 person and causing over $50 million in damage
Oct 25th - Hurricane Sandy makes landfall in Cuba and Haiti killing 65 people and causing over $80 million in damage
Oct 26th - 64 people are killed in West Burma after continued sectarian clashes
Oct 26th - 41 people are killed and 50 injured by a suicide bombing of a mosque in Maymana, Afghanistan
Oct 26th - China blocks the New York Times from searches and social media in response to an investigation into Premier Wen Jiabao
Oct 26th - Hurricane Sandy makes landfall in the Bahamas killing 2 people and causing over $300 million in damage
Oct 27th - 46 people are killed and 123 injured in Iraq after a series of attacks and bombs
Oct 27th - Thousands demonstrate in Madrid against proposed budget cuts
Oct 28th - Syrian ceasefire collapses and 128 people are killed in ongoing civil war violence
Oct 28th - 15 people are killed and 33 injured by a series of Baghdad car bombings
Oct 28th - Sebastian Vettel wins the 2012 Formula One Indian Grand Prix
Oct 28th - San Francisco Giants defeat the Detroit Tigers in game four to take the 2012 MLB World Series
Oct 28th - Pablo Sandoval is named MLB 2012 World Series MVP.
Oct 29th - Hurricane Sandy makes landfall in New Jersey resulting in 110 deaths and $50 billion in damage and forces the New York stock exchange to close
Oct 29th - Publishing companies Penguin and Random House merge to form the world's largest publisher
Oct 30th - Walt Disney purchases Lucasfilm Ltd and its rights for Star Wars and Indiana Jones for $4.05 billion
Oct 31st - The New York stock exchange opens after being closed for two days after Hurricane Sandy
Nov 1st - Google's Gmail becomes the world's most popular email service
Nov 1st - 22 people are killed and 111 injured after a fuel tanker explodes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Nov 1st - Yellow fever kills 32 people and sickens 50 more in Darfur, Sudan
Nov 1st - Acid is poured over a 15 year old girl by her parents after being seen talking to a young man in an honour killing in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan
Nov 1st - Scientists detect evidence of light from the universe's first stars, predicted to have formed 500 million years after the big bang.

 
Happy birthday, Grandma!