istoryworld
All Events
Marie NDiaye wins the Prix Goncourt with Trois femmes puissantes ("Three Strong Women"), a story of family relationships linking France and Senegal
The Fujifilm 3D W1 is the first camera on the market capable of taking stereoscopic images
The Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai is inaugurated, entering the record books as the world tallest building at 828 m (2717 ft)
Haiti is devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, causing more than 230,000 deaths
A sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, L'Homme qui marche, sets a new auction record for a work of art at £65 million (US$103.7 million)
President Obama's radical bill of health care reform is passed by a margin of seven votes in the House of Representatives and is signed into law two days later
Violent riots break out in Kyrgyzstan, causing the president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, to flee from the capital, Bishek
A plane carrying the president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and other high Polish officials crashes on the way to a commemoration of the Katyn massacre, killing all 96 people on board
Volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajökull, a volcano beneath a glacier in Iceland,disrupts northern Europe air traffic for several days
President Bakyev of Kyrgyzstan resigns and escapes into exile in Belarus
An explosion destroys BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig, killing eleven people and starting a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
Greece is promised an EU and IMF bail-out package of 45 billion euros to cope with its high level of national debt
Greece's credit rating is downgraded by Standard & Poor to BB+ ('junk'), causing a run on global stock markets
Severe austerity measures in Greece persuade Germany to back an increased EU and IMF bail-out package of 110 billion euros
The UK general election results in no overall majority, with the Conservatives winning 306 seats, the Labour party 258 and the Libereral Democrats 57
Conservative leader David Cameron becomes UK prime minister, forming a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats and appointing Nick Clegg as his deputy prime minister
Geneticist Craig Venter announces that his team have inserted the genome of a bacterium into a cell to create the world's first synthetic life form
Israeli soldiers board an aid flotilla headed for Gaza and in the resulting violence kill nine Turkish activists on the Mavi Marmara
Ethnic violence against the Uzbek minority erupts in the Jalal-Abad region of Kyrgyzstan, lasting several days and resulting in more than 200 deaths
The Solar Impulse, promoted by Bertrand Piccard and piloted by André Borschberg, becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to fly for more than 24 hours
Spain beats the Netherlands 1-0 in the final of the FIFA World Cup in the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg
BP announces that a newly fitted cap has finally stopped the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
President Obama signs into law a sweeping and radical package of reforms in the control of the US financial sector
The website Wikileaks publlishes more than 90,000 classified internal reports about US involvement in Afghanistan since 2004
Disastrous monsoon floods strike northwest Pakistan, killing more than 1600 people, displacing as many as 20 million and ruining crops
