NASA launches a rocket carrying the roving science laboratory Curiosity, which is programmed to land on Mars on 6 August 2012

The USA formally declares an end to the Iraq War

NASA's Kepler mission discovers the first two earth-size planets outside our solar system

Samoa and Tokelau move themselves from east to west of the International Date Line to coincide their date with their nearest trading partners

The first programme of The Bridge, itself the first TV collaboration between Sweden and Denmark, is broadcast in Denmark at 10 pm and in Sweden an hour later

Helle Thorning-Schmidt becomes Denmark's first female prime minister

Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission publishes a report, widely rejected as a whitewash, exonerating the country's military of responsibity for the atrocities inflicted on the Tamils in the civil war

Václav Havel dies and is given a state funeral, with thousands gathering in the streets of Prague to honour him

Rockhopper Exploration announce plans for offshore oil production in Falkland waters, to begin in 2016

The Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, prominent critic of the Communist regime, is arrested on charges of tax evasion and released two months later after international outcry

Brilliant new ballerina Natalia Osipova leaves the Bolshoi Ballet to have more artistic freedom, and from 2013 is with the Royal Ballet in London

Kim Jong-il dies and is succeeded by his 28-year-old son Kim Jong-un, the third member of the Kim dynasty to be declared Supreme Leader of North Korea

Elizabeth II makes the first visit by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland since the country's establishment, after much violence, in 1922

David Hockney, in a major exhibition of his work at the Royal Academy, includes landscape paintings created on an iPad and displayed as prints

More than a hundred Muslims are killed during the year in Burma by fanatical nationalist Buddhists, influenced by the Buddhist 969 movement

Enrica Borghi's Nebula, with its shimmer of colour through discarded plastic bottles, is an example of her light installations

The percentage of American Indians living in urban areas of the USA is now 70%, up from 45% in 1970 and 8% in 1940

John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka win the Nobel Prize for discovering that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent stem cells, capable of development in any part of the body

The Shard, an 87-storey building in London designed by Renzo Piano, is completed, becojming the tallest building in the European Union

Iran blames the USA and Israel for the murder of one of their nuclear scientists by a suicide bomber on a motorcyle

The Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia crashes into a rock near the Italian island of Giglio, killing 32 people

The European Union imposes an oil embargo on Iran to deter efforts to achieve a nuclear weapon

About 80 people are killed and more than 1000 injured in a clash between fans at a football match in the Egyptian city of Port Said

Russia and China use their Security Council veto to block a UN resolution to end the violence in Syria

The Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II marks the 60th anniversary of her succession as Queen of the UK and Head of the Commonwealth