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INTERNATIONAL HISTORY

2013: The French military intervenes in the Northern Mali conflict.

Chelyabinsk meteor.

Pope Benedict XVI resigns and Pope Francis becomes Pope.

Terrorist attacks occur in Boston and Nairobi.

Edward Snowden releases classified documents concerning mass surveillance by the NSA.

President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi is deposed by the military in a coup d'état.

Croatia becomes a member of the European Union.

A chemical attack in Ghouta, Syria is blamed on President Bashar al-Assad.

Typhoon Haiyan kills nearly 6150 people in the Philippines and Vietnam.

Deaths of Hugo Chávez, Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher.

Uruguay becomes the first country to fully legalise cannabis.

Benghazi attack leads to the death of US ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The Higgs boson is discovered.

Hurricane Sandy kills 209 people in North America, while Typhoon Bopha kills over 1,600 in the Philippines.

Skydiver Felix Baumgartner becomes the first person to break the sound barrier without a vehicle.

UN Climate Change Conference agrees to extend the Kyoto Protocol until 2020. .

10 MAR - The 2011 Yunnan earthquake was a 5.4 magnitude earthquake that occurred on March 10, 2011, at 12:58 CST with its epicenter in Yingjiang County, Yunnan, People's Republic of China, near the Burmese border.[2] At least 25 people died and 250 were injured with 134 in serious condition

11 MAR - The 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami was a 9.0 MW megathrust earthquake off the coast of Japan that occurred at 14:46 JST on 11 March 2011. The epicenter was reported to be 130 kilometers (81 mi) off the east coast of the Oshika Peninsula, Tôhoku, with the hypocenter at a depth of 24.4 km (15.2 mi).

The earthquake triggered tsunami warnings and evacuations from Japan's Pacific coast and at least 20 countries, including the entire Pacific coast of North America and South America.The earthquake created tsunami waves of up to 10 meters (33 ft) that struck Japan, with smaller waves in many other countries, with a significant surge and damage as far away as Chile. In Japan, the waves are reported to have travelled up to 10 km (6 mi) inland. The Japanese National Police Agency has officially confirmed 1,597[3] deaths, 1,923[3] injuries, and 1,481[3] people missing across sixteen prefectures, but estimated numbers are far higher.

The estimates of the Sendai earthquake's magnitude made it the most powerful earthquake to hit Japan and one of the five most powerful earthquakes in the world overall since modern record-keeping began in 1900

Arab Spring: revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya follow, as well as uprisings in Yemen and Bahrain, and protests in several other Arab countries.

Syrian civil war begins.

Deaths of Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, and Kim Jong-Il.

World population reaches 7 billion.

Floods in Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines kill roughly 2500 people.

All 33 miners trapped for 10 weeks in the San José Mine in Copiapó, Chile, are rescued

David Cameron becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Benigno Aquino III is elected as the 15th President of the Philippines.

A 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti kills 230,000.

The threat of Greece defaulting on its debts triggers the European sovereign debt crisis and Ireland's financial crisis.

The largest oil spill in US history occurs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Arab Spring triggered by self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17,

10 April the President of Poland, Lech Kaczyñski, is among 96 killed when their airplane crashes in Smolensk.

February 7 : Bushfires fanned by gale force winds in Victoria kill 173 people and cause massive damage in the worst natural disaster in Australia's history.

September 29: An 8.1 magnitude submarine earthquake near the Samoan Islands generated a tsunami which caused substantial damage and loss of life (119) in Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga. Scientists determined that the waves measured 14 metres (46 feet) at their highest in the Samoan coast.

2 May - Cyclone Nargis made landfall causing Myanmar's (also known as Burma) deadliest natural disaster with at least 34,273 fatalities and a further 27,838 still missing. Exact details are sketchy as relief efforts were hampered for political reasons by Myanmar's military leaders.

12 May - On Monday May 12 at 2.28 local time an earthquake of magnitude 7.9/8.0 hit approximately 90km North-east of Chegdu, the provincial capital of Shichuan in the Poples Republic of China. As of May 31, the death toll was 68,467 in Shichuan with a further 17,000 people missing and 354,045 injured.

24 October - "Bloody Friday" saw many of the world's stock exhange experienced the worst decline in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indicies.

20 October - South Africa defeats England in the Rugby World Cup 2007 final in Stade de France, Paris. The All Blacks were knocked out in the quarter-finals by France.

February 15 - You Tube launched in the US.

August 29 - Hurricane Katrina devastates southern states of the USA

October 8 - A massive (7.6) earthquake in Northern Pakistan and Kasmir devastates an area the size of New Zealand killing an estimated 75,000 people, injuring 100,000 and leaving 3.5m homeless.

1 September: Chechen Commandos stormed a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan, Northern Ossetia taking almost 1,200 students and faculty hostage. They used weapons and explosives that had been hidden under the gym floor by Chechen detainees during recent renovations. The standoff lasted for 2 days, when the school was stormed by Russian special operation troops. The official death toll is 336, with hundreds wounded.

26 December: A tsunami generated by a 9.3 magnitude earthquake off the northern tip of Sumatra killed in excess of 300,000 people in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka & East Africa.

February 1 - The Columbia space shuttle broke up some 6km above the Mid-West of the USA when re-entering the earth's atmosphere killing all 7 on board.

The Second Gulf War breaks out when a US-led force invades Iraq.