Timeline of the 21st century

This is a timeline of the 21st century.

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2000s

2001

January 1: The 3rd millennium and 21st century began per Gregorian calendar.
January 15: Wikipedia was launched.
January 20:
- President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines is ousted in the Second EDSA Revolution.
- George W. Bush is inaugurated as President of the United States.
January 26: An earthquake strikes Gujarat, India, on Republic Day, resulting in more than 20,000 deaths.
June 1: Eleven members of the royal family of Nepal, including the king and queen, are killed by Crown Prince Dipendra, who wounds himself and dies three days later.
September 11: September 11 attacks: Nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists hijack four planes, crashing two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the third plane into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, while the fourth plane is downed on the outskirts of Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania. 2,996 people, including 2,977 victims and 19 hijackers, died in the attacks.
September 18: Start of anthrax letter attacks.
October 7 – December 17: The United States invades Afghanistan and topples the Taliban regime, resulting in a long-term war.
October 23: Steve Jobs introduces the first iPod.
October 25: Microsoft release Windows XP.
December 3: Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a series of scandals.
December 11: China becomes a member of the World Trade Organization.
December 19 – 20: During an economic crisis in Argentina, the government effectively freezes all bank accounts for twelve months which leads to riots and President Fernando de la Rúa's resignation from office. There are five "presidents" in less than a month.
The al-Aqsa Intifada continues.
Dean Kamen unveils Segway.
Media magnate Silvio Berlusconi was elected Prime Minister of Italy.

2002

January 1: The Euro enters circulation.
February 8: The Algerian Civil War ends.
February 27 – March 1: Riots and mass killings in the Indian state of Gujarat leave 1,044 dead.
March 14: SpaceX is founded by Elon Musk.
April 11 - 13: 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt fails to overthrow president Hugo Chavez.
May 20: East Timor gains independence.
July 1: The International Criminal Court is established.
July 9: The African Union is founded.
August 10: 2002 renaming of Turkmen months and days of week.
September 19: The First Ivorian Civil War begins.
October 12: The 2002 Bali bombings killed 202 people and injured 209 more.
October 23 – 26: Chechen rebels seize a theater in Moscow. Amid this siege, around 200 people died.
November 16: The 2002-2004 SARS outbreak begins in Guangdong, China.
Switzerland joins the United Nations as the 190th member.
Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world.
2001–2002 India–Pakistan standoff ends.
Israel starts Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank in response to a wave of Palestinian suicide attacks.
Construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier begins.
America demands Iraq allow unfettered access to weapons inspectors.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is established.
Hu Jintao is elected as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

2003

February 1: Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates upon reentry, killing all seven astronauts on board.
March 19: The United States invades Iraq and ousts Saddam Hussein, triggering worldwide protests and an 8 year war.
August 27 – 29: The first six-party talks, involving South and North Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
November 3 – 23: The Rose Revolution occurs in Georgia.
The War in Darfur begins.
The Human Genome Project is completed.
The Second Congo War ends with more than 5 million dead.
The Second Liberian Civil War ends.
The last Volkswagen Beetle is made in Mexico, after 65 years in production.
Final flight of the SST (Supersonic Transport) Concorde.

2008

May 2: Cyclone Nargis kills 133,000 in Myanmar.
May 12: Magnitude 8.0 earthquake occurs in Wenchuan, China, causing almost 90,000 people to die or go missing.^[1]
May 28: The 1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly declares Nepal a republic, ending its monarchy.
June 20 – 21: Sinking of the MV Princess of the Stars.
October 7: Spotify is launched.^[2]
November 4: Barack Obama is elected the first African-American President of the United States.
November 26 – 29: 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Google Chrome is released.
The Gaza War begins.
2008 South Ossetia war.
Kosovo declares independence, though it is not recognised by the United Nations.
Iraqi forces crack down on Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi forces in Basra and Sadr City.
The Large Hadron Collider is completed as the world's largest and most powerful particle collider.
Tesla Roadster launched, the first mass production lithium-ion battery electric car.
Stock markets plunge during the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession.

2009

January 3: The cryptocurrency Bitcoin is launched.
January 15: US Airways Flight 1549 ditches in the Hudson River in an accident that becomes known as the "Miracle on the Hudson", as all 155 people on board are rescued.
January 20: First inauguration of Barack Obama.
June 16: Formation of BRICS economic bloc.
June 25: Death of Michael Jackson.
December 18: Avatar is released in cinemas and becomes the highest-grossing film of all time.
The Gaza War ends.
The Sri Lankan Civil War ends.
Election protests begin in Iran.
The Second Chechen War ends.
The Boko Haram insurgency begins in Nigeria.
2009 swine flu pandemic begins in North America.

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2010s

2010

January 12: A 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti kills 230,000.
February 18: 2010 Nigerien coup d'état.
March 29: 2010 Moscow Metro bombings.
April 10: The President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, is among 96 killed when their airplane crashes in Smolensk, Russia.
April 20: The largest oil spill in US history occurs in the Gulf of Mexico.
May 31: Gaza flotilla raid.
July 22 – August 10: 2010 Colombia–Venezuela diplomatic crisis.
November 23: North Korea shells the island of Yeonpyeong.
A military crackdown occurs in Thailand.
The Greek government-debt crisis triggers the euro area crisis and the Post-2008 Irish economic downturn.
Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi is released from house arrest.
Arab Spring starts.
Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010.
The Burj Khalifa in Dubai becomes the tallest structure in the world, standing at 829.8 m (2,722 ft).
Dilma Rousseff is elected as the first female president of Brazil.
The iPad is introduced.
Instagram is launched.
2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull.
Julia Gillard is elected first woman Prime Minister of Australia.

2011

February 22: Christchurch earthquake kills 185 and injures 2,000.
March 11: A 9.1 earthquake in Japan triggers a tsunami and the meltdown of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
May 2: Osama bin Laden is shot dead by United States Navy SEALs in Pakistan.
July 9: Independence of South Sudan.
July 22: 2011 Norway attacks.
August 6 – 11: Riots flare across England.
October 20: Muammar Gaddafi is captured and killed during the Battle of Sirte.
World population reaches 7 billion.
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.
Second Ivorian Civil War.
Occupy movement inspires worldwide protests.
News International phone hacking scandal.
Death and state funeral of Kim Jong-il.
The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, the world's longest, opens in China.
Second Ivorian Civil War ends with the arrest of former president Laurent Gbagbo.
Iraq War ends.
Bombings occur in Russia and Somalia.
Floods in Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines kill roughly 2,500 people.
Space Shuttle program is officially ended.
NASA launches space craft to visit Jupiter and Mars.

2012

May 7: Vladimir Putin is elected president of Russia for the third time.
July 20: 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting.
September 11 – 12: 2012 Benghazi attack leads to the death of US ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
October 14: Skydiver Felix Baumgartner becomes the first person to break the sound barrier without a vehicle.
October 22 – November 22: Hurricane Sandy causes $70 billion in damage and kills 233 people.
November 6: Barack Obama wins second term as President of the United States, defeating former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
November 15: Xi Jinping is elected as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
November 26 – December 8: UN Climate Change Conference agrees to extend the Kyoto Protocol until 2020.
December 4 – 9: Typhoon Bopha kills over 1,600 in the Philippines.
December 14: Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The Higgs boson is discovered.
Conflict begins in the Central African Republic.
Israel launches Operation Pillar of Defense against the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip.
The US rover, Curiosity, takes a selfie on Mars and finds evidence of an ancient streambed of water on the Red Planet.
Shenouda III, Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, dies; Tawadros II succeeds him.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh steps down.
Northern Mali conflict, the MNLA declares Azawad an independent state.

2013

February 15: An undiscovered meteor strikes the Chelyabinsk oblast in Russia, with an airburst injuring thousands and damaging many buildings.
February 28 – March 13: Pope Benedict XVI resigns, the first Pope to do since 1415, and Pope Francis is elected, becoming the first Pope from Latin America.
March 5: Death and state funeral of Hugo Chavez.
April 24: The Rana Plaza collapses in Bangladesh.
May 22: British Army soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is murdered in Woolwich, southeast London by Islamic terrorists Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale.
July 1: Croatia becomes a member of the European Union.
July 3: Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi is ousted in a coup d'état.
July 22: Birth of Prince George of Wales.
August 21: A chemical attack in Ghouta, Syria is blamed on President Bashar al-Assad.
September 17: Rockstar Games release Grand Theft Auto V.
November 8: Typhoon Haiyan kills nearly 6,150 people in Vietnam and the Philippines.
November 21: The Euromaidan uprising begins in Ukraine.
December 5: Death and state funeral of Nelson Mandela.
The French military intervenes in the Northern Mali conflict.
Terrorist attacks occur in Boston and Nairobi.
Edward Snowden releases classified documents concerning mass surveillance by the NSA.
Conflict begins in South Sudan.
Uruguay becomes the first country to fully legalize cannabis.
End of 2012–2013 Cypriot financial crisis.
Death and funeral of Margaret Thatcher.

2014

February: Euromaidan protest in Ukraine sparks a revolution and the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, leading to Russia's annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas.
March 8: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears from radar while en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. There were 239 people on board.
April 16: The MV Sewol sinks, killing 304 of 476 passengers, 250 of which were students at Danwon High School.
May 22: A coup d'état in Thailand overthrows the caretaker government.
June 19: King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicates; his son becomes King Felipe VI.
August 9: The shooting of African-American teenager Michael Brown by police leads to violent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.
September 18 – Scotland votes to remain part of the United Kingdom during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
November 12: The Rosetta spacecraft's Philae probe becomes the first to successfully land on a comet.
December 16: Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan kill over 130 students in Pakistan.
The worst Ebola epidemic in recorded history occurs in West Africa, infecting nearly 30,000 people and resulting in the deaths of 11,000+.
The Yemeni Civil War begins after the Houthi takeover in Yemen.
Persecution of Uyghurs in China in Xinjiang increases.
Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 crashes into the Java Sea, while Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is shot down over Ukraine and Air Algérie Flight 5017 is downed in Mali.
2014 Gaza War: Israel launches an assault on the Gaza Strip in response to tit-for-tat murder-kidnappings, leading to the deaths of 71 Israelis and 2,100 Palestinians.
ISIL begins its offensive in northern Iraq, leading to intervention in Iraq and Syria by a US-led coalition.
Second Libyan Civil War begins.
Narendra Modi is elected as the Prime Minister of India.
Joko Widodo is elected President of Indonesia.

2015

January 1: Five former Soviet Union countries form the Eurasian Economic Union.
January 3 – 7: Boko Haram perpetrates a massacre of over 2,000 people in Baga, Nigeria, and allies itself with ISIL.
April 2: Al-Shabaab perpetrates a mass shooting in Kenya, killing 148.
July 14: Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement reached, setting limits to Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
July 30: Smart contract based Cryptocurrencies Ethereum launched.
September 30: Russia begins air strikes against ISIL and anti-government forces in Syria
November 30 – December 12: 195 nations agree to lower carbon emissions by negotiating the Paris agreement.
A series of terrorist attacks occur in Paris.
A series of earthquakes in the Himalayas kills over 10,000 people.
The heads of China and Taiwan meet for the first time, while the United States and Cuba reestablish full diplomatic relations.
Liquid water is found on Mars.
First close -up images of Ceres and Pluto.
China announces the end of One-child policy after 35 years.
European migrant crisis.
The Supreme Court of the United States determines that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.
Homo naledi, a species of early human, is discovered in Africa.
Volkswagen emissions scandal.
Charleston church shooting.
Assassination of Boris Nemtsov.
2015 FIFA corruption case.

2016

February 11: Detection of gravitational waves by LIGO confirmed.
March 9-15: Artificial intelligence program AlphaGo defeats top Go player Lee Sedol in a series of 5 games, winning 4 out of 5 games.
March 20: Barack Obama becomes the first U.S. president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.
April 3: Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information of 214,888 offshore companies.
June 1: The Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel, is completed.
June 12: A shooter kills 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
June 23 – July 13: The people of the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union; David Cameron resigns as a result, and Theresa May succeeds him as the second female Prime Minister of the UK.
July 4: Juno enters orbit around Jupiter
September 4: Mother Teresa is officially canonized by Pope Francis.
November 4: The Paris Agreement, signed by 195 nations to fight global warming, formally goes into effect.
November 8: Donald Trump wins the 2016 presidential election, in an upset against Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be nominated by a major party.
The United Nations lifts sanctions from Iran in recognition of the dismantling of its nuclear program.
Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill sign the Ecumenical Declaration.
ISIL claims responsibility for a series of bombings in Brussels, a massacre at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport and car ramming attacks in Nice.
Augmented-reality game, Pokémon Go, is released, breaking records in revenue, and becoming the best-selling mobile game.
The Colombian government signs a peace deal with FARC to end the Colombian conflict, despite narrowly losing a referendum.
The government of Turkey begins a series of purges in reaction to a failed coup d'état attempt.
US troops withdraw from Afghanistan after 15 years.
The President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, is impeached.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand dies after 70 years on the throne and is succeeded by his son Vajiralongkorn.
Andrei Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, is assassinated at an art exhibition in Ankara.
Tsai Ing-wen is elected as the first female President of Taiwan.
2016 attack on the Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran.
Radovan Karadžić is found guilty of 10 of 11 counts of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity during the Bosnian War and is sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Dhaka attack kills 29 people.
A third set of locks in the Panama Canal opens for commercial traffic.
2016 Southern Taiwan earthquake.
An outbreak of the Zika virus is linked to a cluster of cases of microcephaly.
Death and state funeral of Fidel Castro.

2017

January 20: Donald Trump is inaugurated as President of the United States.
January 21: Millions of people participate in the Women's March in response to the inauguration of Donald Trump.
February 13: Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of Kim Jong-Un, is assassinated in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
May 13: Pope Francis canonizes Jacinta and Francisco Marto, two of the three Fátima children who reported seeing the Virgin Mary in the spring and summer of 1917.
May 22: A terrorist bombing attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England kills 22 people and injures over 140.
August 11 – 12: Charlottesville, Virginia becomes the site of a far-right rally protesting the removal of Confederate statues throughout the US. During the event, a white supremacist rams his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, injuring 19 and killing one.
September: Two earthquakes strike Mexico on September 8 and September 19, killing over 400 people.
October 1: 60 people are killed in a mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas.
October 14: A bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia kills 587 people and injures 316. It is one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern history.
October 28: 'Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object, is identified.
November 5: 26 people are killed in a church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
North Korea tests a hydrogen bomb and conducts a series of ballistic missile tests. The United States responds with a wave of export sanctions.
ISIL launches simultaneous attacks in Tehran, destroy the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, Iraq, and kill 311 in Egypt, but is declared defeated in Iraq by the end of the year.
A military operation targeting Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is declared ethnic cleansing by the UNHCR.
This year's Atlantic Hurricane season features Hurricane Harvey, which kills 107 and becomes the costliest hurricane in US history, as well as Hurricane Irma, killing 134, and Hurricane Maria, killing 3,059.
Robert Mugabe is ousted in a coup d'état.
Serb military commander Ratko Mladić is declared guilty of genocide in the Bosnian Genocide.
Allegations of sexual abuse against film producer Harvey Weinstein lead to a wave of similar accusations from within Hollywood and other areas of primarily the English-speaking world.
Grenfell Tower fire in London kills 72 and injures 70.
The President of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, is impeached, while Moon Jae-in is elected president.
Emmanuel Macron becomes President of France after defeating far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

2018

March 24: March for Our Lives occurs in 900 locations worldwide in response to the 14 February Parkland shooting.
June 12: The first summit between the US and North Korea and the first ever crossing of the Korean Demilitarized Zone by a North Korean leader occur.
June 23 – July 10: Twelve boys and their football coach are successfully rescued from the flooded Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Thailand.
June 24: Saudi Arabia allows women to drive.
October 2: Exiled Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is assassinated inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, triggering a diplomatic crisis for Saudi Arabia.
Turkey invades northern Syria, while 70 die in a chemical attack, triggering a missile strike against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Pakatan Harapan becomes the first opposition party to assume power in Malaysia since independence.
Twenty-year Eritrean–Ethiopian border conflict formally ends.
Yellow vests movement becomes France's largest sustained period of civil unrest since 1968.
The Sunda strait tsunami kills 426 and injures 14,000 and the 2018 Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami kills 4,340 and injures 10,700.
Macedonia and Greece reach a historic agreement in the Macedonia naming dispute, in which the former is renamed in 2019 to the 'Republic of North Macedonia'.
China's National People's Congress votes to abolish presidential term limits, allowing Xi Jinping to rule for life. Xi is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the highest position without term limits.
China–United States trade war begins.
2018 Armenian revolution occurs.
First post-ISIL election in Iraq.
The Trump administration reimposes sanctions against Iran.
The first monkeys are cloned, and first genetically modified humans reported, in China.
Four people are poisoned with a nerve agent, one fatally, in Salisbury and Amesbury, England in a suspected Russian assassination attempt.
The northern white rhinoceros becomes functionally extinct.

2019

January 3: Chang'e 4 becomes the first object to land on the far side of the Moon.
April 10: The Event Horizon Telescope takes the first ever image of a black hole, at the core of galaxy Messier 87.
April 15: A major fire engulfs Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, resulting in the roof and main spire collapsing.
April 30: Emperor Akihito of Japan abdicates from his throne, the first abdication by a Japanese monarch in almost two centuries. The abdication ends the Heisei era of Japan and ushers in the Reiwa era with the new emperor, his son Naruhito, ascending the throne on May 1.
August 5: India revokes the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.
October 18: NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch conduct the first all-female spacewalk outside of the ISS.
December 18: US President Donald Trump is impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
December 20: The United States Space Force is announced by Vice President Mike Pence.
New Horizons takes the first close up image of a classical kuiper belt object.
Christchurch mosque shootings kill 51 people, while a suicide bombing in Iran kills 41, and a series of bomb attacks in Sri Lanka kills 250.
ISIL loses the last of its territory.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigns as President of Algeria, while Omar al-Bashir is deposed as President of Sudan in a coup d'état amid widespread protests in both countries.
Victor Vescovo breaks the human depth record, reaching 10,928 m in the Challenger Deep.
Protests begin in Hong Kong over an extradition bill.
Wildfires spike in Brazil, while Australia endures the most widespread bush fires in its history.
Isabelle Holdaway is the first patient to receive a genetically modified phage therapy to treat a drug-resistant infection.
Pope Francis abolishes pontifical secrecy in sex abuse cases.
The 2019–2020 dengue fever epidemic begins in Southeast Asia.
Protests erupt in Bolivia and Venezuela over disputed elections.
Nursultan Nazarbayev resigns as President of Kazakhstan. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev assumes power. Astana is renamed Nur-Sultan in his honor.
The EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market is passed over intense opposition.
Bashar al Assad launches multiple offensives in Northwestern Syria; Turkey launches an offensive into northeastern Syria.
The United States blames attacks on ships in the Gulf of Oman on Iran, escalating tensions in the Persian Gulf.
Barisha raid ends in the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
A trilateral gathering is held at the Panmunjom Truce Village between South Korean President Moon Jae-in, North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump.
Japan and South Korea trade dispute.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

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2020s

Summarize

Perspective

2020

January 2: The Royal Australian Air Force and Navy are deployed to New South Wales and Victoria to assist mass evacuation efforts amidst the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season.^[3]^[4]
January 3: Qasem Soleimani is targeted and killed at Baghdad International Airport.
January 8: Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 is shot down by Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) shortly after taking off from Tehran, killing all 176 on board.
January 16 – February 5: Donald Trump is acquitted by the United States Senate in his first impeachment trial.
January 31: The United Kingdom formally withdraws from the European Union.
February 9: Bong Joon-ho's Parasite becomes the first South Korean film to receive Academy Award recognitions at the 92nd Academy Awards.
May:
- Cyclone Amphan becomes the costliest cyclone ever recorded in the Northern Indian Ocean.
- Protests in Belarus against the Alexander Lukashenko regime begin.
May 25: The murder of George Floyd sparks protests across the United States and the world.
May 30: Crewed spaceflight resumes in the United States for the first time since 2011.
June 16: North Korea demolishes the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Kaesong, established in 2018 to improve relations.
June 30: China's National People's Congress grants itself sweeping powers to curtail civil liberties in Hong Kong.
July 9: Protests begin in Bulgaria against the government of prime minister Boyko Borisov.
July 10: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan orders the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to be reverted to a mosque following the annulment of a 1934 presidential decree that made it into a museum.
July 30: NASA successfully launches its Mars 2020 rover mission to search for signs of ancient life and collect samples for return to Earth.
August 4: An explosion caused by unsafely stored ammonium nitrate kills at least 218 people, injures thousands, and severely damages the port of Beirut, Lebanon.
August 19: The Special Tribunal for Lebanon convicts in absentia Salim Ayyash, a senior member of Hezbollah, for the 2005 assassination of former prime Minister Rafic Hariri.
August 25: Africa is declared free of wild polio, the second virus to be eradicated from the continent since smallpox 40 years previously.
August 26: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos becomes the first person in history to have a net worth exceeding US$200 billion, according to Forbes.
September 14:
- The Royal Astronomical Society announces the detection of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere, which is known to be a strong predictor for the presence of microbial life.
- The first discovery of the perfectly preserved remains of a cave bear, believed to be 22,000 to 39,500 years old (Late Pleistocene), is made in Lyakhovsky Islands, Siberia in the thawing permafrost.
September 16: A United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission formally accuses the Venezuelan government of crimes against humanity, including cases of killings, torture, violence against political opposition and disappearances since 2014.
September 27 – November 10: 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
October 15: President of Kyrgyzstan Sooronbay Jeenbekov resigns from office after weeks of massive protests in the wake of the October 2020 parliamentary election.
October 20: NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly touches down on 101955 Bennu, becoming the agency's first probe to retrieve samples from an asteroid, with its cargo returning to Earth in 2023.
October 22: The Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women's Health and Strengthening the Family is signed by government representatives from 34 countries.
October 23: At the end of an 11-year demining process, the Falkland Islands are declared free of land mines, 38 years after the end of the Falklands War.
November 3: The 2020 United States presidential election occurs. Despite the pandemic, early voting and other factors result in the highest voter turnout since 1900, and a record of over 155 million votes cast. Although Joe Biden is declared the winner on November 7, Donald Trump leads an unprecedented effort to prevent official recognition of his defeat, culminating on January 6 the next year.
November 3: The Tigray War begins in Ethiopia.
November 15: The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is signed by 15 Asia-Pacific countries to form the world's largest free-trade bloc, covering a third of the world's population.
November 19: The Brereton Report into Australian war crimes during the War in Afghanistan is released.
November 27: Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, is assassinated near Tehran.
November 30: Protein folding, one of the biggest mysteries in biology, is solved by AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence algorithm developed by DeepMind.
December 1: The Arecibo Telescope of the Arecibo Observatory collapses, just weeks after the announcement of its planned demolition.
December 2: The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs votes to remove cannabis from a list of dangerous drugs in recognition of its medical value, although some controls will remain.
December 8: Nepal and China officially agree on Mount Everest's actual height, which is 8,848.86m.
December 18: Media outlets report that astronomers have detected a radio signal, BLC1, apparently from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun.
December 21: A great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurs, with the two planets separated in the sky by 0.1 degrees. This is the closest conjunction between the two planets since 1623.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which began spreading late in the prior year, spreads from China to the vast majority of the world's inhabited areas, infecting at least 81 million and killing at least 1.8 million people in its first year.
Fears of COVID-19 cause the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fall ten percent in one week, its largest drop in history, triggering the COVID-19 Recession, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The United States signs a tentative peace agreement with the Taliban.
Silurian millipede Kampecaris obanensis, the oldest known land animal, is discovered in Scotland.
China and India engage in border skirmishes, the largest escalation between the two powers in 50 years.
China launches Chang'e 5 and becomes the third country after the US and the Soviet Union to return samples of the moon.

2021

January 1: The African Continental Free Trade Area comes into effect.
January 6: Supporters of President Donald Trump, gathered after a rally led by him, attack the United States Capitol, leading to five deaths.
January 10: Kim Jong-un is elected as the General Secretary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, inheriting the title from his father Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011.
January 13: In Lyon, France, the first transplant of both arms and shoulders is performed on an Icelandic patient at the Édouard Herriot Hospital.
January 13 – February 13: Donald Trump is impeached for a second time following the events of January 6, but is acquitted again after his trial from February 9–13.
January 20: Joe Biden is inaugurated as President of the United States. Kamala Harris, sworn in as vice president, becomes the first woman, first African American and first Asian American to be vice president.
January 22: The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the first legally binding international agreement comprehensively to prohibit nuclear weapons, comes into effect.
February 13 – 17: Winter Storm Uri becomes the costliest winter storm in North American history, costing $200 billion and 237 lives, and triggering the 2021 Texas power crisis.
February 18: NASA's Mars 2020 mission (containing the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter drone) lands on Mars at Jezero Crater, after seven months of travel.
February 22: Luca Attanasio, the Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is murdered near Goma.
March 6: Pope Francis meets with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, Iraq. It is the first-ever meeting between a pope and a grand ayatollah.
March 18: The Spanish Congress of Deputies passes the euthanasia law.^[5]
March 20: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announces his country's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, the first country to do so.
March 23 – 29: The container ship Ever Given obstructs the Suez Canal for six days, costing an estimated $3.6 billion in global trade.
April 9: Buckingham Palace announces the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and husband of the Queen, at the age of 99.
April 11: Hideki Matsuyama wins the 2021 Masters Tournament, becoming the first man from Japan to win a major golf championship.
April 13: Japan's government approves the dumping of radioactive water of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean over the course of 30 years, with full support of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
April 15: Scientists announce they successfully injected human stem cells into the embryos of monkeys, creating chimera-embryos.
April 19:
- Ingenuity becomes the first vehicle to fly in the atmosphere of another planet.
- Miguel Díaz-Canel becomes First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, replacing the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raúl, after 62 years.
April 20: Idriss Déby, President of Chad, is killed in clashes with rebel forces after 30 years in office.
April 24: Following an international search and rescue effort, the Indonesian navy reports the sinking of KRI Nanggala with 53 crew members, the largest loss of life aboard a submarine since 2003.
April 28 – May 1: A border clash between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan leads to 55 deaths.
May 6 – 21: Hundreds die in conflicts after Israel evicts six Palestinian families from East Jerusalem.
May 23: Ryanair Flight 4978 is forced to land by Belarusian authorities to detain dissident journalist Roman Protasevich.
June 7: The Juno spacecraft performs its only flyby of Jupiter's moon Ganymede, the first flyby of the moon by any spacecraft in over 20 years.
June 13: Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister of Israel, is voted out of office; Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid are sworn in as Prime Minister of Israel and as Alternate Prime Minister of Israel, respectively.
June 19: Joe Biden signs Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law, making Juneteenth a federal holiday. It is the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day.^[6]^[7]
June 24: The Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida, collapses, killing 98 people.
July 7: Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, is assassinated in a midnight attack by unknown mercenaries.
July 18: An international investigation reveals that spyware sold by Israel's NSO Group to different governments is being used to target heads of state, along with thousands of activists, journalists and dissidents around the world.
July 19: Blue Origin successfully conducts its first human test flight, with a reusable New Shepard rocket delivering four crew members into space including its founder Jeff Bezos.
July 28: The first direct observation of light from behind a black hole is reported, confirming Einstein's theory of general relativity.
August 9: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases the first part of its Sixth Assessment Report, which concludes that the effects of human-caused climate change are now "widespread, rapid, and intensifying".
August 14: An earthquake in Haiti kills over 2,000 people.
August 15: Kabul falls following the 2021 Taliban offensive, as the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan collapses, and the country is governed thereafter by the Taliban as the reinstated Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The War in Afghanistan thus ends after 20 years following the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops.
August 30: The UN Environment Programme announces that leaded petrol in road vehicles has been phased out globally, a hundred years after its introduction.
September 7: El Salvador becomes the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as an official currency.
September 14: North Korea demonstrates two short-range ballistic missiles that land just outside Japan's territorial waters; hours later South Korea demonstrates its first submarine-launched ballistic missile.
September 15: A trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States is formed to counter Chinese influence. This includes enabling Australia to build its first nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
September 16: Inspiration4, launched by SpaceX, becomes the first all-civilian spaceflight, carrying a four-person crew on a three-day orbit of the Earth.
October 3: The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and assorted media partners publish a set of 11.9 million documents leaked from 14 financial services companies known as the Pandora Papers, revealing offshore financial activities that involve multiple current and former world leaders.
October 6: The World Health Organization endorses the first malaria vaccine.
November 16: Russia draws international condemnation following an anti-satellite weapon test that creates a cloud of space debris, threatening the International Space Station.
November 30: Barbados becomes a republic on its 55th anniversary of independence while remaining a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues, infecting more than 220 million and killing at least 3.6 million people in its second year. The true totals of infected and dead are estimated to be much higher.
Coups d'état occur in Myanmar, Mali and Guinea.
Russia begins a military buildup on the Ukrainian border, warning NATO not to intervene.
197 nations sign the Glasgow Climate Pact, agreeing to limit the use of coal, and the Netherlands legally mandates Royal Dutch Shell to comply with the Paris Agreement.