January •
January 4 – The tallest man-made structure to date, the
Burj Khalifa in
Dubai,
United Arab Emirates, is officially opened. •
January 8 – The
Togo national football team is attacked in
Cabinda Province,
Angola, and as a result withdraws from the
Africa Cup of Nations. The attack was perpetrated by the
FLEC, their first since the
Angolan Civil War. •
January 10 –
Religious violence erupts in Jos, Nigeria, which left scores dead, and many injured. •
January 12 – A
7.0-magnitude earthquake occurs in
Haiti, devastating the nation's capital,
Port-au-Prince. •
January 14 –
Yemen declares an open war against the terrorist group
al-Qaeda. •
January 15 • The
longest annular solar eclipse of the
3rd millennium occurs. • The
Chadian Civil War officially ends. •
Honduras withdraws from
ALBA. •
January 19 •
Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh is
assassinated in Dubai. •
North Caucasian Federal District was split from
Southern Federal District by decree of
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. •
January 25 –
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crashes into the Mediterranean shortly after take-off from
Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport, killing all 90 people on board.
February •
February 3 – The sculpture ''
L'Homme qui marche I'' by
Alberto Giacometti sells in London for
£65 million (US$103.7 million), setting a new world record for a work of art sold at auction. •
February 10 – The
Australian government is hit by
cyberattacks from
freedom of expression activists, following recent
Australian pornography restrictions. •
February 12–
28 – The
2010 Winter Olympics are held in
Vancouver and
Whistler, Canada. •
February 15 –
Two trains collide in
Halle,
Belgium, killing 19 and injuring 171 people. •
February 18 – The
president of Niger,
Mamadou Tandja, is overthrown after a group of soldiers
storms the presidential palace and form a ruling junta, the
Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy headed by ''
chef d'escadron''
Salou Djibo. •
February 27 – An
8.8-magnitude earthquake occurs in
Chile, triggering a
tsunami over the Pacific and killing at least 525. The earthquake is one of the
largest in recorded history.
March •
March 14 –
Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver Versions were released in North America. These are the highest rated games to date, with a user score of 9.1/10 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim," and a critic score of 87. •
March 16 – The
Kasubi Tombs,
Uganda's only cultural
World Heritage Site, are destroyed by fire. •
March 22 – Four-year-old
Paulette Gebara Farah disappears from her family's home located in Huixquilucan, State of Mexico. •
March 26 – The
ROKS Cheonan, a
South Korean Navy ship carrying 104 personnel,
sinks off the country's west coast, killing 46. In May, an independent investigation blames
North Korea, which denies the allegations.
April •
April 3 – The
first iPad is released. •
April 5 –
Julian Assange leaks footage of a 2007
airstrike in
Iraq titled "
Collateral Murder" on the website
WikiLeaks. •
April 7 –
Kyrgyz President
Kurmanbek Bakiyev flees the country amid fierce
anti-government riots in the capital,
Bishkek. •
April 10 – The
president of Poland,
Lech Kaczyński, is among 96 killed when their airplane
crashes near
Smolensk,
Russia. •
April 14 –
Volcanic ash from one of
several eruptions beneath Mount
Eyjafjallajökull, an
ice cap in
Iceland, begins to
disrupt air traffic across northern and western Europe. •
April 20 – The
Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform explodes in the
Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers. The resulting
Horizon oil spill, one of the largest in history, spreads for several months, damaging the waters and the United States coastline, and prompting international debate and doubt about the practice and procedures of
offshore drilling. •
April 25 – In the second round of the
2010 Hungarian parliamentary election the alliance of Fidesz lead by
Viktor Orbán and the
Christian Democratic People's Party (KDNP) wins enough seats to achieve a two-thirds supermajority in the legislature beginning Orbán's
16-year second term as
Prime Minister of Hungary during which the country enters a period of
Democratic backsliding. •
April 27 –
Standard & Poor's downgrades Greece's
sovereign credit rating to
junk 4 days after the activation of a
€45-billion
EU–
IMF bailout, triggering the decline of
stock markets worldwide and of the
euro's value, and furthering a
European sovereign debt crisis.
May •
May 1 –
Expo 2010 is held in
Shanghai,
China. •
May 2 – The
eurozone and the
International Monetary Fund agree to a €110 billion bailout package for Greece. The package involves sharp Greek
austerity measures. •
May 4 –
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust by
Pablo Picasso sells in New York for
US$106.5 million, setting another new world record for a work of art sold at auction. •
May 6 • The
2010 United Kingdom general election results in a
hung parliament, with the
Conservative Party twenty seats short of a majority. • The
2010 flash crash, a trillion-dollar stock market crash, occurs over 36 minutes, initiated by a series of automated trading programs in a feedback loop. •
May 7 •
Chile becomes the 31st member of the
OECD. • Scientists conducting the
Neanderthal genome project announce that they have
sequenced enough of the
Neanderthal genome to suggest that Neanderthals and humans may have
interbred. •
May 10 – The
2010 Philippine presidential election is held, with
Benigno Aquino III elected as Philippine President. •
May 12 • Following the 6 May United Kingdom general election, the Conservative and
Liberal Democrat parties
agree to form a coalition government, the UK's first since the
Second World War. •
Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashes at runway at
Tripoli International Airport in
Libya, killing 103 of the 104 people on board. •
May 19 –
Protests in
Bangkok,
Thailand, end with a bloody military crackdown, killing 91 and injuring more than 2,100. •
May 20 • Scientists announced that they have created a functional
synthetic genome. • Five paintings worth €100 million are stolen from the
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. •
May 22 •
Air India Express Flight 812 overshoots the runway at
Mangalore International Airport in India, killing 158 and leaving 8 survivors. •
Inter Milan beats
Bayern München 2–0 in the
2010 Champions League Final at the
Santiago Bernabéu. •
May 25–
29 – The
Eurovision Song Contest 2010 takes place in
Oslo,
Norway, and is won by
German entrant
Lena with the song "
Satellite". •
May 28 – the
2010 Ahmadiyya mosques massacre in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, killed 94 people during Friday prayers at two mosques. •
May 31 – Nine activists are
killed in a clash with soldiers when Israeli Navy forces raid and capture a flotilla of ships attempting to break the
Gaza blockade.
June •
June 9 – The
Chicago Blackhawks win their first
Stanley Cup since
1961. •
June 10–
14 –
Ethnic riots in
Kyrgyzstan between
Kyrgyz and
Uzbeks result in the deaths of hundreds. •
June 11–
July 11 – The
2010 FIFA World Cup was held in
South Africa and was won by
Spain. •
June 19 –
Wedding of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Daniel Westling •
June 22–
25 – A tennis match between
Nicolas Mahut and
John Isner at the
Wimbledon Championships, becomes the
longest tennis match in history. •
June 24 –
Julia Gillard is elected unopposed in a
Labor Party leadership ballot and sworn in as the first female
prime minister of Australia following the resignation of
Kevin Rudd. On the same day
FIA appointed
Pirelli as official tyre partner and supplier for
Formula One from season onwards.
July •
July 8 – The first 24-hour flight by a
solar-powered plane is completed by the
Solar Impulse. •
July 13 –
Microsoft ends extended support for
Windows 2000. •
July 16 – First (test)
Instagram posts made by co-developers
Mike Krieger and
Kevin Systrom in
San Francisco; the service launches publicly on October 12. •
July 21 –
Slovenia becomes the 32nd member of the
OECD. •
July 25 –
WikiLeaks, an online publisher of anonymous, covert, and classified material, leaks to the public
over 90,000 internal reports about the United States-led involvement in the
War in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. •
July 28 –
Airblue Flight 202 crashes near Islamabad, Pakistan, killing all 152 people on board. •
July 29 – Heavy monsoon rains begin to cause
widespread flooding in the
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Over 1,600 are killed, and more than one million are displaced by the floods. •
PDVAL affair, also known as the Pudreval affair, political scandal in Venezuela where
tons of rotten food supplies were found torrent, which imported during
Hugo Chávez's government through subsidies of state-owned enterprise
PDVAL.
August •
August 10 – The
World Health Organization declares the
H1N1 influenza pandemic over, saying worldwide flu activity has returned to typical seasonal patterns. •
August 16 –
AIRES Flight 8250, a
Boeing 737–700, crashed on landing at
San Andrés,
Colombia, killing two. •
August 21 –
2010 Australian federal election:
Julia Gillard's
Labor government is re-elected, narrowly defeating the
Liberal/
National Coalition led by
Tony Abbott. •
August 23 – The
Manila hostage crisis occurred near the
Quirino Grandstand in Manila, Philippines killing 9 people, including the perpetrator, while injuring 9 others.
September •
September 4 – A
7.1 magnitude earthquake rocks
Christchurch,
New Zealand causing large amounts of damage but no direct fatalities. It is the first in a series of earthquakes between 2010 and 2012 that resulted in the deaths of 187 people and over $40 billion worth of damage. Seismologists noted that the earthquake sequence was highly unusual, and likely to never happen again anywhere else in the world. •
September 7 –
Israel becomes the 33rd member of the
OECD. •
September 22 –
Anonymous initiates
Operation Payback, a
coordinated cyberattack on multiple corporations, law firms, and politicians over the banning of
file-sharing websites such as
LimeWire and
The Pirate Bay and also the
politicians and financial institutions against
WikiLeaks, a
whistleblower website.
October •
October 1 –
Građevni kombinat 'Međimurje' from
Čakovec, one of the largest Croatian construction and civil engineering companies (with more than 8,000 employees in 1980s), ceased to exist •
October 3 –
Germany makes final reparation payment for
World War I. •
October 3–
14 –
2010 Commonwealth Games takes place in
Delhi,
India. •
October 10 – The
Netherlands Antilles are
dissolved, with the islands being split up and given a new constitutional status. •
October 11 – Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he will extend the settlement freeze if the Palestinian leadership recognizes Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinians quickly reject the offer. •
October 12 – •
Instagram was launched. • The Finnish
Yle TV2 channel's
Ajankohtainen kakkonen current affairs program featured controversial
Homoilta episode (literally "gay night"), which led to the resignation of almost 50,000
Finns from the
Evangelical Lutheran Church. •
October 22 • The
International Space Station surpasses the
record for the longest continuous human occupation of space, having been continuously inhabited since November 2, 2000 (3641 days). • The
2010 Iraq War Documents leak occurs, being deemed the biggest
US government leak in history.
WikiLeaks being responsible for revealing
391832 documents concerning the
2003 Iraq War which revealed approximately 60% of the
Iraqi deaths were
civilian casualties, the
Iraq War body count project showing the casualty percentage is closer to 80%. •
October 23 – In
preparation for the Seoul summit, finance ministers of the
G-20 agree to reform the
International Monetary Fund and shift 6% of the
voting shares to
developing nations and countries with
emerging markets. •
October 25 – An
earthquake and consequent tsunami off the coast of
Sumatra,
Indonesia, kills over 400 people and leaves hundreds missing. •
October 26 –
Repeated eruptions of
Mount Merapi volcano in
Central Java,
Indonesia, and accompanying
pyroclastic flows of scalding gas, pumice, and
volcanic ash descending the erupting volcano kill 353 people and force hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate. •
October 28 –
Dilma Rousseff is elected, becoming the first (and, so far, the only) female president from
Brazil. •
October 31 –
Expo 2010 concludes in
Shanghai,
China.
November •
November 2 –
2010 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 2, 2010, in the middle of Democratic President
Barack Obama's first term. Republicans ended unified Democratic control of Congress and the presidency by winning a majority in the House of Representatives. •
November 4 •
Aero Caribbean Flight 883 crashes in central
Cuba, killing all 68 people on board. •
Qantas Flight 32 suffers an
engine failure requiring an emergency landing in Singapore. •
November 11–
12 – The
G-20 summit is held in
Seoul,
South Korea. Korea becomes the first non-
G8 nation to host a G-20 leaders summit. •
November 13 –
Burmese opposition politician
Aung San Suu Kyi is released from her
house arrest after being incarcerated since
1989. •
November 14 –
Sebastian Vettel became the youngest F1 Champion after a 4 way championship fight. •
November 17 – Researchers at
CERN trap 38
antihydrogen atoms for a sixth of a second, marking the first time in history that humans have trapped
antimatter. •
November 20 – Participants of the
2010 NATO Lisbon summit issue the
Lisbon Summit Declaration. •
November 21 –
Eurozone countries agree to a
rescue package for the
Republic of Ireland from the
European Financial Stability Facility in response to the country's
financial crisis. •
November 23 –
North Korea shells Yeonpyeong Island, prompting a military response by South Korea. The incident causes an escalation of tension on the
Korean Peninsula and prompts widespread international condemnation. The
United Nations declares it to be one of the most serious incidents since the end of the
Korean War. •
November 28 –
WikiLeaks releases a collection of more than 250,000 American
diplomatic cables, including 100,000
marked "secret" or "confidential". •
November 29 – The
European Union agree to an €85 billion
rescue deal for Ireland from the
European Financial Stability Facility, the
International Monetary Fund and bilateral loans from the
United Kingdom,
Denmark and
Sweden. •
November 29–
December 10 – The
2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference is held in
Cancún, Mexico. Formally referred to as the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 16), it serves too as the 6th meeting of the Parties to the
Kyoto Protocol (CMP 6).
December •
December – Comet
Hale Bopp was found again around 30.7
AU away from the Sun. The previous time the Comet was found was in
April 1997. •
December 9 –
Estonia becomes the 34th member of the
OECD. •
December 16 – After 25 years on
CNN,
Larry King Live airs its final episode. Contemporary reporting noted that King had recorded more than 6,000 programs for the network and that he was reported to be listed in the
Guinness World Records for hosting the longest-running show with the same host in the same network time slot. •
December 17 – The attempted
suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in
Tunisia, triggers the
Tunisian Revolution and the wider
Arab Spring throughout the
Arab world. •
December 21 – The first
total lunar eclipse to occur on the day of the Northern
winter solstice and Southern
summer solstice since
1638 takes place. == World population ==