For any contributors, add only events with significant media coverage or of historic importance. Please avoid elections, regular hurricane events or similar. Keep events at no more than 10 per year.

NOTE: I used : to rapresent months. Three ":::" before an event means March.

[edit] 20th Century

[edit] 1980s

[edit] 1981

• Assassination bid of Ronald Reagan fails

• Pope John Paul II injured in assassination attempt

• Israeli planes bomb a nuclear reactor in Iraq

[edit] 1982

The Falkland/Malvinas War erupts

• Israeli forces invade Lebanon

• Palestinians massacred in Lebanese refugee camps

[edit] 1983

• United States embassy bombed in Beirut

• War breaks out in Sri Lanka

• Soviet planes shot down a South Korean airliner

• Foreign soldiers killed in attacks on military barracks in Beirut

[edit] 1984

• Indian Army fights Sikhs in Amritsar

• Indira Gandhi assassinated

• The Bhopal disaster occurs

[edit] 1985

• TWA Flight 847 hijacked

• Boeing 747 crash in Japan kills hundreds

• Earthquake rocks Mexico City

• Israel launches airstrike on Tunisia

• Terrorists attack Rome and Vienna airports

[edit] 1986

• Space Shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after lift-off

• Mir launched

• Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme assassinated

• United States airplanes bomb Libya

• The Chernobyl disaster takes place

The Iran-Contra Affair revealed

[edit] 1987

• Uprising begins in the Palestinian territories

[edit] 1988

• Hundreds die in a poison gas attack on Iraqi Kurds

• United States military shots down a civilian airliner

• Earthquake devastates Armenia

Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head the government of an Islam-dominated state

• The Lockerbie bombing occurs

[edit] 1989

• Soviets leave Afghanistan

• The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurs

• Chinese troops crush the Tiananmen Square protests

• The Loma Prieta earthquake shakes California

The Berlin Wall falls

• The U.S. military invades Panama

[edit] 1990

• Iraqi troops invade Kuwait

[edit] 1990s

[edit] 1991

• The Gulf War erupts

• Cyclone kills thousands in Bangladesh

Dictatorship ends in Ethiopia

• Croatia and Slovenia declare their independence, triggering the breakup and wars of Yugoslavia

• Dissolution of the USSR

[edit] 1992

Ethnic tensions start the Bosnian War

[edit] 1993

Czechoslovakia gets peacefully divided

Terrorists bomb New York's World Trade Center

United States troops battle in Mogadishu, Somalia

[edit] 1994

• Hutus massacre Tutsis in Rwanda

• Comet collides with Jupiter

• Terrorist attack targets Jewish center in Argentina

• Worst European maritime disaster in modern times occurs in the Baltic Sea

• Russian troops invade Chechnya

[edit] 1995

• An earthquake devastates Kobe, Japan

• Cult attacks Tokyo subway with poisonous gas

• Oklahoma City bombing

• Bosniaks massacred in Srebrenica

• Operation Storm ends the war in Croatia

• NATO bombs Bosnian Serbs

• The Dayton Agreement ends the Bosnian War

[edit] 1996

• Israeli shelling kills dozens of civilians in Lebanon

• Controversial TWA Flight 800 incident takes place

• The Taliban take Afghanistan's capital Kabul

• Rebels take hostages at the Japanese embassy in Lima, Peru

[edit] 1997

• Diana, Princess of Wales dies in a car crash in Paris

• Terrorists massacre tourists in Egypt's Luxor archaeological site

[edit] 1998

• Insurgency intensifies in Serbia's Kosovo province

• The world's deadliest high-speed train disaster occurrs in Germany

• Terrorists strike United States embassies in East Africa

• Cruise missile attacks strike terrorists in Afghanistan and Sudan

• Iraq is targeted in a four-day bombing campaign

[edit] 1999

• NATO bombs Yugoslavia

• The Columbine High School massacre takes place

• India and Pakistan fight in Kashmir

• Earthquake devastates İzmit, Turkey

• Rebels unsuccessfully invade Russia's Republic of Dagestan

• Explosions destroy apartments accross Russia

• Russian troops invade Chechnya

• General Pervez Musharraf takes power in a coup d'etat in Pakistan

[edit] 2000

• Doctor Harold Shipman is found guilty of killing 215 people, making him the United Kingdom's most prolific serial killers

• A Concorde crashes near Paris

• The Russian submarine Kursk explodes and sinks

• A controversial visit to a sacred site in Jerusalem leads to a Palestinian uprising

• Slobodan Milošević is overthrown in Serbia

• Terrorists bomb a United States warship in Yemen

A fire causes tragedy in an Austrian funicular tunnel

[edit] 21st Century

[edit] 2000s

[edit] 2001

• Macedonia comes close to civil war in a rebel insurgency

• A plane colision stirs diplomatic row between the United States and China

• Terrorists strike the United States

• U.S. led forces invade Afghanistan

[edit] 2002

Israel invades the West Bank in response to a string of terror attacks

A coup d'etat in Venezuela fails to depose president Hugo Chavez

Überlingen Mid-Air Collision

Bali resort attacked

Moscow theater hostage crisis

Prestige oil spill

[edit] 2003

• The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas

• Conflict starts in Sudan's Darfur region

• Global SARS outbreak

• United States-led forces invade Iraq

• Rebels lay siege to the Liberian capital Monrovia

• Earthquake destroys Bam, Iran

[edit] 2004

• Terrorists strike Madrid

• A Shia uprising escalates the Iraq War

• Prisoner abuse in Iraq is exposed

• The first privately-funded human spaceflight takes place

• Children are among the hostages killed in a school siege in Russia

Earthquake and subsequent tsunami kill thousands in Southeast Asia

[edit] 2005

• An uprising is crushed by the Uzbekistan government

• Terrorists attack London's public transit system

• The Space Shuttle returns to flight

• Hurricane Katrina devastates the southern United States

• One thousand die in a stampede in Baghdad

• The Great Pakistan earthquake kills thousands

• A three-week civil unrest grips France

[edit] 2006

A mosque bombing escalates Sunni-Shia civil strife in Iraq

• A Hezbollah attack on Israel sparks a 34-day war

• North Korea conducts its first ever nuclear test

• An ex-KGB officer is poisoned in London, causing controversy

• Ethiopia invades Somalia

[edit] 2007

• The United States escalate its involvement in Iraq

• 32 are killed in a Virginia campus mass murder

• Hamas takes control of the Gaza Strip

• Ex-Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated

• Violence follows a contested election in Kenya

[edit] 2008

• Kosovo unilaterally declares independence from Serbia

• A cyclone brings destruction to Burma

• The deadliest earthquake in China since 1976 kills thousands