Year 2010
Events
January
Damaged buildings in Port-au-Prince following the Haiti earthquake on
January 12.
Remains of Tu-154 after crash on April 10, 2010 that killed Polish
president Lech Kaczynski
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 involved in an attack 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 12 – A 7.0-magnitude earthquake occurs in Haiti, devastating the
nation's capital, Port-au-Prince. With a confirmed death toll over
316,000, it is the tenth deadliest on record.
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 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 12–28 – The 2010 Winter Olympics are held in Vancouver and
Whistler, Canada.
February 15 – Two trains collide in the Halle train collision 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 16 – The Kasubi Tombs, Uganda's only cultural World Heritage Site,
are destroyed by fire.
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 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 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 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 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 12 – 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.
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 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 is held in South Africa, and
is won by Spain.
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.
July
July 8 – The first 24-hour flight by a solar-powered plane is completed
by the Solar Impulse.
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 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.
August
August 10 – The World Health Organization declares the H1N1 influenza
pandemic over, saying worldwide flu activity has returned to typical
seasonal patterns.
August 21 – 2010 Australian federal election: Julia Gillard's Labor
Government is re-elected, narrowly defeating the Liberal/National
Coalition led by Tony Abbott.
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 30 – Germany pays war reparations for World War I.
October
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 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).
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.
November
November 4 – Aero Caribbean Flight 883 crashes in central Cuba, killing
all 68 people on board.
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 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. Also referred to as the 16th
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 9 – Estonia becomes the 34th member of the OECD.
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.
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