Year 2007
Events
January
January 1
Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union, while Slovenia joins the
Eurozone.
Adam Air Flight 574 disappears from Jakarta's radar. A week later it is
founded that the aircraft had crashed into the Makassar Strait, killing
all 102 people on board.
January 4 – Congress elects Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of
the House in U.S. history.
January 8 – Russian oil supplies to Poland, Germany, and Ukraine are cut
as the Russia–Belarus energy dispute escalates; they are restored three
days later.
January 9 – Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a
Macworld keynote in San Francisco.
February
February 2 – The IPCC publishes its fourth assessment report, having
concluded that global climate change is "very likely" to have a
predominantly human cause.
February 3 – A truck bomb explodes in Baghdad, Iraq, killing at least
135 people and injures 339 others.
February 13 – North Korea agrees to shut down its nuclear facilities in
Yongbyon by April 14 as a first step towards complete denuclearization,
receiving in return energy aid equivalent to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel
oil.
February 26 – The International Court of Justice finds Serbia guilty of
failing to prevent genocide in the Srebrenica massacre, but clears it of
direct responsibility and complicity in the case.
March
March 1 – The fourth International Polar Year, a $1.73 billion research
program to study both the North Pole and South Pole, is launched in
Paris.
March 11 – According to the accusation by Georgia, three Russian
helicopters fired on the Georgian-controlled Kodori Gorge in a
break-away autonomous republic of Abkhazia in north-western Georgia.
March 13 – April 28 – The 2007 Cricket World Cup is held in the West
Indies and is won by Australia.
March 23 – Naval forces of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arrest
Royal Navy personnel in disputed Iran-Iraq waters; they were released on
April 4.
March 27 – Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis and Russian Prime
Minister Mikhail Fradkov sign a border treaty between Latvia and Russia,
officially demarcating the border between the two.
April
April 3 – French high speed passenger train, the TGV, reaches a top
speed of 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph), breaking the record for the world's
fastest conventional train.
April 16 – South Korean Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 people and wounds 17
others in a shooting at Virginia Tech, a university in the United
States.
April 18 – A series of attacks take place across Baghdad, Iraq, killing
nearly 200 people.
April 24 – Gliese 581c, a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet
habitable for life, is discovered in the constellation Libra.
April 26–27 – Ethnic Russian riot in Tallinn and other cities in Estonia
against the moving of the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet World War II
memorial.
May
May 3 – Madeleine McCann disappeared from 5A Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva
in Praia da Luz, Portugal while she was sleeping.
May 17 – The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate
re-unite after 80 years of schism.
May 20 – Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai makes the
largest single charitable donation in modern history, committing €7.41
billion to an educational foundation in the Middle East.
June
June 5 – NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its second fly-by of Venus en
route to Mercury.
June 28 – 2007 European heat wave: in the aftermath of Greece's worst
heat wave in a century, at least 11 people are reported dead from
heatstroke, approximately 200 wildfires break out nationwide, and the
country's electricity grid nearly collapses due to record breaking
demand.
June 29 – The iPhone, the first modern smartphone, is released in the
United States. It was later released in the United Kingdom, France,
Germany, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland and Austria in November 2007.
July
July 7 – Live Earth Concerts are held in nine major cities around the
world to raise environmental awareness.
July 17 – TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns the runway of São
Paulo–Congonhas Airport and crashes, killing all 187 and 12 others on
the ground.
July 24 – Five Bulgarian nurses were released from Libyan prison after
eight and a half years spent behind bars in Benghazi and Tripoli,
marking the end of the so-called "HIV trial in Libya".
August
August 4 – The Phoenix spacecraft is launched toward Mars to study its
north pole.
August 9 – The French global bank BNP Paribas in the United Kingdom
blocks withdrawals from three hedge funds heavily committed in sub-prime
mortgages, signaling the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
August 14 – Multiple suicide bombings kill 572 people in Qahtaniya,
northern Iraq.
August 15 – An 8.0 earthquake strikes Peru, killing at least 519 people,
injuring more than 1,300, and causing tsunami warnings in the Pacific
Ocean.
September
September 6 – Israeli Air Force airplanes attack a suspected nuclear
reactor in Syria in an airstrike.
September 13 – The United Nations General Assembly adopts the
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
September 14 – The SELENE spacecraft launches, with its objective being
to study the Moon.
September 20 – The Universal Forum of Cultures opens in Monterrey,
Mexico.
September 25 – Mount Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park in New Zealand,
erupts.
November
November 6 – A suicide bomber kills at least fifty people in
Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, including six members of the National
Assembly.
November 14 – High Speed 1 from London to the Channel Tunnel is opened
to passengers.
November 16 – Up to 15,000 people are believed to have been killed after
Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh.
December
December 5 – Eight people are killed and four others wounded when a
gunman opens fire at Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska.
December 13 – Treaty of Lisbon is signed by members states of European
Union.
December 20 – The Pablo Picasso painting Portrait of Suzanne Bloch,
together with Candido Portinari's O Lavrador de Café, is stolen from the
São Paulo Museum of Art.
December 21
At the age of 81 years, 244 days, Queen Elizabeth II became the oldest
ever reigning British monarch, surpassing Queen Victoria who was aged 81
years, 243 days upon her death on January 22, 1901.
The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland,
Slovakia, and Slovenia join the Schengen border-free zone.
December 27
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated, along
with 20 other people, at an election rally in Rawalpindi.
Riots erupt in Mombasa, Kenya, after Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner
of the general election, triggering a political, economic, and
humanitarian crisis that killed over 1,000 people.
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