January
January 1st - The UK assumes Presidency of G8 group.
January 2nd - US President Barack Obama signs the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 to prevent the US from falling off a “fiscal cliff”.
January 4th - Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban in October 2012 because of her campaigning for women’s right to education, is discharged from Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham.
January 15th - Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, Iceland and Dunnes withdraw various beef products after the Food Safety Authority of Ireland informs them that they are contaminated with horse meat.
January 16th-20th - Islamic militants take over a BP natural gas facility at Amenas in Algeria. More than 800 workers are held hostage. By the time special forces regain control of the site, at least 39 hostages have been killed, along with a security guard and 29 militants.
January 21st - Barack Obama inaugurated for his second term as US President.
January 23rd - David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom announces that the Conservative manifesto for 2015 will promise an in-out referendum on EU membership by 2017.
February
February 4th - A skeleton thought to be that of King Richard III is discovered under a Leicester car park. Subsequent tests eventually establish it to be the case.
February 5th - The House of Commons votes by 400 votes to 175 in favour of legislation to introduce same-sex marriages to England and Wales.
February 11th - Pope Benedict XVI announces that he will resign the papacy on February 28th.
February 14th - Oscar Pistorius is charged with murder. The South African athlete is charged with the fatal shooting of his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, in an incident in his home in Pretoria. His trial is eventually set for March 2014.
February 28th - Pope Benedict XVI resigns as head of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the first Pope to resign since Pope Gregory XII in 1415. In modern times, all popes have stayed in office until death. Benedict XVI is the first Pope to have resigned without external pressure since St. Pope Celestine V in 1294. Benedict XVI retained his papal name and is addressed as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
March
March 5th - Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela, dies at the age of 58. He had been ill with cancer for over a year.
March 8th - UN Security Council passes strict new sanctions against North Korea, following a nuclear test conducted by the state the previous month. China is actively involved in drafting the sanctions. Three days later, North Korea announces its withdrawal from the 60 year old armistice with South Korea, which ended the Korean War in 1953.
March 13th - Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina is elected the 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, whereupon he becomes His Holiness Pope Francis, the first Jesuit Pope, the first Pope from the Americas, and the first Pope from the Southern Hemisphere.
March 24th - Cyprus is offered a $13bn bailout by the European Union and International Monetary Fund. The terms of the rescue require Cyprus to raise $7.5bn by taxing bank deposits.
April
April 1st - Kim Jong-un announces plans to expand North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, in defiance of UN warnings.
April 8th - Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, dies aged 87 following a stroke. The UK’s only female Prime Minister, Baroness Thatcher won three general elections as Conservative leader.
April 14th - Former bus driver Nicolás Maduro becomes President of Venezuela.
April 15th - Two pressure cooker bombs are detonated near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing five people and injuring a further 264.
April 17th - A full ceremonial service for Baroness Thatcher, partly funded by the state, is held at St. Paul’s cathedral.
April 18th - The FBI identifies brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev as Boston marathon bombing suspects. Tamerlan dies following a shootout with police on April 19th; Dzhokhar is captured later that evening.
April 30th - Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands abdicates the throne. Her son, Willem-Alexander becomes King of the Netherlands
May
May 6th - Amanda Berry escapes from a house in Cleveland, Ohio, whose owner Ariel Castro, has been holding her captive since 2003. Two other women and a child are later released. (Their captor will be jailed for life in July, hanging himself a month later.)
May 8th - Sir Alex Ferguson retires as Manchester United manager.
May 10th - HRH Prince Taufaʻahau Manumataongo, 2nd in the line to the Tongan throne is born
May 17th - Jorge Rafael Videla, 42nd President of Argentina dies
May 25th - Bayern Munich win the Champions League.
June
June 9th - Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old a former employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, which provides consulting services to the US government, reveals himself as the source of the NSA leaks. He has taken refuge in Hong Kong.
June 17-18th - UK hosts G8 summit at Lough Erne in County Fermanagh.
June 19th - Actor James Gandolfini dies, aged 51
June 21st - Edward Snowden is charged by the United States with espionage, theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence. Two days later he arrives in Russia.
June 26th - Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female Prime Minister, is forced to step down after a ballot by Labor MPs installs Kevin Rudd as party leader.
June 30th - Huge protests calling for the resignation of President Mohamed Morsi take place across Egypt. Protestors numbering in their millions accuse Morsi of failing to tackle Egypt’s economic and security problems since taking power in 2012.
July
July 1st - Croatia becomes the 28th member of the European Union
July 3rd - President Mohamed Morsi is deposed in a military coup. The head of Egypt’s armed forces, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, announces Morsi’s fall on national television. A “road map” is outlined and consists of the provisional suspension of the constitution, installing Adly Mansour as acting President pending a Presidential election and establishing a technocratic government.
July 7th - Andy Murray defeats Novak Djokovic to become the first British man to win Wimbledon since 1936.
July 13th - Actor Cory Monteith dies, aged 31
July 17th: Same sex marriages are legalised in England and Wales, after the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 receives Royal Assent. Such marriages will begin to go ahead in March 2014.
July 22nd - HRH Prince George of Cambridge is born to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. He is the sole grandson of HRH the Prince of Wales, and is third in line to succeed Queen Elizabeth II.
August
August 1st - Edward Snowden is granted a one year temporary political asylum in Russia.
August 12th - Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau dies.
August 14th - In what the Human Rights Watch describe as “the most serious incident of mass unlawful killings in modern Egyptian history”, supporters of ousted President Morsi are massacred by the security services, after two pro-Morsi camps in Cairo are cleared. The Egyptian health ministry figures puts the death toll of the attacks at 638; others count the dead in thousands. The massacre provokes violent outbursts in other cities, and a month-long state of emergency is declared.
August 21st - Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning is sentenced to 35 years imprisonment for handing confidential government information to the WikiLeaks site.
September
September 19th - A group of Greenpeace activists protesting against Russian oil drilling are arrested after the Russian authorities board their vessel in the Barents Sea. The activists are taken into custody and become known as “The Arctic 30”. An international campaign for their release begins.
September 21st - Al-Shabaab militants attack the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi. Sixty-two people are killed and at least 170 are wounded.
September 26th - The UN Security Council agrees a resolution that formally requires Syria to hand over its chemical weapons.
October
October 3rd - At least 359 people die when a boat carrying migrants from Libya sinks off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Overcrowding and a botched attempt to summon help by lighting a fire are said to be among the causes. Eight days later, at least 34 people die in a similar wreck.
October 10th - Peter Higgs and Francois Englert win the Nobel Prize in Physics. The physicists are honoured for their discovery of the Higgs boson (or “God Particle”). The Higgs boson is crucial to theories concerning the mass and diversity of particles in the universe; its existence was confirmed at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland.
October 11th - The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
October 16th - One night before a debt ceiling deadline that could have pushed the US into default, the US House and Senate approve a bill to fund the government until early 2014.
October 20th - New South Wales declares a state of emergency after Australian bushfires destroy 200 homes in the region, killing two people.
October 25th - Actress and comedienne Marcia Wallace dies.
October 28th - The biggest trial into phone hacking allegedly conducted by the now-defunct News of the World begins at the Old Bailey in London. Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, former editors of the tabloid, are among the eight defendants, who are charged with a range of offences including conspiring to access voice mail messages illegally.
October 28th - Tadeusz Mazowiecki, 1st Prime Minister of Poland, dies.
November
November 8th - Around 6,000 people are killed as Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest storm ever recorded at landfall, hits the Philippines. Nearly 2 million people lose their homes, and more than 6 million are displaced.
November 20th - The first members of the Arctic 30 are released on bail.
November 21st - Three women are freed from a house in south London, reportedly after “30 years of slavery”: one is said to have spent her entire life in captivity. The house is associated with a sect of Maoist extremists. A man and a woman are bailed until January.
November 24th - Following lengthy negotiations with the US and other world powers, Iran agrees to limit its nuclear development programme.
November 26th - Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, unveils the Scottish National Party’s independence blueprint.
November 27th - The Italian parliament votes to expel former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, following his conviction for tax fraud.
November 30th - Actor Paul Walker dies.
December
December 5th - Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s anti-apartheid revolutionary and former President, dies, aged 95.
December 6th - France sends troops to the Central African Republic on a UN-backed peace-keeping mission.
December 9th - Kim Jong-un’s uncle, Jang Song-Thaek, is removed from power and executed.
December 10th - World leaders attend a memorial ceremony for Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg.
December 15th - Nelson Mandela is buried at the village of Qunu.
December 15th - Ireland exits the EU/IMF bailout
December 16th - The UN makes its biggest ever appeal, for £4bn/$6.5bn aid for Syria.
December 18th - Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber, dies, aged 84.
December 19th - 92 injured in ceiling-collapse at London’s Apollo Theatre.
