2009 world events timeline
2009-12-28 16:14
JANUARY
18: Israel ends a 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip, leaving some 1 330 Palestinians dead.
15: A US jet carrying 155 people crashes on the Hudson River in New York, but the pilot manages to land it on its belly with no casualties.
20: Barack Obama is inaugurated as president of the United States.
FEBRUARY
- 7-11: At least 210 people die in the deadliest wild fires in Australia's history.
- 17: Duch, believed to have been one of the worst torturers of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, goes on trial at UN-backed tribunal.
- 23: The film Slumdog Millionaire wins top prizes at the US Academy Awards.
- 27: President Barack Obama says all US troops will have left Iraq by the end of August 2010.
MARCH
- 4: The International Criminal Court issues its first arrest warrant against a sitting head of state, Omar al-Beshir of Sudan, but he is not detained.
- 12: An Iraqi man who became a hero by throwing his shoes at US president George W Bush in 2008 gets three years in jail. He wins early release in October.
- 31: After inconclusive elections, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu becomes Israel's new prime minister.
APRIL
- 1: Albania and Croatia join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
- 2: Leaders of the "Group of 20" nations hold a summit in London, vowing tough action against tax havens.
- 24: The World Health Organisation raises its alert level for the worldwide H1N1 flu epidemic.
MAY
- 7: Police in Afghanistan say that US-led air strikes killed 100 people, most of them civilians.
- 7: For the first time, Italian patrol boats in the Mediterranean return a group of asylum seekers to Libya.
- 12: After decades of legal wrangling, the former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk is extradited from the United States to face trial in Germany.
- 16: India's ruling Congress Party is re-elected, ensuring a second term for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
- 18: Sri Lanka's military declares victory in its decades-old conflict with the Tamil Tigers.
- 19: The speaker of Britain's lower house of parliament resigns over a massive expenses scandal.
JUNE
- 1: The once mighty US automobile company General Motors is declared bankrupt, with the federal government taking a major stake in its capital.
- 1: An Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappears over the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of all on board.
- 4: In Cairo, US President Barack Obama addresses the world's Muslims, vowing to forge a "new beginning".
- 8: Conservative parties make gains in elections to the European Union Parliament, which are marred by a record low turnout.
- 13: The Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is declared the winner of a presidential election, sparking major unrest and accusations of fraud.
- 19: A record one billion people around the world do not have enough to eat, the UN food agency says.
- 25: The US pop singer Michael Jackson dies unexpectedly at age 50, reportedly from cardiac arrest.
- 28: President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras is overthrown in a coup.
- 29: Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff is jailed for 150 years for a multi-billion-dollar pyramid scheme.
JULY
- 1: US forces pull out of Iraq's main cities and towns.
- 11: China says nearly 200 people have been killed in unrest between Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs in its province of Xinjiang.
- 15: Russian human rights activist Natalya Estemirova is found murdered after being abducted from Chechnya.
- 20: The world marks the 40th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon.
- 25: US President Barack Obama expresses regret at having said that a white policeman acted "stupidly" in arresting a black Harvard professor.
AUGUST
- 20: Afghans vote to elect a president for only the second time in their history. The incumbent Hamid Karzai is eventually declared the winner, but the polls are marked by massive fraud.
- 20: A Libyan convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie aircraft bombing is released from jail in Scotland as he is terminally ill.
- 26: US senator Edward Kennedy dies of brain cancer at age 77.
- 28: An American girl who had disappeared at age 11 is found nearly two decades later, after being sequestered by a man who fathered two children by her.
- 30: An election in Japan brings the Democratic Party to power, ending a long period of domination by conservatives.
SEPTEMBER
- 4: A NATO bombing kills up to 90 people in Afghanistan, many of them civilians.
- 24-25: Leaders of the Group of 20 nations hold an economic summit in the US city of Pittsburgh.
- 27: German voters give a second mandate to conservative leader Angela Merkel, who forms a coalition with a small centrist party.
- 30: Tsunamis caused by an undersea earthquake kill at least 113 people in the Samoan islands of the Pacific.
- 30: A 7.6-magnitude quake off Indonesia's Sumatra island kills more than 1 100 people.
OCTOBER
- 2: Rio de Janeiro is chosen to host the 2016 Olympic Games.
- 3: Voting for the second time on the European Union's Lisbon Treaty, Ireland finally approves it.
- 8: The Romanian-born German author Herta Mueller wins the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature.
- 9: US President Barack Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
- 25: Suicide car bombs kill 153 people at government offices in central Baghdad.
- 26: The trial of former Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic opens before a UN tribunal in the Netherlands.
- 28: A car bomb kills over 100 people at a market in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
NOVEMBER
- 3: French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss dies the age of 100.
- 6: A US army doctor about to be deployed to Iraq shoots dead 13 people at his military base in Texas.
- 19: European leaders choose Belgian President Herman Van Rompuy as the EU's first president.
- 25: World financial markets tumble as it emerges that a huge company in the Gulf emirate of Dubai cannot pay its debts.
- 29: Voters in Switzerland opt to ban any future building of minarets on mosques throughout the country.
DECEMBER
- 1: US President Barack Obama announces the sending of 30 000 more troops to Afghanistan, but also says he will begin pulling forces out of the country in July 2011.
- 3: Guinea's junta chief Moussa Dadis Camara is flown out of his west African country after being shot and injured by an aide.
- 8: Simultaneous bomb attacks kill at least 127 people in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
- 13: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi stays in hospital for four days after a man with a history of mental problems attacked him.
- 18: The climate change conference held over two weeks in Copenhagen ends with a non-binding agreement that skeptical observers say is unlikely to limit emissions sufficiently to halt global warming.
- 19: Five Eurostar passenger trains get stuck in the rail tunnel between Britain and continental Europe during heavy snow, followed by days of train cancellations which leave thousands stranded in Paris, London and Brussels.
- 24: A sweeping US healthcare bill passes the Senate, giving President Barack Obama success on his number one domestic priority.
- 24: An apparently deranged woman knocks Pope Benedict XVI to the ground in a dramatic start to Christmas Eve mass at St Peter's Basilica.
- 25: A Nigerian man with reported links to al-Qaeda is overpowered as he apparently tries to blow up a passenger jet landing in Detroit from Amsterdam, raising questions over how he got on board and forcing stunned authorities to step up airport security worldwide.
- 27: Iranian reformist websites say security forces killed a nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in what turn into the bloodiest clashes since unrest in June following a disputed presidential election, with at least five people reported dead.