2010

• International Year of Biodiversity
• International Year of Youth
• 2010 European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion
• International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures

  Pronunciation

Events

January

• 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 attacked 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 10 – Religious violence erupts in Jos, Nigeria, which left scores dead, and many injured.
• January 12 – A 7.0-magnitude earthquake occurs in Haiti, devastating the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince.
• 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 19
• *Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh is assassinated in Dubai.
• *North Caucasian Federal District was split from Southern Federal District by decree of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.
• 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, setting a new world record for a work of art sold at auction.
• February 10 – The Australian government is hit by cyberattacks from freedom of expression activists, following recent Australian pornography restrictions.
• February 12–28 – The 2010 Winter Olympics are held in Vancouver and Whistler, Canada.
• February 15 – Two trains collide 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 22 – Four-year-old Paulette Gebara Farah disappears from her family's home located in Huixquilucan, State of Mexico.
• 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 3 – The first iPad is released.
• April 5 – Julian Assange leaks footage of a 2007 airstrike in Iraq titled "Collateral Murder" on the website WikiLeaks.
• 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 1 – Expo 2010 is held in Shanghai, China.
• 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 United Kingdom general election results in a hung parliament, with the Conservative Party twenty seats short of a majority.
• * 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 10 – The 2010 Philippine presidential election is held, with Benigno Aquino III elected as Philippine President.
• May 12
• * Following the 6 May United Kingdom general election, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties agree to form a coalition government, the UK's first since the Second World War.
• * 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.
• * Inter Milan beats Bayern München 2–0 in the 2010 Champions League Final at the Santiago Bernabéu.
• May 25–29 – The Eurovision Song Contest 2010 takes place in Oslo, Norway, and is won by German entrant Lena with the song "Satellite".
• 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 9 – The Chicago Blackhawks win their first Stanley Cup since 1961.
• 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 19 – Wedding of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Daniel Westling
• June 22–25 – A tennis match between Nicolas Mahut and John Isner at the Wimbledon Championships, becomes the longest tennis match in history.
• 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. On the same day FIA appointed Pirelli as official tyre partner and supplier for Formula One from season onwards.

  July

• July 8 – The first 24-hour flight by a solar-powered plane is completed by the Solar Impulse.
• July 13 – Microsoft ends extended support for Windows 2000.
• July 16 – First Instagram posts made by co-developers Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom in San Francisco; the service launches publicly on October 12.
• 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 28 – Airblue Flight 202 crashes near Islamabad, Pakistan, killing all 152 people on board.
• 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.
• PDVAL affair, also known as the Pudreval affair, political scandal in Venezuela where tons of rotten food supplies were found torrent, which imported during Hugo Chávez's government through subsidies of state-owned enterprise PDVAL.

  August

• August 10 – The World Health Organization declares the H1N1 influenza pandemic over, saying worldwide flu activity has returned to typical seasonal patterns.
• August 16 – AIRES Flight 8250, a Boeing 737–700, crashed on landing at San Andrés, Colombia, killing two.
• August 21 – 2010 Australian federal election: Julia Gillard's Labor government is re-elected, narrowly defeating the Liberal/National Coalition led by Tony Abbott.
• August 23 – The Manila hostage crisis occurred near the Quirino Grandstand in Manila, Philippines killing 9 people, including the perpetrator, while injuring 9 others.