Timeline of the 21st century

Millennium:	3rd millennium
Centuries:	20th century; 21st century; 22nd century;
Timelines:	20th century; 21st century; 22nd century;
State leaders:	20th century; 21st century; 22nd century;
Decades:	2000s; 2010s; 2020s; 2030s; 2040s; 2050s; 2060s; 2070s; 2080s; 2090s;
Categories:	Births – Deaths ; Establishments – Disestablishments

This is a timeline of the 21st century.

2000s

2001

September 11 attacks: Al-Qaeda terrorists crash planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A fourth plane is downed on the outskirts of Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania; 2,996 people die in the attacks.
An earthquake strikes Gujarat, India, on Republic Day, resulting in more than 20,000 deaths.
The United States invades Afghanistan and topples the Taliban regime, resulting in a long-term war.
Steve Jobs introduces the first iPod.
China becomes a member of the World Trade Organization.
Wikipedia is launched.
Eleven members of the royal family of Nepal, including the king and queen, are killed by Crown Prince Dipendra, who wounds himself and dies three days later.

2002

The African Union is founded.
The 2002 Bali bombings killed 202 people and injured 209 more.
The Euro enters circulation.
Riots and mass killings in the Indian state of Gujarat leave 1,044 dead.
Israel starts Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank in response to a wave of Palestinian suicide attacks.
Construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier begins.
Chechen rebels seize a theater in Moscow.
The International Criminal Court is established.
America demands Iraq allow unfettered access to weapons inspectors.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is established.
The Algerian Civil War ends.
East Timor gains independence.
The First Ivorian Civil War begins.
Brazil wins the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
Hu Jintao is elected as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China.

2003

The United States invades Iraq and ousts Saddam Hussein, triggering worldwide protests and an 8 year war.
The War in Darfur begins.
The Human Genome Project is completed.
The Second Congo War ends with more than 5 million dead.
The Second Liberian Civil War ends.
The Rose Revolution occurs in Georgia.
The last Volkswagen Beetle is made in Mexico, after 65 years in production.
The first six-party talks, involving South and North Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
Final flight of the SST (Supersonic Transport) Concorde.

2008

Tesla Roadster launched in 2008, the first mass production lithium-ion battery electric car

Stock markets plunge around the world, signaling the start of the Great Recession.
End of Monarchy in Nepal.
Google Chrome is released.
Barack Obama is elected as President of the United States.
Dmitry Medvedev becomes President of Russia.
Cyclone Nargis kills 133,000 in Myanmar.
The Gaza War begins.
2008 South Ossetia war.
The 2008 Summer Olympic was hosted in Beijing, China.
Kosovo declares independence, though it is not recognised by the United Nations.
Iraqi forces crack down on Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi forces in Basra and Sadr City.
2008 Mumbai attacks.
The Large Hadron Collider is completed as the world's largest and most powerful particle collider.
Tesla Roadster launched, the first mass production lithium-ion battery electric car.

2009

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin is launched.
The Gaza War ends while Gaza blockade continues.
The Sri Lankan Civil War ends.
Election protests begin in Iran.
The Second Chechen War ends.
Boko Haram rebellion begins in Nigeria.
Formation of BRICS economic bloc.
Treaty of Lisbon ratified.
2009 swine flu pandemic began in North America.
Typhoon Ketsana kills 789 people in the Philippines.

2010s

2010

After the 2010 United Kingdom general election, David Cameron becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
A military crackdown occurs in Thailand.
A 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti kills 230,000.
The threat of Greece defaulting on its debts triggers the European sovereign debt crisis and Republic of Ireland's financial crisis.
The largest oil spill in US history occurs in the Gulf of Mexico.
North Korea shells the island of Yeonpyeong.
Gaza flotilla raid.
Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi is released from house arrest.
The FIFA World Cup is held in Africa for the first time.
2010 Moscow Metro bombings.
Arab Spring starts.
Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010.
2010 Nigerien coup d'état.
The President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, is among 96 killed when their airplane crashes in Smolensk on April 10.
The Burj Khalifa in Dubai becomes the tallest structure in the world, standing at 829.8 m (2,722 ft).
Dilma Rousseff is elected as the first female president of Brazil.
The iPad is introduced.
Instagram is launched.
2010 Colombia–Venezuela diplomatic crisis.

2011

Independence of South Sudan.
Snapchat launched.
February Christchurch earthquake kills 185 and injures 2,000.
Arab Spring: revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya follow, as well as uprisings in Yemen and Bahrain, and protests in several other Arab countries.
Syrian civil war begins.
Second Ivorian Civil War.
Occupy movement inspires worldwide protests.
News International phone hacking scandal.
A 9.0 earthquake in Japan triggers a tsunami and the meltdown of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, the world's longest, opens in China.
Second Ivorian Civil War ends with the arrest of former president Laurent Gbagbo.
Iraq War ends.
Riots flare across England.
Bombings occur in Russia and Somalia.
World population reaches 7 Billion.
Floods in Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines kill roughly 2,500 people.
Osama bin Laden is shot dead by United States Navy SEALs in Pakistan.
2011 Norway attacks.
Muammar Gaddafi is captured and killed during the Battle of Sirte.
Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.
Space Shuttle program is officially ended.
Amazon Rainforest and River, Hạ Long Bay, Jeju Island, Iguazú Falls, Puerto Princesa Underground River, Komodo Island and Table Mountain were named as the world's New7Wonders of Nature.

2012

The Higgs boson is discovered.
Vladimir Putin is elected president of Russia for the third time.
Skydiver Felix Baumgartner becomes the first person to break the sound barrier without a vehicle.
Conflict begins in the Central African Republic.
UN Climate Change Conference agrees to extend the Kyoto Protocol until 2020.
Israel launches Operation Pillar of Defense against the Palestinian-governed Gaza Strip.
The US rover, Curiosity, takes a selfie on Mars.
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting.
Costa Concordia disaster.
Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
Barack Obama wins second term as President of the United States, defeating former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
Shooting of Trayvon Martin: The 17-year-old African-American high school student was killed in Sanford, Florida.
The 2012 Summer Olympics was hosted in London, United Kingdom.
Xi Jinping is elected as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China.

2013

The French military intervenes in the Northern Mali conflict.
Pope Benedict XVI resigns and Pope Francis is elected, becoming the first Pope from Latin America.
Terrorist attacks occur in Boston and Nairobi.
The Rana Plaza collapses in Bangladesh.
Edward Snowden releases classified documents concerning mass surveillance by the NSA.
President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi is deposed by the military in a coup d'état.
Croatia becomes a member of the European Union.
The Euromaidan protest begins in Ukraine.
A chemical attack in Ghouta, Syria is blamed on President Bashar al-Assad.
A 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Bohol, kills 222.
Typhoon Haiyan kills nearly 6,150 people in Vietnam and the Philippines.
Conflict begins in South Sudan.
Uruguay becomes the first country to fully legalize cannabis.
End of 2012–2013 Cypriot financial crisis.

2014

The worst Ebola epidemic in recorded history occurs in West Africa, infecting nearly 30,000 people and resulting in the deaths of 11,000+.
Euromaidan protest in Ukraine sparks a revolution and the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, leading to Russia's annexation of Crimea and the War in Donbass.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears from radar while en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8. There were 239 people on board.
A coup d'état in Thailand overthrows the caretaker government.
King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicates; his son becomes King Felipe VI.
Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 crashes into the Java Sea, while Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is shot down over Ukraine and Air Algérie Flight 5017 is downed in Mali.
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan kill over 130 students in Pakistan.
Israel launches an assault on the Gaza Strip in response to tit-for-tat murder-kidnappings, leading to the deaths of 71 Israelis and 2,100 Palestinians.
ISIS begins its offensive in northern Iraq, leading to intervention in Iraq and Syria by a US-led coalition.
Second Libyan Civil War begins.
The Rosetta spacecraft's Philae probe becomes the first to successfully land on a comet.
The shooting of African-American teenager Michael Brown by police leads to violent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.

2015

Five former Soviet Union countries form the Eurasian Economic Union.
A series of terrorist attacks occur in Paris.
Boko Haram perpetrates a massacre of over 2,000 people in Baga, Nigeria, and allies itself with ISIL.
Al-Shabaab perpetrates a mass shooting in Kenya, killing 148.
A series of earthquakes in the Himalayas kills over 10,000 people.
The heads of China and Taiwan meet for the first time, while the United States and Cuba resume diplomatic relations.
195 nations agree to lower carbon emissions.
Liquid water is found on Mars.
First close-up images of Ceres and Pluto.
China announces the end of One-child policy after 35 years.
European migrant crisis.
The Supreme Court of the United States determines that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.
The death of African-American teenager Freddie Gray by police leads to violent unrest in Baltimore, Maryland.

2016

The United Nations lifts sanctions on Iran in recognition of its dismantling of its nuclear program.
ISIL claims responsibility for a series of bombings in Brussels, a massacre at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport and car ramming attacks in Nice and Berlin.
The Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world's longest railway tunnel, is completed.
The people of the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union; Theresa May becomes Prime Minister.
The Colombian government signs a peace deal with FARC despite losing a referendum.
The government of Turkey begins a series of purges in reaction to a failed coup d'état attempt.
Detection of gravitational waves by LIGO confirmed.
A shooter kills 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

2017

Tensions between North Korea and the UN escalate as the country tests a hydrogen bomb and conducts a series of ballistic missile tests. The UN responds with a wave of export sanctions.
A terrorist bombing attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England kills 22 people and injures over 500.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launch simultaneous attacks in Tehran, destroy the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul Iraq, and kill 311 in Egypt, but are declared defeated in Iraq by the end of the year.
A military operation targeting Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is declared ethnic cleansing by the UNHCR.
A bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia on October 14, kills 587 people and injures 316. It is one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern history.
Hurricane Harvey kills 107 and becomes the costliest hurricane in US history, while Hurricane Irma kills 134, and Hurricane Maria kills 3,059.
Robert Mugabe is ousted in a coup d'état, while Ratko Mladić is declared guilty of genocide.
The city of Charlottesville is the site of a far-right rally protesting the removal of Confederate statues throughout the US. During the event, a white supremacist rams his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, injuring 19 and killing one.
58 people are killed in a mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Allegations of sexual abuse against film producer Harvey Weinstein lead to a wave of similar accusations from within Hollywood and other areas of primarily the English-speaking world.
'Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object, is identified.

2018

Turkey invades northern Syria, while 70 die in a chemical attack, triggering a missile strike against Bashar al-Assad.
The first monkeys are cloned, and first genetically modified humans reported, in China.
March for Our Lives occurs in 900 locations worldwide in response to the Parkland shooting.
Pakatan Harapan becomes the first opposition party to assume power in Malaysia since independence.
The first summit between the US and North Korea and the first ever crossing of the Korean Demilitarized Zone by a North Korean leader occur.
Twenty-year Eritrean–Ethiopian border conflict formally ends.
Yellow vests movement becomes France's largest sustained period of civil unrest since 1968.
The Sunda strait tsunami kills 426 and injures 14,000 and the 2018 Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami kills 4,340 and injures 10,700.
Exiled Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is assassinated inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, triggering a diplomatic crisis for Saudi Arabia.
Macedonia and Greece reach a historic agreement in the Macedonia naming dispute, in which the former is renamed in 2019 to the 'Republic of North Macedonia'.
China's National People's Congress votes to abolish presidential term limits, allowing Xi Jinping to rule for life. Xi is also the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the highest position without term limits.
2018 Armenian revolution occurs.
First post-ISIS election in Iraq.

2019

New Horizons takes the first close up image of a classical kuiper belt object.
Chang'e 4 becomes the first object to land on the far side of the Moon.
Christchurch mosque shootings kill 51 people, while a suicide bombing in Iran kills 41, and a series of bomb attacks in Sri Lanka kills 250.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant loses the last of its territory.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigns as President of Algeria, while Omar al-Bashir is deposed as President of Sudan in a coup d'état amid widespread protests in both countries.
The Event Horizon Telescope takes the first ever image of a black hole, at the core of galaxy Messier 87.
Victor Vescovo breaks the human depth record, reaching 10,928 m in the Challenger Deep.
Protests begin in Hong Kong over an extradition bill.
India revokes the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.
Wildfires spike in Brazil, while Australia endures the most widespread brush fires in its history.
A major fire engulfs Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, resulting in the roof and main spire collapsing.
Avengers: Endgame was released in theaters, breaking many box-office records, including becoming the highest-grossing movies of all time.
Isabelle Holdaway is the first patient to receive a genetically modified phage therapy to treat a drug-resistant infection.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch conducts the first all-female spacewalk outside of the ISS.
Pope Francis abolishes pontifical secrecy in sex abuse cases.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, is impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate.
The COVID-19 pandemic begins in Wuhan, China; the start of an ongoing global pandemic.

2020s

2020

The COVID-19 pandemic claims 1.8 million lives and infects at least 83 million people worldwide.
United States President Donald Trump is impeached and acquitted.
The United Kingdom formally withdraws from the European Union.
New Horizons provides the first close up images of a classical Kuiper belt object.
Fears of COVID-19 cause the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fall ten percent in one week, its largest drop in history, triggering the Coronavirus recession.
The United States signs a tentative peace agreement with the Taliban.
Silurian millipede Kampecaris obanensis, the oldest known land animal, is discovered in Scotland.
Cyclone Amphan becomes the costiest cyclone ever recorded in the Northern Indian Ocean.
The killing of George Floyd sparks protests across the United States and the world.
China's National People's Congress grants itself sweeping powers to curtail civil liberties in Hong Kong.
Manned spaceflight resumes in the United States for the first time since 2011.
Protests begin in Bulgaria against the government of Boyko Borisov.
China and India engage in border skirmishes, the largest escalation between the two powers in 50 years.
2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The United States formally exits the Paris Agreement on climate change.

History of 21st century
Timeline
Decades	2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s 2050s 2060s 2070s 2080s 2090s
Topics	Art Christianity Literature Music classical Philosophy Science
Lists	State leaders Earthquakes Lunar eclipses Solar eclipses Volcanic eruptions
Category

Timeline of the 21st century

See also