Permission is granted for 3 concerts a year at Twickenham rugby ground and the Rolling Stones play the first concert.

Skype, designed jointly by a Danish and a Swedish software developer, uses a webcam to enable users to see, by means of the internet, the person to whom they are speaking

Jerry Springer: The Opera, by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, is profane and outrageous and extremely successful

Grayson Perry, dressed as his female alter ego Claire, begins his speech of thanks on winning the Turner Prize with the statement: 'It was high time a transvestite potter won this prize'.

Recep Edogan begins a period of at least fourteen years as Turkey's prime minister, at first with success but by 2014 his administration is mired in corruption charges and is regarded as too authoritarian

Mark Edwards builds replicas of the boats used in 1829 in the first Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, and the universities race them again over the original Henley course

The footbridge at Kew Gardens station is restored with the help of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant

Martin Scorsese directs Leonardo DiCaprio as the eccentric aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, in The Aviator

Mikheil Saakashvili, the real winner of Georgia's November 2003 presidential election, has a resounding victory in the replay

Lord Hutton publishes his report into the circumstances leading up to the suicide of Dr David Kelly

For the second time president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is forced to flee from Haiti, after losing control to opposition rebels

Bombs explode simultaneously on several commuter trains in Madrid during the morning rush hour, killing 190 people

In Russia's presidential election Vladimir Putin easily wins a second term

The Annan UN plan for the reunification of Cyprus is approved by the Turkish community but rejected by the Greeks

Abuses in the US military prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq are revealed on US television

Ten new member states (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungrary, Malta, Cyprus) join the European Union

The Governors of the Royal Star & Garter Home announce plans for it to be replaced by three new purpose-built care homes elsewhere in the UK, and the building is put up for sale

Michael Schumacher becomes the first driver to win seven world championship titles in Formula One

Chechen terrorists take an entire school hostage, in Beslan in southern Russia, resulting in more than 300 deaths

The National Physical Laboratory develops a new system of measuring time by bombarding a single strontium atom, frozen to -273C, with tiny packages of light

Representatives of the member states of the European Union accept a proposed European Constitution, subject to its ratification by each state

George W. Bush wins a second term, defeating Democrat John Kerry in the US presidential election

Palestinian president Yasser Arafat dies in a hospital near Paris

Prime minister Viktor Yanukovych is at first declared winner of a rigged (and subsequently annulled) presidential election in Ukraine

Hamid Karzai becomes the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan