The Japanese tsunami results in a nuclear crisis and massive evacuation because of meltdowns in three reactors at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant

Nearly 20,000 people are killed and more than 125,000 buildings destroyed or severely damaged by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates agree to send troops and police to strengthen government forces in Bahrain

Muammar Gaddafi makes a rousing speech on Libyan TV saying that his people will seek out traitors and infidels in Benghazi 'alley by alley' to deal with them

The United Nations Security Council passes Resolution 1973, authorizing the international community to use force to protect civilians in Libya

Muammar Gaddafi's tanks are on the verge of reaching Benghazi to enter the city and carry out his promised cleansing of the city of rebel traitors

The first air strikes by NATO, authorized by the UN, destroy sufficient of Gaddafi's armour just in time to save Benghazi from a proclaimed massacre of rebel civilians

The civil war in Ivory Coast is perhaps ended by the capture of former president, and recently defeated presidential candidate, Laurent Gbagbo

Prince William marries Kate Middleton in London's Westminster Abbey in a ceremony watched by millions of viewers around the world

At 1.a.m. Osama bin Laden is killed in his house in Abbottabad, in Pakistan, by a special forces team of US Navy SEALs

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander wanted for war crimes at Srebrenica in 1995, is arrested in Serbia and subsequently extradited to the Hague

A court in Cairo finds Hosni Mubarak guilty of damaging the national economy by severing internet connections on January 26 and fines him about US $34 million

President Saleh of Yemen is flown to Egypt for medical treatment, after being wounded on the previous day by an explosion in the government compound in Sana'a

Surgeons in Sweden achieve the first artificial living organ transplant, after using the patient's own stem cells to coat a plastic replica of his windpipe

Following the referendum result earlier in the year, South Sudan secedes from the Sudan to become the independent Republic of South Sudan

Goran Hadzic is arrested in Serbia, completing the detention of all 161 people from the former Yugoslavia indicted by the International Criminal Court

The United Nations declares southern Somalia to be in a state of famine, with the disastrous lack of rain driving thousands of refugees into Ethiopia and Kenya

The return of Space Shuttle Atlantis to the Kennedy Space Centre ends NASA's 20-year space shuttle programme

Anders Behring Breivik shoots and kills 69 young people on the Norwegian island of Uteya after killing eight with a bomb in government buildings in Oslo

Eurozone leaders agree a second bail-out package for Greece of €109 billion

The commander of the rebel forces in Libya, Abdel Fattah Younes, is assassinated in mysterious circumstances while in rebel hands

President Obama announces a last-minute deal with congressional leaders on the debt limit, temporarily calming the fears of the financial markets

In response to the continuing uprising the Syrian government launches an attack with tanks against several of the country's cities, in particular Hama

The funding crisis in the Eurozone extends to fears of potential government default in the large economies of Spain and Italy

With no sign of a deal between Obama and Republicans on raising the debt limit, fears grow that the USA might default on its debts on August 2