Prince George is born, son of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, immediately becoming the third in line of succession to the British throne

Australian scientists develop a microscope using the laws of quantum mechanics to probe with unparallelled precision the inner workings of living cells

Boeing launches, at the Paris Air Show, the 787-10 Dreamliner – the largest version as yet in a revolutionary series of passenger planes built from composite materials

Laure Prouvost, a French artist working in London, wins the Turner Prize with her work Wantee, evoking a fictional relationship between her grandfather and Kurt Schwitters

The Jean-Claude Carrière Theatre, designed by A+Architecture, is completed in Montpellier

In In Times of Fading Light Eugen Ruge creates a powerful saga depicting the decades of the East German Communist state, related in an account of three generations of his own family

Norwegian photographer Andrea Gjestvang is the winner of the largest ever photographic competition, the Sony World Awards, with more than 122,000 entries submitted

Ayad Akhtar tackles a topical subject with his Pulitzer-Prize drama Disgraced, about a successful American's concealment of his Pakistani Muslim background

Narendra Modi emerges as the preferred BJP candidate for the Indian presidency, causing the US and UK to rescind the visa restrictions placed on him after the 1992 killing of Muslims in Gujarat

Shin Thawbita, a Buddhist monk in Burma, is burnt alive by a Muslim mob in Meikhtilar

Just four months before his death three powerful new works by John Tavener are premiered by the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester's Bridgewater Hall

A paper to the Endocrine Society in the USA, about male rats passing on the acquired characteristic of obesity to their male offspring, is part of a growing renewal of interest in Lamarck

Croatia joins the European Union, as the 28th member

Radical Islamists take more than 800 people hostage at the Amenas Gas Project in Algeria

French troops arrive in Mali, at the government's request, to help in evicting radical Islamist groups from the north of the country

About forty foreign hostages and twenty-nine militants die when Algerian forces raid the Amenas gas site

Scientists at Cambridge university prove that there is quadruple helix DNA in humans, promising potential protection against cancer

Netanyahu wins the Israeli election, with second place taken by a moderate party, Yesh Atid, newly formed by Yair Lapid

Violent protests erupt in Egypt against President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood

North Korea carries out its third underground nuclear test

Double-amputee Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius is charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp

A huge meteor enters the earth's atmosphere and explodes over Chelyabinsk in Russia, injuring more than 1000 people

In the italian election Beppe Grillo's new Five Star Movement wins 25% of the votes but refuses to join any coalition

Pope Benedict XVI resigns, the first pope to do so for 600 years

The Argentinian archbishop Jorge Bergoglio is elected pope and takes the name Francis in honour of St Francis of Assisi