A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Frank Gehry wins world-wide attention with his design for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

Bertie Ahern, leader of Fianna Fáil, becomes the prime minister (Taoiseach) of the republic of Ireland

Elton John sings a revised version of Candle in the Wind in Westminster Abbey, as a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales

The Real IRA, a splinter group of the Provisional IRA, declares its commitment to a continuing campaign of violence

The British architectural firm of Foster & Partners completes the Hong Kong International Airport

A proposed referendum on northern Irish issues is accepted by all the relevant political parties in what becomes known as the Good Friday Agreement

In the referendum to endorse the Good Friday Agreement, the terms are accepted by majorities in both the republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

Anthony Gormley's massive metal Angel of the North is erected near Gateshead in northern England

Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark

The Real IRA kills 26 people and injures about 200 with a bomb planted in Omagh, in northern Ireland

SPD leader Gerhard Schröder replaces Helmut Kohl as German chancellor, in a coalition with the Green party

Civil war begins in Kosovo with a guerrilla campaign by Albanians in the Kosovo Liberation Army

Augusto Pinochet, visiting Britain from Chile for medical treatment, is arrested on an extradition request from a Spanish judge

The European Court of Human Rights replaces a preceding part-time court in Strasbourg

Brutal reprisals by Serb troops against Albanians in Kosovo include systematic ethnic cleansing

A fire in the Mont Blanc road tunnel kills 39 people and closes the tunnel for three years

Libya hands over, for trial in the Hague, two men suspected of causing the Lockerbie disaster of 1988

NATO peacekeepers enter Kosovo after Milosevic agrees to withdraw Serb troops

A translation by Irish author Seamus Heaney brings many new readers to the Old English poem Beowulf

The Russian army returns to Chechnya after Islamic militants commit acts of terrorism

The UN sends in KFOR (Kosovo Force) to supervise post-war recovery in Kosovo

Boris Yeltsin announces his completely unexpected resignation on New Year's Eve and effectively hands power to Vladimir Putin as acting president

Chromosome 22 becomes the first human genome to be fully sequenced, at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England

The new Northern Ireland Assembly is suspended because of IRA failure to decommission arms