Stores open in the US state of Colorado freely selling 'recreational' cannabis, under a new state law

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 en route to Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board, loses contact with the ground for unknown reasons but flies on for five hours and vanishes, causing a massive international search.

Russia formally annexes Crimea after President Vladimir Putin signs a bill finalizing the process.

Supporters of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and law enforcement confront each-other following a 21-year legal dispute in which the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) obtained court orders directing Bundy to pay over $1 million in withheld grazing fees for Bundy's use of federally owned land.

In the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping: more than 250 girls and women are abducted by Boko Haram to be held hostage.

Less than two weeks after the abduction of the Nigerian schoolgirls Boko Haram militants make a night raid on the towns of Gamboru and Ngala, killing about 300 people

Lethal attacks attributed to Boko Haram take place in a marketplace and bus station in Jos, Nigeria

A Sunni militant group emerges calling itself the Islamic State, now widely known as ISIS.

In the Camp Speicher massacre Isis kills 1,566 Shia Iraqi Air Force cadets. It is the second deadliest terrorist attack in history.

2,100 Palestinians and 71 Israelis are killed in seven weeks of fighting

The Sinjar massacre is the beginning of ISIS attacks resulting in the massacre of over 4,000 Yazidis in Iraq's Sinjar District.

The shooting of Michael Brown, an African American, by a police officer occurs in Ferguson, Missouri triggering riots.

The uncrewed Rosetta spacecraft's Philae probe successfully lands on Comet 67P, the first time in history that a spacecraft has landed on such an object.

Peshawar school massacre: The Pakistani Taliban carry out a mass shooting, killing at least 145 people, mostly schoolchildren.