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Kano, Nigeria. The radical Islamic sect Boko Haram continues to perpetrate massacres across the country. On January 21, a single attack killed at least 250 people.

Giglio Island. The Costa Concordia cruise ship sank after hitting a rock and ran aground near the shore. Of the four thousand passengers, 17 died, and 15 were missing.

Global Financial Crisis. Standard & Poor’s cuts the ratings of several countries, including Italy and France, which loses its AAA rating.

Iraq. The last American soldiers and equipment are leaving the country. Only 157 soldiers remain for the embassy in Baghdad. The war lasted nine years, sparking a civil war that killed 100,000 Iraqis. Of the 1.5 million Americans who passed through Iraqi territory, 4,487 were

Naples. Michele Zagaria, the fugitive boss of the Casalesi clan, wanted for 16 years, is captured in Casapesenna, near Caserta. He was hiding in a bunker under 5 meters of reinforced concrete. The raid began around 3:00 a.m., and once the fugitive’s presence was confirmed

Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA launches the Curiosity probe aboard its Atlas V rocket toward Mars.

Southern Somalia: Ethiopian and Kenyan troops, in close coordination, invade Somalia to fight the Shabab, or Islamic extremists linked to Al Qaeda. The UN-backed operation also includes support from the so-called Sufis (Ahlu-Sunnah wal-Jamah), Ugandans, Burundians, but also French, American Predator aircraft, and possibly Italian

Southern Libya. Saif al-Islam, Muammar Gaddafi’s second son, is captured by Libyan border forces. He was attempting to cross the border.

Rome: President Napolitano entrusts Mario Monti with the government mandate.

Rome: Silvio Berlusconi resigns after the vote on the Stability Law. This brings to a close a period that at times spans two decades. Napolitano’s role was crucial, having appointed Mario Monti a senator for life two days earlier, thus making him a candidate for

Rome: final act of the Berlusconi government: the Stability Law is voted on for exceptional measures to balance the budget, as requested by the European Central Bank and loudly requested by French Prime Minister Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel.

At the Hannover Messe, Industry 4.0, the Fourth Industrial Revolution based on the Internet of Things and Big Data, was mentioned for the first time. The German government will soon launch a program based on this vision, and the U.S. government will follow suit soon

Pakistan: Libyan Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, deputy to the new al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, was reportedly killed in a US drone attack on a vehicle carrying four people in the Norwak area of Mir Ali district. Al-Rahman was 35-40 years old and had a $1 million

Afghanistan, Wardak region west of Kabul. The Taliban shot down an American Chinook helicopter carrying 38 soldiers, including 24 Navy Seals. There were no survivors. The helicopter was returning from a mission in which eight Taliban fighters were killed.

Global Financial Crisis. United States debt is downgraded from AAA to AA+ by one of the major rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s. This is the first time in US history. The decision follows weeks of discussions in Washington between Democrats and Republicans to raise the

Syria. In the days immediately preceding and immediately following Ramadan, the Sunni city of Hama was attacked by tanks. The victims numbered hundreds. Twenty-nine years earlier, the father of the previous president (Hafez al-Assad, an ethnic Alawite Shiite) had ordered a similar massacre, also in

Norway. Under the government headquarters in Oslo and at a summer retreat for young Labour Party members on the island of Utøya, a far-right terrorist causes a massacre: 76 dead (8 in Oslo, 68 on Utøya) and dozens injured. Police arrest 32-year-old Anders Behrig Breivik.

The War on Terror launched by the United States after September 11, 2001, caused 225,000 deaths, 365,000 injuries, and a cost of $4.4 trillion between 2001 and 2011. The spending figure includes the costs of counterterrorism on US soil and reimbursements and social services for

Space Shuttle Mission STS134 returns from the ISS. This is the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Libya: Italian, Canadian, Spanish, Norwegian, and Danish aircraft join the no-fly zone operation.

3:30 PM: At the end of the EU-US-Arab League summit, a military intervention in Libya is decided to enforce the no-fly zone and protect the civilian population. French President Nicolas Sarkozy announces the move at 3:30 PM, adding that French planes are already over Benghazi.

At 11:00 am, the systematic violation of the ceasefire by government militias is confirmed, as they attempt to enter western Benghazi with tanks and retake Misrata.

Libya: The UN approves Resolution 1973 for the use of force to protect civilians in Libya. Soon after, Gaddafi announces a ceasefire.

Fukushima, Japan: Reactor 3 also exploded, devastating the containment structure, again due to accumulated hydrogen. The core casing held firm. Reactor 3 is the only one that uses plutonium in its fuel mix.

Fukushima, Japan: Reactor 1 explodes, caused by hydrogen buildup. The outer concrete casing is torn open. The steel casing protecting the core holds firm. Radioactivity near the plant peaks at 1,204 microsieverts per hour, about double the limit set by Japanese law.

Fukushima, Japan: The six reactors automatically shut down at the onset of the 9.0 Richter earthquake. However, they were seriously damaged by the subsequent tsunami, which compromised the automatic cooling system.

An Italian team led by Marco Peresani of the University of Ferrara published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, providing evidence of Neanderthal hunting of various bird species, as well as the use, processing, and modification of bird bones for

Libya: Gaddafi’s militias, superior in equipment, firepower, and training, are driving rebels to flight in several cities. The Arab League supports a no-fly zone over Libya.

Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist working for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, discovers potentially tiny fossil life forms on several rare meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. Some of the fossils uncovered resemble bacteria known on Earth as Velox Titanospirillum. Others, however, are completely unknown, potentially alien.

Space Shuttle Discovery completed its final mission, STS133 (the 39th), to the International Space Station (ISS), delivering the Permanent Multipurpose Module, Express Logistics Carrier 4, and the Italian Leonardo module. This was followed by a mission of Endeavour (the 25th), one of Atlantis (the 33rd),

Libya: The crackdown by military forces and militias loyal to the Gaddafi regime results in thousands of deaths from sniper fire and even airstrikes. The eastern part of the country (Misrata, Benghazi, Tobruk) falls into rebel hands from the very first days.

Bahrain: The popular uprising of the Shiite majority against the Sunni prince is initially repressed with force (10 deaths) but then the military leaves the Pearl Roundabout in Manama to the demonstrators.

Libya: Unprecedented street protests, especially in Benghazi, demand democratic reforms from Gaddafi, who has been in power for 42 years. The repression, carried out by militiamen hired by the regime, leaves more than 180 dead in two days. When snipers open fire on the crowd

Iran. Day of Rage. Thousands of supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi take to the streets of Tehran to protest against Ahmadinejad and celebrate the Arab Spring.

Iran. The British Embassy is attacked and ransacked by protesters who burn its archives.

Egyptian President Mubarak resigns, yielding to pressure from popular protests, handing over power to the army. This is almost a first for the Islamic Middle East (the previous cases being Ataturk’s Turkey and, indeed, Tunisia, which sparked the Egyptian uprising).

Evvia, a Greek restaurant in Palo Alto, California. Dinner hosted by Apple’s Steve Jobs, with guests including President Barack Obama, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Yahoo’s Carol Bartz, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Cisco’s John Chambers, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Genentech’s Art Levinson, and Netflix’s Reed Hastings.

Yemen: Popular protests call for the overthrow of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year government.

The American probe Stardust-NEST (New Exploration of Tempel 1, an extension of the Stardust mission), after a flyby of asteroid 5535 Annefrank and collecting cometary samples from the still-unsatisfied comet Wild 2, is diverted to reach comet Tempel 1, which was struck by a heavy

NASA’s Kepler satellite has identified the Kepler 11 planetary system with six planets orbiting a yellow dwarf, some of which are comparable in size to Earth. The Kepler satellite continues to perform its job admirably, discovering new exoplanets every week, bringing the total count to

A suicide bomber from the Caucasus region of Russia blew himself up in the arrivals area of Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport, killing 35 and wounding 168.

The consultation launched by FIAT CEO Marchionne for the new Mirafiori contract in Turin ended with a 54% “yes” vote. The agreement reduces the number of breaks, increases salaries by approximately €3,600 per year, provides for monitoring absenteeism, waives the first day of sick leave

Professor Sergio Focardi and engineer Andrea Rossi demonstrate an energy production process in a laboratory on Via dell’Elettricista in Bologna that could be cold fusion between nickel and hydrogen atoms. The energy produced is 15 times greater than the input. The process is unclear, but

There have been 110 attacks carried out by UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) drones in the seven tribal regions of Waziristan, in West Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan. In 2009, there were 52. These are generally MQ-1 Predator or MQ-9 Reaper drones armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and

The US Senate ratifies the START treaty, which limits the United States and Russia to a maximum of 1,550 nuclear warheads and 700 launchers each.

Swedish scientist Paabo publishes in Nature the discovery of a now extinct human genus, which he calls Denisovan, also crossbred with Homo sapiens: the inhabitants of New Guinea have up to 6% of the genes of Denisovan Homo (which flourished mainly in Siberia, but whose

NASA-funded research at MonLake demonstrates the ability of life to thrive even in abundant arsenic, which, in the bacterium GFAJ-1, incredibly replaces phosphorus as the basic building block of life. Arsenic was previously considered a poison to life because, with properties very similar to phosphorus,

Egypt. The ScanPyramid project, which involves the use of muon detectors to map the interior of the solid part of the Egyptian pyramids, is being launched (almost literally). The idea originated half a century earlier, with American physicist Luis Alvarez, a former member of the

The WikiLeaks organization publishes millions of confidential, and sometimes compromising, emails and documents from the American administration and other nations.

Washington, D.C. – Italian Federico Faggin, along with Americans Marcian E. Hoff Jr. and Stanley Mazor, received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation directly from the hands of US President Barack Obama for the invention of the microprocessor. Federico Faggin moved from Italy to

NASA’s Direct Launcher launch system, derived from the STS (Space Transportation System, aka Space Shuttle), is approved by President Obama and becomes law.

Pakistan, border region with Afghanistan. A drone strike kills Sheikh Fateh Al Misri, an Al Qaeda operative believed to have orchestrated several attacks in Pakistan that left hundreds dead. The drone strike strategy has seen an increase in operations in September.

The merger between Continental and United Airlines is approved. The new airline, renamed United, will be the world’s largest, serving 370 destinations in 59 countries, with revenues of $29 billion, a fleet of approximately 700 aircraft, and 87,000 employees.

The merger between Continental and United Airlines is approved. The new airline, renamed United, will be the world’s largest, serving 370 destinations in 59 countries, with revenues of $29 billion, a fleet of approximately 700 aircraft, and 87,000 employees.

Worldwide, disaster deaths are 72,000 per year (a 10-year average). In the 1930s, they were 971,000 per year.

Iraq. Twenty attacks targeting Iraqi forces are unleashed in 13 cities, resulting in 48 deaths. Al Qaeda claims responsibility.

Somalia. Al-Qaeda-linked militias attack the government-controlled area in Mogadishu, killing four members of parliament and 33 others.

A shaft collapses in the San José mine, 800 kilometers from Santiago, Chile. Officials are still missing from the whereabouts of 33 miners. Contact is later established, and construction of a tunnel to reach them begins. Only in mid-October will they all be freed, in

Cambodia. Duch, a Khmer Rouge leader who led the S-21 camp where 14,000 prisoners died, was found guilty of crimes against humanity, murder, and torture and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Vienna. Ten Russian spies captured in the United States are exchanged for four double agents captured in Russia. This is the largest spy swap between the United States and Russia since the end of the Cold War. One of the four is Sergei Skripal, whose

Tokyo, newly elected center-left Prime Minister Hatoyama (Democratic Party) tearfully resigns. He leaves office following controversy over the continued existence of the U.S. military base in Okinawa. He is the fourth prime minister to resign in less than four years. He is replaced by former

German President Horst Köhler resigns after a gaffe regarding the mission in Afghanistan: he was criticized by political parties for saying that the choice was motivated by economic reasons.

Several Israeli army helicopters attempt to seize control of a fleet of peace activist ships attempting to break the blockade of Gaza and deliver food and medical supplies. The operation, carried out in international waters, goes smoothly on all vessels except the Turkish one, where

Mustafa Abu Al Yazid, the operational and financial leader of what remains of the old Al Qaeda, is killed in a CIA drone strike in the Pakistani tribal area. The jihadist movement itself announces his disappearance.

The USAF launches a small, 9-meter-long, fully automatic, unmanned shuttle vehicle aboard an Atlas V rocket. It is a next-generation spy shuttle (code X-37B/OTV-1), far more advanced than NASA’s shuttle. Its fifth flight will remain in orbit for 780 consecutive days. Several units will be

A British Petroleum (BPE) oil platform (now called Beyond Petroleum) catches fire and then sinks in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil that will continue to leak from the field for weeks will cause a massive environmental disaster. Incredibly, scientific analyses conducted six months later

Akatsuki, Japan’s mission to Venus. It was accompanied by Ikaros, the first solar sail, still in solar orbit today, and Shin’en, an interplanetary probe that lost contact shortly after separating from the mother probe. Akatsuki, at the crucial moment of entering Venusian orbit, went into

team of experts led by Danish scientists Eske Willerslev and Morten Rasmussen is analyzing the ancient remains of an ancestor of ours who lived 4,000 years ago on the west coast of Greenland, on the island of Qeqertasussuk. The remains were found in 1986, along

Airline accident death rate: 0 – 0.2 per million passengers per year, since 2010 (0.00002%/year). It was 6 in 1972 (0.0006%/year).

The percentage of GDP spent on social welfare is still growing steadily. It is around 30% for countries like France and Italy, and around 20% for Australia, Canada, the USA, and the UK. In the 1970s, the figures were roughly halved for each country. At

The global homicide rate is 6 per 100,000 people per year (0.006%/year), and continues to decline. In the United States, it is 5 per 100,000 people per year (0.005%/year), and in England, it is 1 per 100,000 people per year (0.001%/year).

The iPad is introduced by Steve Jobs at an Apple conference at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco. It will be available for sale in April 2010. It will sell one million units within a month.

Andre Geim wins the Nobel Prize for the discovery of graphene, a two-dimensional version of graphite with exceptional properties in terms of Young’s Modulus, thermal and electrical conductivity, transparency, etc.

Siberia, in the Denisova Cave, in the Altai Mountains, in Russia, but almost on the border with Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia, excavations in successive waves bring to light the bones of a finger of a new Homo species: Homo Denisova.

The results of the Neanderthal genome are published and compared with the DNA of Homo sapiens. It turns out that 1% to 4% of the DNA of current populations in Europe and the Middle East, and consequently the Americas and Australia, derives from Neanderthals. However,

Ali “Chemical Ali,” Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of Saddam Hussein’s closest aides, has been sentenced to death for the Halabija massacre. Five thousand Kurds lost their lives in a matter of minutes, suffocated by a deadly cocktail of tabun, sarin, and VX. The attack on

A 7.0 earthquake on the Richter scale struck near Port-au-Prince in Haiti, leaving over 200,000 victims and over 300,000 homeless. Within hours of the tragedy, an international outcry, coordinated by the U.S. military, began.

December 2009 marked the first month since the start of the Iraq war in 2003 that no American soldiers were killed in combat. Since July, the number of combat casualties had never exceeded five per month.

Several CIA agents are killed in a Taliban suicide attack on a base in Khost, Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan.

H1N1 swine flu outbreak