2015 in History

Events 1 - 100 of 364

• Jan 1 Lithuania adopts the euro as its currency, replacing the litas and becoming the 19th member of the Eurozone
• Jan 1 Eurasian Economic Union comes into effect, creating a political and economic union between Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

• Jan 3 18 people are killed after the Norwegian cargo ship MS Bulk Jupiter sinks off the coast of Vietnam
• Jan 3 Over 2,000 people are killed in north-east Nigeria after Boko Haram militants raze the town of Baga

• Jan 7 A car bomb explodes in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, killing 38 people and injuring more than 63
• Jan 10 57 people are killed after an oil tanker collided with a passenger coach outside of Karachi, Pakistan
• Jan 10 72 people are killed & 169 hospitalized after a mass poisoning of beer with crocodile bile at a funeral in Mozambique
• Jan 11 Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović is elected as the first female President of Croatia
• Jan 14 63 people are killed and 70,000 are left homeless after floods devastate Mozambique and Malawi
• Jan 21 Italian fashion label Gucci names Alessandro Michele as its new creative director

• Jan 26 Libby Lane is ordained as the first female bishop of the Church of England
• Jan 29 Malaysia officially declares the disappearance of missing flight MH370 an accident

• Jan 31 Sergio Mattarella is elected President of Italy
• Jan 31 Australia defeats South Korea in football to win the 2015 AFC Asian Cup
• Jan 31 Pr-Football Hall of Fame inductees: Junior Seau, Jerome Bettis, Charles Haley, Will Shields, Tim Brown, and Mick Tingelhoff
• Jan 31 Sergio Matarella is elected President of Italy
• Feb 5 65th Berlin International Film Festival: "Taxi" wins the Golden Bear
• Feb 8 Ivory Coast wins the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations football championship
• Feb 11 Francesco Schettino, Captain of the Costa Concordia that ran aground 2012, is convicted of manslaughter in Grosseto and sentenced to 16 years in jail

• Feb 27 Russian politician Boris Nemtsov is assassinated in Moscow

• Mar 5 -8th Islamic State militants ransack and destroy ancient cities of Nimrud, Hatra and Dur-Sharrukin in Iraq
• Mar 6 US State Department charges 2 Vietnamese and a Canadian citizen with cyberfraud, for stealing 1 billion email addresses for spam
• Mar 6 NASA's Dawn space probe enters orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres
• Mar 7 54 people are killed & 143 are wounded by 5 Boko Haram suicide bombings in Maiduguri city, Nigeria

• Mar 13 Cyclone Pam causes widespread damage in Vanuatu and the South Pacific, including 15-16 deaths.

• Mar 24 Germanwings flight on route between Barcelona and Düsseldorf crashes in the French Alps killing all 150 on board
• Mar 24 The Opportunity rover becomes the first to complete a Martian marathon
• Mar 26 Richard III of England (1452-1485) is reburied at Leicester Cathedral in England, after being discovered under a carpark in Leicester in 2012
• Mar 27 Russia's Soyuz TMA-16M launches to deliver three crew members to the international space station to research the long-term effects of micro gravity
• Mar 29 Nigerian General Election - voting is extended to a 2nd day. death toll from Boko Haram attacks at 43
• Apr 1 56 people are killed after the Russian trawler Dalniy Vostok sinks off the coast of the Kamchatka Penninsula
• Apr 2 140 people are killed after gunmen attack Garissa University College, Kenya
• Apr 5 Rolling Stone Magazine retracts its "Rape on Campus" story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia after being discredited
• Apr 11 Barack Obama and Raúl Castro meet in Panama, the 1st meeting of US and Cuban heads of state since the Cuban Revolution

• Apr 13 Migrant ship carrying around 550 sinks off the Libyan coast, about 400 drown
• Apr 14 Archeologists announce they have found at Lomekwi in Kenya 3.3 million-year old stone tools, the oldest ever discovered and which pre-date the earliest humans

• Apr 19 Boat carrying approx. 850 migrants is shipwrecked in the Mediterranean between Italian and Libya, with only 27 migrants rescued.
• Apr 20 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Anthony Doerr's for his novel "All the Light We Cannot See" and to Elizabeth Kolbert for "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History"

• Apr 24 Armenia commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire
• Apr 25 100 year anniversary of the Gallipoli Peninsula landings in Turkey by ANZAC forces during WWI


• Apr 25 7.8-magnitude earthquake near Kathmandu in Nepal, killing 8000, leaving over 100,000 homeless, destroying many historic sites
• Apr 26 Nursultan Nazarbayev is re-elected President of Kazakhstan with 97.7% of the vote
• Apr 26 FC Bayern Munich wins the 2014–15 Bundesliga for a 25th time
• Apr 29 Indonesia executes 8 prisoners, including 7 foreigners, for drug offences at Besi Prison on the island of Nusakambangan
• Apr 29 German Measles is declared eradicated from North and South America - 1st world region to do so

• Apr 30 MESSENGER spacecraft is intentionally deorbited and destroyed
• May 1 Expo 2015 opens in Milan (thru till 31st October)
• May 2 Celtic wins the 2014–15 Scottish Premiership
• May 5 Scientists announce the discovery of the oldest & most distant galaxy known to man, EGS-zs8-1
• May 5 Archaeornithura meemannae, the oldest known prehistoric bird, is discovered
• May 5 "Traveller" debut album by Chris Stapleton is released (Grammy Award Best Country Album 2016, Billboard Album of the Year 2016)

• May 9 A gun fight erupts in Macedonian town of Kumanovo between police and Albanian separatists adding to the government crisis

• May 17 A mudslide hits the alpine town of Salgar in Western Colombia killing over 50 people
• May 17 Gun fight between rival biker gangs and police in Waco, Texas leaves 9 dead and 18 injured. 170 later arrested for organised crime.
• May 17 Canada defeats Russia to win gold at the 2015 IIHF World Championship
• May 17 Melbourne Victory FC defeats Sydney FC to win the Australian A-League

• May 19 UK inflation is recorded as a negative for the first time since 1960
• May 20 Journal Nature publishes findings of the oldest human-made tools from Kenya’s Turkana basin - 3.3 million years, 1st found to pre-date the Homo genus
• May 20 5 major world banks (JPMorgan, Barclays, Citigroup, RBS and UBS) fined US$5.7bn for manipulating currency markets - some of the largest ever fines
• May 22 Ireland becomes 1st country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote
• May 29 Heat wave in India centered in Telengana and Andhra Pradesh states is reported to have killed 1800 people in a week

• May 29 Sepp Blatter is elected to a fifth term as president of FIFA
• May 30 Namibia defeat Mozambique 2-0 to win the 2015 COSAFA Cup
• May 30 FC Barcelona defeat Athletic Bilbao 3-1 in the 2014–15 Copa del Rey final
• Jun 1 Cruise ship carrying 458 people capsizes on Yangtze River, less than 50 survive
• Jun 2 US Congress passes new legislation to reform National Security Agency procedures, restricting gathering of phone records
• Jun 2 FIFA President Sepp Blatter announces his resignation, 5 days after his re-election, amid FIFA's involvement in a bribery scandal
• Jun 2 100 volunters in Bhutan set a world record for tree planting - 49,672 in 1 hour
• Jun 3 200 people are killed by an explosion at a gasoline station in Accra, Ghana
• Jun 3 Dr. Jesse Selber performs the world's first partial-skull and scalp transplant at Houston Methodist Hospital
• Jun 5 6.0 magnitude earthquake (strongest to affect Malaysia since 1978) strikes Ranau, Sabah, Malaysia, killing 18 people on Mount Kinabalu
• Jun 6 Convicted killers Richard Matt and David Sweat break out of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York
• Jun 6 236th Epsom Derby: Golden Horn ridden by Frankie Dettori wins
• Jun 7 69th Tony Awards: "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" and "Fun Home" win 5 awards
• Jun 7 -8 41st G7 summit held in Schloss Elmau, Bavaria
• Jun 12 Zimbabwe discards its own currency, offering an exchange of $1 for 35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars
• Jun 12 Al-Qaeda's 2nd-in-command Nasser al-Wuhayshi (Osama Bin Laden's former private secretary) is killed in a US air strike in Yemen
• Jun 13 Floods in Tbilisi, Georgia, kill 12 people and free animals from the city's zoo including bears and hippos to roam the city
• Jun 13 Philae, 1st spacecraft to land on a comet in European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission re-awakes after 7 months

• Jun 15 Remains of a 2,000 year old women dubbed "the sleeping beauty" are announced discovered in Northern Ethiopia from ancient kingdom of Aksum
• Jun 15 800 year anniversary of "the birthplace of modern democracy", the signing of the Magna Carta by King John at Runymede, England

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• May 2 Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, daughter of Prince William, born in London
• Jun 15 Prince Nicolas of Sweden, Duke of Ångermanland, born in Danderyd

• Oct 14 Ricki Lake and Christian Evans divorce after 3 years of marriage

Deaths 1 - 100 of 147

• Jan 1 Mario Cuomo, American Democratic Party politician and the 52nd Governor of New York (1983-95), dies of a heart condition at 82
• Jan 1 Boris Morukov, Russian cosmonaut, dies at 64
• Jan 1 Ninón Sevilla, Cuban-Mexican actress (Aventurera, Víctimas del Pecado), dies at 85
• Jan 1 Omar Karami, Lebanese Prime Minister (1992-94, 2004-05), dies at 80

• Jan 7 Jean Cabut [Cabu], French caricaturist (Charlie Hebdo), killed in terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo's office in Paris at 76
• Jan 10 Robert Stone, American novelist (Dog Soldiers, WUSA), dies from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at 77
• Jan 12 John Bayley, English academic and writer (Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch), dies at 89
• Jan 13 Ronnie Ronalde [Ronald Charles Waldron], British entertainer and world famous whistler, dies at 91
• Jan 21 Martin Honeysett, British cartoonist (Punch, Private Eye), dies at 71
• Jan 21 Leon Brittan, [Baron Brittan of Spennithorne] British politician, Home Secretary and member of the European Commission, dies at 75
• Jan 23 King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (2005-2015), dies at 90
• Jan 26 Tom Uren, Australian politician, Australian heritage and conservation campaigner, dies at 93
• Jan 27 Charles Hard Townes, American Physicist and inventor (Nobel Prize 1964 for mazer-lazer principle), dies at 99
• Jan 27 Harriet Elizabeth Byrd, American politician, Member of the Wyoming House of Representatives (1998-88), dies at 88
• Jan 29 Colleen McCullough, New Zealand-born Australian author (The Thorn Birds), dies at 77

• Jan 31 Richard von Weizsacker, German politician and 1st president of reunited Germany (1990-94), dies at 94
• Feb 1 Beryl Platt [Baroness Platt of Writtle], British Engineer, politician and CEO, dies at 91
• Feb 1 Monty Oum, American Animator (RWBY), dies of an allergic reaction at 33
• Feb 3 Sir Martin Gilbert, British historian (Winston Churchill biography), dies at 78
• Feb 6 André Brink, South African writer (Kennis van die aand - 1st Afrikaans book banned), dies at 79
• Feb 7 Robert Gavron, Baron Gavron, English publisher/multi-millionaire, dies of a heart attack at 84
• Feb 12 David Carr, American journalist (New York Times), dies of cancer at 58
• Feb 14 Louis Jourdan [Robert Gendre], French actor (The Paradine Case, Count Dracula, Gigi, Octopussy), dies at 93
• Feb 14 Philip Levine, American poet (1995 Pulitzer prize), dies at 87
• Feb 14 Michele Ferrero, Italian entrepreneur (Ferrero SpA) created Nutella, dies at 89
• Feb 26 Avijit Roy, Bangladeshi American activist and blogger, killed by assailants in Dhaka, Bangladesh
• Feb 27 Malcolm Boyd, American Episcopal Priest, author and civil rights activist, dies at 91
• Feb 27 Boris Nemtsov, Russian politician, dies at 55, shot four times in Moscow
• Feb 28 Yaşar Kemal, Turkish writer (Memed, My Hawk), dies at 91
• Mar 2 Mal Peet, British children's author, dies at 67
• Mar 9 James Molyneaux [Baron Molyneaux of Killead], MP (Ulster unionist), dies at 94

• Mar 14 Valentin Rasputin, Russian writer (To Live and Remember), dies at 77
• Mar 15 Robert Clatworthy, English sculptor, dies at 87

• Mar 20 Robert Kastenmeier, American politician (Rep-D-WI, 1959-91), dies at 91

• Mar 26 Tomas Tranströmer, Swedish poet (Nobel Prize for Literature - 2011), dies at 83
• Apr 1 John Paul Hammerschmidt, American politician (Rep-R-AR, 1967-93 ), dies at 92
• Apr 3 Sarah Brady, American gun-control activist, dies at 73
• Apr 4 John Read, British businessman, CEO (TSB Group), dies at 97
• Apr 12 Sheila Kitzinger, British author, anthropologist & child birth educator, dies at 86
• Apr 13 Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist and writer, dies at 74

• Apr 18 Joseph Lechleider, American electrical engineer (invented DSL/high speed internet technology), dies at 82
• Apr 19 Roy Mason [Baron Mason of Barnsley], British defense secretary and Labour MP, dies at 91
• Apr 20 Sir Raymond Carr, English historian and warden (St Antony's College Oxford), dies at 96
• Apr 29 Jean Nidetch, American businesswoman and founder of Weight Watchers, dies at 91
• Apr 29 Brian Sedgemore, British MP (Labour Party 1974-79 and 1983-2005), dies at 78
• May 1 Dan Farley, American racing journalist (President National Turf Writer's Association), dies at 72
• May 2 Ruth Rendell, English thriller writer (Inspector Wexford novels), dies at 85
• May 6 Jim [James] Wright, American politician (D-Texas) (Speaker of the House 1987-1989), dies at 92
• May 7 Sir Samuel "Sam" Edwards, Welsh physicist (condensed matter physics), dies at 87
• May 9 Kenan Evren, Turkish soldier and politician, (President of Turkey 1980-1989 by military coup), dies at 97
• May 24 Tanith Lee, British Science-fiction author (The Flat-Earth Cycle), dies of cancer at 67
• May 30 Joseph [Beau] Biden III, American politician and son of Vice President Joe Biden, dies of cancer at 47
• Jun 1 Charles Kennedy, British politician (Liberal Democrat leader 1999-2006), dies at 55
• Jun 2 Irwin Rose, American biologist (Nobel Prize Chemistry 2004), dies at 88
• Jun 4 Hermann Zapf, German typeface designer (Palatino and Optima), dies at 96
• Jun 5 Tariq Aziz, Iraqi politician and close adviser to Saddam Hussein, dies at 79
• Jun 6 Ludvik Vaculik, Czech writer (Two Thousand Words), dies at 88
• Jun 6 Vincent Bugliosi, American attorney and author (Helter-Skelter), dies at 80
• Jun 7 Michael Oliver, British cardiologist (linked cholesterol with coronary artery disease), dies at 89
• Jun 8 Marie-Louise Grog-Carven, French fashion designer (Ma Griffe perfume), dies at 105
• Jun 15 Kirk Kerkorian, American CEO and "father of the mega-resort" (MGM, UA), dies at 98
• Jun 16 Charles Correa, Indian architect (McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT), dies at 84
• Jun 17 Suleyman Demirel, Turkish leader, President (1993-2000) and Prime Minister, dies at 90
• Jun 18 Ralph J Roberts, American businessman and founder of Comcast, dies of natural causes at 95
• Jun 20 Nazar Singh, British great-grandfather, believed to be Europe's oldest man, dies at 111
• Jun 21 Veijo Meri, Finnish writer, dies at 86
• Jun 22 Gabriele Wohmann, German writer, dies at 83
• Jun 24 Mario Biaggi, American politician (Rep-D&R-NY, 1969-88), dies at 97
• Jun 26 Ash Brownridge, American conservationist (National Wildlife Federation) creator of Ranger Rick, dies at 98
• Jun 29 Glenn Ford, American freed death row inmate (wrongly spent 30 years in prison), dies at 65
• Jul 1 Sir Nicholas Winton, English Humanitarian ('British Schindler' - saved 600 children from Nazis), dies at 106
• Jul 1 Lawrence Herkimer, American "Grandfather of Cheerleading" (founded National Cheerleading Association, patented the pom-pom), dies at 89
• Jul 3 Boyd K. Packer, LDS church apostle, dies at 90
• Jul 5 Yoichiro Nambu, Japanese-born American Physicist (Nobel Prize 2008), dies at 94
• Jul 8 James Tate, American poet (Pulitzer Prize 1992), dies at 71
• Jul 11 Satoru Iwata, Japanese CEO of Nintendo (Nintendo DS and Wii), dies of cancer at 55
• Jul 11 Claudia Alexander, Canadian-born American NASA Scientist (led Galileo mission to Jupiter), dies of cancer at 56
• Jul 15 Wan Li, Chinese reform politician, dies at 98
• Jul 17 Rev Owen Chadwick, English historian, priest and university chancellor, dies at 99 (d. 2015)
• Jul 20 Elio Fiorucci, Italian fashion designer, dies at 80
• Jul 21 E. L. Doctorow, American author (Ragtime, Billy Bathgate), dies at 84
• Jul 26 Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, dies in a coma at 22
• Jul 27 A. P. J. [Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen] Abdul Kalam, Indian scientist and politician, 11th President of India (2002-07), dies at 83
• Jul 28 James Jude, American thoracic surgeon (developed CPR), dies at 87
• Aug 2 Forrest Bird, American aviator and inventor (1st respirators and ventilators), dies at 94
• Aug 3 Les Munro, New Zealand WWII pilot (Dambusters), dies at 96
• Aug 3 Robert Conquest, English historian and poet (The Great Terror), dies at 98
• Aug 7 Frances Oldham Kelsey, Canadian-American FDA Director (stopped thalidomide use in the US), dies at 101
• Aug 9 David Nobbs, English comedic writer (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin), dies at 80
• Aug 15 Julian Bond, American civil rights leader and politician (D-Ga), dies at 75
• Aug 16 Jacob Bekenstein, American-Israeli theoretical physicist (Bekenstein-Hawking radiation), dies of a heart attack at 68
• Aug 18 Louis Stokes, American politician (Rep-D-OH, 1969-99 ), dies at 90

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