Important Historical Events of the year 2015, Year 2015 in History
List of 2015 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 2015
What happened in the year 2015?
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 1, 2015 | The Eurasian Economic Union comes into effect, creating a political and economic union between Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. |
| January 3, 2015 | Boko Haram militants destroy the entire town of Baga in north-east Nigeria, starting the Baga massacre and killing as many as 2,000 people. |
| January 7, 2015 | Two gunmen commit mass murder at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, shooting twelve people execution style, and wounding eleven others. |
| January 7, 2015 | A car bomb explodes outside a police college in the Yemeni capital Sana'a with at least 38 people reported dead and more than 63 injured. |
| January 9, 2015 | The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier are both killed after a hostage situation; a second hostage situation, related to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurs at a Jewish market in Vincennes. |
| January 9, 2015 | A mass poisoning at a funeral in Mozambique involving beer that was contaminated with Burkholderia gladioli leaves 75 dead and over 230 people ill. |
| January 10, 2015 | A traffic accident between an oil tanker truck and passenger coach en route to Shikarpur from Karachi on the Pakistan National Highway Link Road near Gulshan-e-Hadeed, Karachi, killing at least 62 people. |
| January 12, 2015 | Government raids kill 143 Boko Haram fighters in Kolofata, Cameroon. |
| January 15, 2015 | The Swiss National Bank abandons the cap on the Swiss franc's value relative to the euro, causing turmoil in international financial markets. |
| January 25, 2015 | A clash in Mamasapano, Maguindanao in the Philippines kills 44 members of Special Action Force (SAF), at least 18 from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and five from the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters. |
| January 26, 2015 | An aircraft crashes at Los Llanos Air Base in Albacete, Spain, killing 11 people and injuring 21 others. |
| January 26, 2015 | Syrian civil war: The People's Protection Units (YPG) recaptures the city of Kobanî from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), marking a turning point in the Siege of Kobanî.[49] |
| February 4, 2015 | TransAsia Airways Flight 235, with 58 people on board, en route from the Taiwanese capital Taipei to Kinmen, crashes into the Keelung River just after takeoff, killing 43 people. |
| February 11, 2015 | A university student was murdered as she resisted an attempted rape in Turkey, sparking nationwide protests and public outcry against harassment and violence against women. |
| February 17, 2015 | Eighteen people are killed and 78 injured in a stampede at a Mardi Gras parade in Haiti. |
| February 20, 2015 | Two trains collide in the Swiss town of Rafz resulting in as many as 49 people injured and Swiss Federal Railways cancelling some services. |
| February 22, 2015 | A ferry carrying 100 passengers capsizes in the Padma River, killing 70 people. |
| February 24, 2015 | A Metrolink train derails in Oxnard, California following a collision with a truck, leaving more than 30 injured. |
| February 27, 2015 | Russian politician Boris Nemtsov is assassinated in Moscow while out walking with his girlfriend. |
| March 4, 2015 | At least 34 miners die in a suspected gas explosion at the Zasyadko coal mine in the rebel-held Donetsk region of Ukraine. |
| March 18, 2015 | The Bardo National Museum in Tunisia is attacked by gunmen. Twenty-three people, almost all tourists, are killed, and at least 50 other people are wounded. |
| March 20, 2015 | A Solar eclipse, equinox, and a supermoon all occur on the same day. |
| March 20, 2015 | Syrian civil war: The Siege of Kobanî is broken by the People's Protection Units (YPG) and Free Syrian Army (FSA), marking a turning point in the Rojava–Islamist conflict. |
| March 24, 2015 | Germanwings Flight 9525 crashes in the French Alps in an apparent pilot mass murder-suicide, killing all 150 people on board. |
| March 27, 2015 | Al-Shabab militants attack and temporarily occupy a Mogadishu hotel leaving at least 20 people dead. |
| March 29, 2015 | Air Canada Flight 624 skids off the runway at Halifax Stanfield International Airport, after arriving from Toronto shortly past midnight. All 133 passengers and five crews on board survive, with 23 treated for minor injuries. |
| April 2, 2015 | Gunmen attack Garissa University College in Kenya, killing at least 148 people and wounding 79 others. |
| April 2, 2015 | Four men steal items worth up to £200 million from an underground safe deposit facility in London's Hatton Garden area in what has been called the "largest burglary in English legal history." |
| April 20, 2015 | Ten people are killed in a bomb attack on a convoy carrying food supplies to a United Nations compound in Garowe in the Somali region of Puntland. |
| April 25, 2015 | Nearly 9,100 are killed after a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes Nepal. |
| April 26, 2015 | Nursultan Nazarbayev is re-elected President of Kazakhstan with 97.7% of the vote. |
| April 29, 2015 | A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests. |
| May 3, 2015 | Two gunmen launch an attempted attack on an anti-Islam event in Garland, Texas, which was held in response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting. |
| May 12, 2015 | A train derailment in Philadelphia kills eight people and injures more than 200. |
| May 12, 2015 | Massive Nepal earthquake kills 218 people and injures more than 3500. |
| May 18, 2015 | At least 78 people die in a landslide caused by heavy rains in the Colombian town of Salgar. |
| May 19, 2015 | The Refugio oil spill deposited 142,800 U.S. gallons (3,400 barrels) of crude oil onto an area in California considered one of the most biologically diverse coastlines of the west coast. |
| May 22, 2015 | The Republic of Ireland becomes the first nation in the world to legalize gay marriage in a public referendum. |
| May 23, 2015 | At least 46 people are killed as a result of floods caused by a tornado in Texas and Oklahoma. |
| May 29, 2015 | One World Observatory at One World Trade Center opens. |
| June 1, 2015 | A ship carrying 458 people capsizes in the Yangtze river in China's Hubei province, killing 400 people. |
| June 3, 2015 | An explosion at a gasoline station in Accra, Ghana, kills more than 200 people. |
| June 5, 2015 | An earthquake with a moment magnitude of 6.0 strikes Ranau, Sabah, Malaysia, killing 18 people, including hikers and mountain guides on Mount Kinabalu, after mass landslides that occurred during the earthquake. This is the strongest earthquake to strike Malaysia since 1975. |
| June 13, 2015 | A man opens fire at policemen outside the police headquarters in Dallas, Texas, while a bag containing a pipe bomb is also found. He was later shot dead by police. |
| June 16, 2015 | American businessman Donald Trump announces his campaign to run for President of the United States in the upcoming election. |
| June 17, 2015 | Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. |
| June 22, 2015 | The Afghan National Assembly building is attacked by gunmen after a suicide bombing. All six of the gunmen are killed and 18 people are injured. |
| June 26, 2015 | Five different terrorist attacks in France, Tunisia, Somalia, Kuwait, and Syria occurred on what was dubbed Bloody Friday by international media. Upwards of 750 people were either killed or injured in these uncoordinated attacks.[7] |
| June 26, 2015 | The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5–4, that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. |
| June 27, 2015 | Formosa Fun Coast fire: A dust fire occurs at a recreational water park in Taiwan, killing 15 people and injuring 497 others, 199 critically. |
| June 30, 2015 | A Hercules C-130 military aircraft with 113 people on board crashes in a residential area in Medan, Indonesia, resulting in at least 116 deaths. |
| July 4, 2015 | Chile claims its first title in international football by defeating Argentina in the 2015 Copa América Final. |
| July 11, 2015 | Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán escapes from the maximum security Altiplano prison in Mexico, his second escape. |
| July 14, 2015 | NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, and thus completes the initial survey of the Solar System.[39][40] |
| July 16, 2015 | Four U.S. Marines and one gunman die in a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee. |
| July 17, 2015 | At least 120 people are killed and 130 injured by a suicide bombing in Diyala Governorate, Iraq. |
| July 20, 2015 | A huge explosion in the mostly Kurdish border town of Suruç, Turkey, targeting the Socialist Youth Associations Federation, kills at least 31 people and injures over 100. |
| July 20, 2015 | The United States and Cuba resume full diplomatic relations after five decades. |
| July 23, 2015 | NASA announces discovery of Kepler-452b by Kepler. |
| July 27, 2015 | At least seven people are killed and many injured after gunmen attack an Indian police station in Punjab. |
| July 29, 2015 | The first piece of suspected debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is discovered on Réunion Island. |
| August 5, 2015 | The Environmental Protection Agency at Gold King Mine waste water spill releases three million gallons of heavy metal toxin tailings and waste water into the Animas River in Colorado. |
| August 6, 2015 | A suicide bomb attack kills at least 15 people at a mosque in the Saudi city of Abha. |
| August 8, 2015 | Eight people are killed in a shooting in Harris County, Texas. |
| August 12, 2015 | At least two massive explosions kill 173 people and injure nearly 800 more in Tianjin, China. |
| August 13, 2015 | At least 76 people are killed and 212 others are wounded in a truck bombing in Baghdad, Iraq. |
| August 14, 2015 | The US Embassy in Havana, Cuba re-opens after 54 years of being closed when Cuba–United States relations were broken off. |
| August 15, 2015 | North Korea moves its clock back half an hour to introduce Pyongyang Time, 8.mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;widt |
| August 16, 2015 | More than 96 people are killed and hundreds injured following a series of air-raids by the Syrian Arab Air Force on the rebel-held market town of Douma. |
| August 16, 2015 | Trigana Air Flight 267, an ATR 42, crashes in Oksibl, Pegunungan Bintang, killing all 54 people on board. |
| August 17, 2015 | A bomb explodes near the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, Thailand, killing at least 19 people and injuring 123 others. |
| August 26, 2015 | Two U.S. journalists are shot and killed by a disgruntled former coworker while conducting a live report in Moneta, Virginia. |
| September 9, 2015 | Elizabeth II becomes the longest reigning monarch of the United Kingdom. |
| September 11, 2015 | A crane collapses onto the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Saudi Arabia, killing 111 people and injuring 394 others. |
| September 12, 2015 | A series of explosions involving propane triggering nearby illegally stored mining detonators in the Indian town of Petlawad in the state of Madhya Pradesh kills at least 105 people with over 150 injured. |
| September 14, 2015 | The first observation of gravitational waves is made, announced by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations on 11 February 2016. |
| September 16, 2015 | A 8.3 Mw earthquake strikes the Chilean city of Illapel, killing 15 people, injuring at least 34, leaving at least six missing, and causing extensive damage. One person also dies in Argentina. |
| September 18, 2015 | Two security personnel, 17 worshippers in a mosque, and 13 militants are killed during a Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan attack on a Pakistan Air Force base on the outskirts of Peshawar. |
| September 24, 2015 | At least 1,100 people are killed and another 934 wounded after a stampede during the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. |
| October 1, 2015 | A gunman kills nine people at a community college in Oregon. |
| October 1, 2015 | Heavy rains trigger a major landslide in Guatemala, killing 280 people. |
| October 1, 2015 | The American cargo vessel SS El Faro sinks with all of its 33 crew after steaming into the eyewall of Hurricane Joaquin. |
| October 3, 2015 | Forty-two people are killed and 33 go missing in the Kunduz hospital airstrike in Afghanistan. |
| October 10, 2015 | Twin bomb blasts in the Turkish capital Ankara kill 109 and injure 500+. |
| October 14, 2015 | A suicide bomb attack in Pakistan kills at least seven people and injures 13 others. |
| October 23, 2015 | The lowest sea-level pressure in the Western Hemisphere, and the highest reliably-measured non-tornadic sustained winds, are recorded in Hurricane Patricia, which strikes Mexico hours later, killing at least 13 and causing over $280 million in damages. |
| October 24, 2015 | A driver crashes into the Oklahoma State Homecoming parade, killing four people and injuring 34. |
| October 26, 2015 | A 7.5 magnitude earthquake strikes in the Hindu Kush mountain range in South Asia, killing 399 people and leaving 2,536 people injured. |
| October 29, 2015 | China announces the end of its one-child policy after 35 years. |
| October 30, 2015 | A fire in a nightclub in the Romanian capital of Bucharest kills sixty-four people and leaves more than 147 injured. |
| October 31, 2015 | Metrojet Flight 9268 is bombed over the northern Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. |
| November 4, 2015 | A cargo plane crashes shortly after takeoff from Juba International Airport in Juba, South Sudan, killing at least 37 people.[5] |
| November 4, 2015 | A building collapses in the Pakistani city of Lahore resulting in at least 45 deaths and at least 100 injuries. |
| November 5, 2015 | An iron ore tailings dam bursts in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, flooding a valley, causing mudslides in the nearby village of Bento Rodrigues and causing at least 17 deaths and two missing. |
| November 5, 2015 | Rona Ambrose takes over after Stephen Harper as the Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. |
| November 12, 2015 | Two suicide bombers detonate explosives in Bourj el-Barajneh, Beirut, killing 43 people and injuring over 200 others. |
| November 13, 2015 | Islamic State operatives carry out a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris, including suicide bombings, mass shootings and a hostage crisis. The terrorists kill 130 people, making it the deadliest attack in France since the Second World War. |
| November 20, 2015 | Following a hostage siege, at least 19 people are killed in Bamako, Mali. |
| November 21, 2015 | The government of Belgium imposes a security lockdown on Brussels, including the closure of shops, schools, and public transportation, due to potential terrorist attacks. |
| November 22, 2015 | A landslide in Hpakant, Kachin State, northern Myanmar kills at least 116 people near a jade mine, with around 100 more missing. |
| November 23, 2015 | Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle became the first rocket to successfully fly to space and then return to Earth for a controlled, vertical landing. |
| November 24, 2015 | A Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet is shot down by the Turkish Air Force over the Syria |
| November 24, 2015 | A terrorist attack on a hotel in Al-Arish, Egypt, kills at least seven people and injures 12 others. |
| November 24, 2015 | An explosion on a bus carrying Tunisian Presidential Guard personnel in Tunisia's capital Tunis leaves at least 14 people dead. |
| November 27, 2015 | An active shooter inside a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, shoots at least four police officers. One officer later dies. Two civilians are also killed, and six injured. The shooter later surrendered. |
| December 2, 2015 | San Bernardino attack: Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik kill 14 people and wound 22 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. |
| December 4, 2015 | A firebomb is thrown into a restaurant in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, killing 17 people. |
| December 6, 2015 | Venezuelan parliamentary election: For the first time in 17 years, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela loses its majority in parliament. |
| December 7, 2015 | The JAXA probe Akatsuki successfully enters orbit around Venus five years after the first attempt. |
| December 10, 2015 | Rojava conflict: The Syrian Democratic Council is established in Dêrik, forming the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria.[12][13] |
| December 12, 2015 | The Paris Agreement relating to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is adopted.[29] |
| December 18, 2015 | Kellingley Colliery, the last deep coal mine in Great Britain, closes. |
| December 23, 2015 | A bomb explodes at Istanbul's Sabiha Gökçen Airport, killing one airport cleaner. The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks claim responsibility for the attack four days later. |
| December 26, 2015 | During the December 2015 North American storm complex, a Tornado Outbreak occurs in the DFW Metroplex, with the most notable tornadoes being an EF2, EF3, and an EF4. About a dozen people died due to various reasons, 10 of which due to the EF4, which did substantial damage to the suburb of Rowlett. |
| December 31, 2015 | A fire breaks out at the Downtown Address Hotel in Downtown Dubai, United Arab Emirates, located near the Burj Khalifa, two hours before the fireworks display is due to commence. Sixteen injuries were reported; one had a heart attack, another suffered a major injury, and fourteen others with minor injuries. |