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2008 (MMVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2008th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 8th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 9th year of the 2000s decade.

2008 was designated as:

Events

January

January 1 – Cyprus and Malta adopt the euro.^[2]^[3]
January 14 – At 19:04:39 UTC, the MESSENGER space probe is at its closest approach during its first flyby of the planet Mercury.^[4]
January 21 – Stock markets around the world plunge amid growing fears of a U.S. recession, fueled by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis.^[5]
January 24 – A peace deal is signed in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, ending the Kivu conflict.^[6]

February

February 4 – Iran opens its first space center and launches a rocket into space.^[7]
February 5 – U.S. stock market indices plunge more than 3% after a report shows signs of economic recession in the service sector. The S&P 500 fall 3.2%, The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops 370 points.^[8]
February 13 – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivers a formal apology to the Stolen Generations.^[9]
February 17 – Kosovo formally declares independence from Serbia, with a mixed response from the international community.^[10]

March

March–April – Rising food and fuel prices trigger riots and unrest in the Third World.
March 2 – Venezuela and Ecuador move troops to the Colombian border, following a Colombian raid against FARC guerrillas inside Ecuadorian territory, in which senior commander Raúl Reyes is killed.^[11]^[12]
March 9 – The first European Space Agency Automated Transfer Vehicle, a cargo spacecraft for the International Space Station, launches from Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.^[13]
March 24 – Bhutan holds its first-ever general elections following the adoption of a new Constitution which changed the country from an absolute monarchy to a multiparty democracy.^[14]
March 25 – African Union and Comoros forces invade the rebel-held island of Anjouan, returning the island to Comorian control.^[15]

April

April 22 – Surgeons at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital perform the first operations using bionic eyes, implanting them into two blind patients.

May

May 3 – Cyclone Nargis passes through Myanmar, killing over 100,000 people.^[16]
May 12 – An earthquake measuring 7.9 Moment magnitude scale strikes Sichuan, China, killing an estimated 87,000 people.^[17]
May 23
- The Union of South American Nations, an intergovernmental organization between states in South America, is founded.^[18]
- The International Court of Justice awards Middle Rocks to Malaysia and Pedra Branca to Singapore, ending a 29-year territorial dispute between the two countries.^[19]
May 25 – NASA's Phoenix spacecraft becomes the first to land on the northern polar region of Mars.^[20]
May 28 – The Legislature Parliament of Nepal votes overwhelmingly in favor of abolishing the country's 240-year-old monarchy, turning the country into a republic.^[21]
May 30 – The Convention on Cluster Munitions is adopted in Dublin.^[22]

June

June 11
- The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is launched.^[23]
- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologizes, on behalf of the Canadian government, to the country's First Nations for the Canadian Indian residential school system.^[24]
June 14 – Expo 2008 opens in Zaragoza, Spain, lasting to September 14, with the topic "Water and sustainable development".^[25]

July

July 2 – Íngrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages are rescued from FARC rebels by Colombian security forces.^[26]
July 21 – Radovan Karadžić, the first president of the Republika Srpska, is arrested in Belgrade, Serbia, on allegations of war crimes, following a 12-year-long manhunt.^[27]

August

August 6 – President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi of Mauritania is deposed in a military coup d'état.^[28]
August 7 – Georgia invades the breakaway state of South Ossetia, sparking a war with Russia as the latter intervenes in support of the separatists in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.^[29]
August 8–24 – The 2008 Summer Olympics take place in Beijing, China.^[30]

September

September 10 – The proton beam is circulated for the first time in the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, located at CERN, near Geneva, under the Franco-Swiss border.^[31]^[32]
September 20 – A suicide truck bomb explosion destroys the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing at least 60 and injuring 266.^[33]^[34]^[35]
September 28 – SpaceX Falcon 1 becomes the world's first privately developed space launch vehicle to successfully make orbit.^[36]^[37]

October

October 3 – Global financial crisis: U.S. President George W. Bush signs the revised Emergency Economic Stabilization Act into law, creating a 700 billion dollar Treasury fund to purchase failing bank assets.^[38]
October 21 – The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is officially inaugurated. It is a collaboration of over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.^[39]^[40]^[41]^[42]
October 22 – The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully launches the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft on a lunar exploration mission.^[43]^[44]

November

November 4 – Democratic U.S Senator Barack Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States, becoming the first African-American President.^[45]^[46]^[47]
November 19 – Claudia Castillo of Spain becomes the first person to have a successful trachea transplant using a tissue-engineered organ.^[48]

December

December 5 – Human remains found in 1991 are identified as Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, using DNA analysis.^[49]
December 10 – The Channel Island of Sark, a British Crown dependency, holds its first fully democratic elections under a new constitutional arrangement, becoming the last European territory to abolish feudalism.^[50]
December 18 – The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda finds Théoneste Bagosora and two other senior Rwandan army officers guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentences them to life imprisonment for their role in the Rwandan genocide.^[51]
December 23 – A military coup d'état deposes the government of Guinea shortly after the death of longtime President Lansana Conté.^[52]
December 27 – Israel invades the Gaza Strip in response to rockets being fired into Israeli territory by Hamas and due to weapons being smuggled into the area.^[53]^[54]^[55]
December 31 – An extra leap second (23:59:60) is added to end the year. The last time this occurred was in 2005.

Births

April 16 – Princess Eléonore of Belgium

Deaths

January

January 2 – Galyani Vadhana, Princess of Naradhiwas, Princess of Thailand (b. 1923)
January 3 – Choi Yo-sam, Korean boxer (b. 1972)
January 10 – Maila Nurmi, Finnish-American actress and television personality (b. 1922)
January 11 – Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist (b. 1919)
January 15 – Brad Renfro, American actor (b. 1982)
January 16 – Nikola Kljusev, 1st Prime Minister of Macedonia (b. 1927)
January 17 – Bobby Fischer, American-Icelandic chess grandmaster and former World Chess Champion (b. 1943)
January 19 – Suzanne Leatherette, American actress (b. 1937)
January 22
- Heath Ledger, Australian actor (b. 1979)
- Claude Piron, Swiss linguist and psychologist (b. 1931)
January 26 – George Habash, Palestinian politician (b. 1926)
January 27
- Gordon B. Hinckley, American Mormon leader (b. 1910)
- Suharto, 2nd President of Indonesia (b. 1921)
January 28 – Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens (b. 1939)
January 29 – Margaret Truman, American singer and writer (b. 1924)

February

February 2 – Joshua Lederberg, American molecular biologist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1925)
February 5 – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Indian spiritual leader (b. 1917)
February 7 – Andrew Bertie, British Grand Master of the Order of Malta (b. 1929)
February 9 – Baba Amte, Indian social activist (b. 1914)
February 10 – Roy Scheider, American actor (b. 1932)
February 11
- Alfredo Reinado, East Timorese rebel (b. 1967)
- Tom Lantos, American politician (b. 1928)
February 12
- Imad Mughniyah, Lebanese militant (b. 1962)
- Badri Patarkatsishvili, Georgian businessman and politician (b. 1955)
February 13
- Kon Ichikawa, Japanese film director (b. 1915)
- Henri Salvador, French singer (b. 1917)
February 18 – Alain Robbe-Grillet, French writer and filmmaker (b. 1922)
February 19
- Natalia Bessmertnova, Russian ballerina (b. 1941)
- Yegor Letov, Russian singer (b. 1964)
February 23
- Janez Drnovšek, 2nd President and 2nd and 4th Prime Minister of Slovenia (b. 1950)
- Paul Frère, Belgian racing driver (b. 1917)
February 27
- William F. Buckley Jr., American author and conservative commentator (b. 1925)
- Ivan Rebroff, German singer (b. 1931)

March

March 1 – Raúl Reyes, Colombian guerrilla (b. 1948)
March 2 – Jeff Healey, Canadian musician (b. 1966)
March 3
- Giuseppe Di Stefano, Italian operatic tenor (b. 1921)
- Norman Smith, English singer and record producer (b. 1923)
March 4 – Gary Gygax, American writer and game designer (b. 1938)
March 5 – Joseph Weizenbaum, German-American author and computer scientist (b. 1923)
March 6 – Peter Poreku Dery, Ghanaian cardinal (b. 1918)
March 14 – Chiara Lubich, Italian Catholic activist (b. 1920)
March 18 – Anthony Minghella, English film director and screenwriter (b. 1954)
March 19
- Arthur C. Clarke, English author, inventor, and futurist (b. 1917)
- Hugo Claus, Flemish writer, painter and film director (b. 1929)
- Paul Scofield, English actor (b. 1922)
March 22 – Adolfo Suárez Rivera, Mexican cardinal (b. 1927)
March 24
- Neil Aspinall, British record producer and business executive (b. 1942)
- Richard Widmark, American actor (b. 1914)
March 26 – Manuel Marulanda, Colombian guerrilla (b. 1930)
March 27 – Jean-Marie Balestre, French sports executive (b. 1921)
March 30 – Dith Pran, Cambodian-American photojournalist (b. 1942)
March 31 – Jules Dassin, American film director (b. 1911)

April

April 3 – Hrvoje Ćustić, Croatian footballer (b. 1983)
April 5 – Charlton Heston, American actor (b. 1923)
April 8 – Stanley Kamel, American actor (b. 1943)
April 10 – Ernesto Corripio y Ahumada, Mexican cardinal (b. 1919)
April 12 – Patrick Hillery, 6th President of Ireland (b. 1923)
April 13 – John Archibald Wheeler, American theoretical physicist (b. 1911)
April 14 – Ollie Johnston, American animator (b. 1912)
April 15 – Benoît Lamy, Belgian motion picture writer-director (b. 1945)
April 16 – Edward Norton Lorenz, American mathematician and meteorologist (b. 1917)
April 17 – Aimé Césaire, French Martinican poet and politician (b. 1913)
April 29 – Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist and writer, discoverer of LSD (b. 1906)

May

May 1 – Anthony Mamo, 1st President of Malta (b. 1909)
May 2 – Philipp von Boeselager, German military officer (b. 1917)
May 3 – Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, Spanish Prime Minister (b. 1926)
May 8 – François Sterchele, Belgian footballer (b. 1982)
May 10 – Leyla Gencer, Turkish soprano (b. 1928)
May 12
- Robert Rauschenberg, American pop artist (b. 1925)
- Irena Sendler, Polish humanitarian (b. 1910)
May 13
- Saad Al-Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, 4th Emir of Kuwait (b. 1930)
- Bernardin Gantin, Beninese cardinal (b. 1922)
May 15 – Willis Lamb, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1913)
May 23 – Cornell Capa, Hungarian-American photographer (b. 1918)
May 24 – Rob Knox, British actor (b. 1989)
May 26 – Sydney Pollack, American actor, director and producer (b. 1934)
May 28 – Sven Davidson, Swedish tennis player (b. 1928)