January:
- Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union, while Slovenia joins the Eurozone
- Oil supplies to Poland, Germany and Ukraine are cut as the Russia-Belarus energy dispute escalates
- Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco
- The England cricket team lose the fifth Ashes test in Sydney by 10 wickets resulting in a 5-0 whitewash, the first time this has occurred since the 1920-21 Ashes Tour
- British Muslim, Umran Javed, is found guilty at the Old Bailey of inciting racial hatred at a London rally in February 2006 protesting the publication of a cartoon in a Danish newspaper depicting Muhammad
- Laura Pearce becomes the first contestant, after 351 attempts, to win the top prize of £250,000 on Channel 4’s Deal or No Deal
- New rules outlawing businesses from discriminating against homosexuals are upheld in the House of Lords, after a challenge by Lord Morrow of the DUP
- Methamphetamine is reclassified as a Class A drug
- Protests are held in India and the UK after Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O’Meara are alleged to have racially abused Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother
- News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman is jailed for four months having pleaded guilty to phone message interception charges
- The final edition of Grandstand, the flagship BBC sports programme, is aired after nearly 50 years on screens
February:
- Global climate change is “very likely” to have a predominantly human cause according to an IPCC report
- A truck bomb explodes in Baghdad killing at least 135 people
- North Korea agrees to shut down its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon as a first step towards denuclearisation
- Tumblr is launched to the public
- Serbia is found guilty of failing to prevent genocide in the Srebenica massacre by the International Court of Justice
March:
- Three Russian helicopters fire on the Georgian-controlled Kodori Gorge in the break-away autonomous republic of Abkhazia
- The 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup is held in the West Indies; Australia win the ODI event by defeating Sri Lanka by 53 runs (Duckworth-Lewis) in the final
- In a House of Commons vote, a majority of MPs express support for a fully elected House of Lords
- Nigel Griffiths resigns as Deputy Leader of the House of Commons over the proposed expansion of the Trident missile program
- The BBC’s correspondent in the Gaza Strip, Alan Johnston, is kidnapped
- Five British Embassy workers who were kidnapped in Ethiopia are released twelve days later in Eritrea
- The rebuilt Wembley Stadium opens to the public for the first time
- Members of the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin meet face-to-face for the first time and agree a timetable for implementing the St Andrews Agreement
April:
- Student Seung-Hui Cho shoots and kills 32 people across the campuses of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, before committing suicide; this was the deadliest school shooting in the history of the US and remained the deadliest mass shooting in US history until the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting
- A series of attacks take place across Baghdad killing nearly 200 people
- An ethnic Russian riot in Tallinn and other Estonian cities against the moving of the Soviet World War II memorial statue, the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, spark cyberattacks on Estonia
- A smoking ban comes into effect in all enclosed public places in Wales and, four weeks later, in Northern Ireland
May:
- Madeleine McCann disappears from 5A Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva in Praia da Luz, Portugal
- The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate re-unite after 80 years of schism
- Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai makes the largest single charitable donation in modern history by committing €7.41 billion to an educational foundation in the Middle East
- Manchester United win their ninth Premier League title
- The Ministry of Justice comes into existence in the UK, reorganised from the Department for Constitutional Affairs and taking over some responsibilities from the Home Office
- Alex Salmond is elected First Minister of Scotland, the first person from the Scottish National Party to hold the post
- Chelsea defeat Manchester 1-0 thanks to a Didier Drogba goal to win the FA Cup in the first club game played at the new Wembley Stadium
- Jenny Bailey becomes the first transgender mayor in the UK
June:
- NASA’s Messenger spacecraft makes its second fly-by of Venus en route to Mercury
- England play their first match at the new Wembley, a 1-1 draw with Brazil
- Scarborough FC, members of the Football League from 1987 to 1999, go out of business with debts of £2.5 million
- Tony Blair officially tenders his resignation as Prime Minister and is succeeded by Chancellor Gordon Brown; Jacqui Smith becomes the first female Home Secretary in the new government
July:
- Live Earth concerts are held in nine major cities around the world to raise environmental awareness
- Operation Banner, the British Armed Forces’ operation in Northern Ireland and the longest continuous deployment in British military history, comes to an end
- A smoking ban comes into effect in all enclosed public places in England
- The Concert for Diana is held in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales at the new Wembley Stadium
- Stadium mk, a 22,000 seat multi purpose stadium, is opened in Milton Keynes; its main tenants are MK Dons FC
- The seventh and final novel in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is published
August:
- The French global bank BNP Paribas in the UK blocks withdrawals from three hedge funds heavily committed in sub-prime mortgages, signalling the financial crisis of 2007-2008
- Multiple suicide bombings kill 572 people in Qahtaniya, northern Iraq
- A magnitude 8 earthquake strikes Peru, killing at least 519 people and causing tsunami warnings in the Pacific
- The 2007 UK foot-and-mouth outbreak is first reported among cattle in Surrey
- 11 year old Rhys Jones is shot dead in Croxteth, Liverpool; his death is believed to have been a random shooting carried out by a local gang
September:
- Israeli Air Force airplanes attack a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria
- The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- The inaugural edition of the Eurovision Dance Contest is held in London; the first ever winners are Katja Koukkula and Jussi Väänänen of Finland
- Michael Barrymore is told that he will not face charges in connection with the death of Stuart Lubbock, the man found dead in his swimming pool more than six years ago
- Northern Rock obtain a liquidity support facility from the Bank of England
- Andrew Gosden, a Doncaster schoolboy, disappears while playing truant in London
- Rally driver Colin McRae and three others are killed in a helicopter crash near Lanark
October:
- Montenegro adopts a new constitution, which among other things changes the country’s official name from “Republic of Montenegro” to “Montenegro”
- Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes the first directly elected female President of Argentina
- Sir Menzies Campbell resigns as leader of the Liberal Democrats
- South Africa defeat England 15-6 in the final of the Rugby World Cup at the Stade de France to claim their second title
November:
- WikiLeaks leaks the standard US army protocol at Guantanamo Bay
- Up to 15,000 people are believed to have been killed after Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh
- Waterloo International, the London terminus of the Eurostar, closes after thirteen years in service and is replaced by London St Pancras International
- Full rollout of UK digital terrestrial television switchover begins with the complete turning off of the analogue signal to the Whitehaven area
- HM Revenue and Customs admitted that it has misplaced two computer discs which contained the records of child benefit claimants data, including bank details and National Insurance numbers, leaving up to 7.25 million households susceptible to identity theft
- Steve McClaren is sacked as manager of the England national football team due to the failure to qualify for UEFA Euro 2008
December:
- At the age of 81 years and 244 days, Queen Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever reigning British monarch, surpassing Queen Victoria
- Eight people are killed in mass shooting at Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska
- Treaty of Lisbon is signed by members of the European Union
- Picasso’s Portrait of Suzanne Bloch and Portinari’s O Lavrador de Café are stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art
- The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia join the Schengen border-free zone
- Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated, along with 20 others, at an election rally in Rawalpindi
- Riots erupt in Mombasa, Kenya, after Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner of the general election, triggering a political, economic and humanitarian crisis that kills over 1,000 people
- Fabio Capello, the 61-year-old Italian former coach of Real Madrid, is appointed by the FA to take charge of the England national team
- Nick Clegg wins the Liberal Democrat leadership election
Other:
- Mauritania is the last country to criminalise slavery, making it illegal everywhere in the world
- Earning $961 million worldwide, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, is the highest grossing film of the year
- Having won the third series of The X Factor one year previously, the biggest selling single of 2007 is Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love”
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