- August 6
- A United Nations report blaming the government of Sudan for crimes against humanity in Darfur is released. [25]
- August 12
- Singapore's prime minister Goh Chok Tong hands over his position to Lee Hsien Loong. [25]
- August 13
- Hurricane Charley kills 27 people in Florida after killing four in Cuba and one in Jamaica. Charley made landfall near Cayo Costa, Florida as a Category 4 hurricane. Charley is the most intense hurricane to strike the United States since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. [25]
- August 16
- Severe flooding occurs in the village of Boscastle in Cornwall, England. [25]
- August 18
- In Dublin, Ireland, the Dublin Port Tunnel excavation works are completed and the final tunnel boring machine breakthrough ceremony takes place. [25]
- August 20
- Elbegdorj Tsakhia, the peaceful democratic revolutionary leader of Mongolia, becomes Prime Minister of Mongolia for the second time. [25]
- August 21
- A series of blasts rocks an opposition party rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing at least 13 people. [25]
- August 22
- Armed robbers steal Edvard Munch's The Scream, Madonna, and other paintings from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. [5] [25]
- August 24
- Two airliners in Russia, carrying a total of 89 passengers, crash within minutes of each other after flying out of Domodedovo International Airport, leaving no survivors. Authorities suspect suicide attacks by rebels from Chechnya to be the cause of the crashes. [25]
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- August 31
- Two suicide attacks on buses in Beer Sheva, Israel, kill at least 16 people and injure at least 60. Hamas claims responsibility for the attacks. [25]
- A woman commits a suicide attack near a subway station in northern Moscow, Russia, killing at least ten people and injuring at least 50. Authorities hold Chechen rebels responsible. [25]
- September 1
- Chechen terrorists take between 1,000 and 1,500 people hostage, mostly children, in a school in the Beslan school hostage crisis. The hostage-takers demand the release of Chechen terrorists imprisoned in neighbouring Ingushetia and the independence of Chechnya from Russia. [25]
- September 2
- The United Nations Security Council adopts Resolution 1559, calling for the removal of all foreign troops from Lebanon. This measure is largely aimed at Syrian troops. [25]
- September 3
- Russian forces end the siege at a school in Beslan, Northern Ossetia. At least 335 people (among which are 32 of the approximately 40 hostage-takers) are killed and at least 700 people injured. [25]
- Hurricane Frances makes landfall in Florida. After killing two people in the Bahamas, Hurricane Frances kills ten people in Florida, two in Georgia and one in South Carolina. [25]
- A small asteroid explodes in the stratosphere above Antarctica depositing micron-sized dust particles. [521]
- September 7
- The Scottish Parliament meets in the new Scottish Parliament Building for the first time. [25]
- Hurricane Ivan passes directly over Grenada, killing 37 people. It passes over other Caribbean islands over the next two days, killing five people in Venezuela, four in the Dominican Republic, one in Tobago and 20 in Jamaica. [25]
- September 9
- A bomb blast outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, kills eleven and injures up to 100 people. [25]
- September 11
- Death of Patriarch Peter VII of Alexandria (helicopter crash) (born 1949). [25]
- September 15
- Davíð Oddsson, Prime Minister of Iceland, steps down after serving as prime minister since April 30, 1991. Oddsson trades posts with his foreign minister Halldór Ásgrímsson, who then becomes Prime Minister. [25]
- Security at the Palace of Westminster in London England is compromised, when the House of Commons is stormed by a small group of protestors during a debate about fox hunting. [25]
- September 16
- Hurricane Ivan strikes Gulf Shores, Alabama, as a Category 3 storm, killing 25 in Alabama and Florida, becoming the third costliest hurricane in American history. [25]
- September 17
- Hurricane Jeanne leaves mudslides in Haiti, killing 3006. [25]
- Mexico and Japan finish two-year-long negotiations and sign a Free Trade Agreement in Mexico City. [25]
- Tamil is declared the first classical language in India. [5]
- September 23
- Mount Saint Helens in Washington state, USA, becomes active again. [25]
- Tropical Storm Ivan, having come around and reformed in the Gulf of Mexico, makes its final landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, to little effect. In total, the storm will kill 92 people. [25]
- September 25
- Hurricane Jeanne makes landfall near Port Saint Lucie, Florida, near location Hurricane Frances hit two weeks earlier. Jeanne kills over 3,030, mostly in Haiti. [25]
- September 29
- Asteroid 4179 Toutatis crosses path of Earth within 1.5 million km. [523.184]
- After taking off from Mojave, California, the White Knight carrier plane launches SpaceShipOne rocket plane, which flies into space (62 miles high) and back. [25] [1575.24]
- October 2
- American Samoa joins the North American Numbering Plan. [5]
- October 4
- The White Knight carrier plane launches SpaceShipOne rocket plane, piloted by Brian Binnie, which flies into space (69.6 miles high) and back. Because of this second successful flight within 2 weeks of the first flight, the Scaled Composites company wins the Ansari X Prize of US$10 million. [108.66] [1575.24]
- Two car bombs kill at least 16 people and injure dozens more in Baghdad, Iraq. [25]
- October 5
- A fire breaks out on the Canadian submarine HMCS Chicoutimi, leaving it stranded without power in the North Atlantic ocean, off the north coast of Ireland; one crewmember is killed. [25]
- October 8
- Kenneth Bigley, the British hostage held by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Iraqi insurgent, is killed after a failed escape attempt. [25]
- Suicide bombers detonate two bombs at the Red Sea resort of Taba, Egypt, killing 34 people, mainly Israeli tourists and Egyptian workers. [25]
- October 9
- Queen Elizabeth II opens the new Scottish Parliament Building in a ceremony in Edinburgh. [25]
- Incumbent Prime Minister of Australia John Howard leads the Liberal-National coalition to victory over the Labor Party led by Mark Latham in federal elections. [25]
- Direct elections for president are held for the first time in Afghanistan. Interim president Hamid Karzai is eventually declared the winner. [25]
- October 10
- Abdullahi Yusuf is chosen as the new transitional president of Somalia. [25]
- October 14
- Prince Norodom Sihamoni is chosen as the new king of Cambodia. [25]
- Intel announces it has scrapped plans to develop and release a 4 GHz Pentium 4 processor. Instead, it will focus on other ways to boost performance. [4]
- October 17
- A referendum in Belarus approves the lifting of constitutional term limits for the presidency. [25]
- October 19
- General Khin Nyunt is replaced by Lieutenant-General Soe Win as Prime Minister of Myanmar. [25]
- A team of explorers reach the bottom of the world's deepest cave, located in Krubera. The depth reached is 2,080 metres (6,824 feet), setting a world record. [25]
- October 20
- Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono becomes the first directly-elected President of Indonesia. [25]
- October 21
- The British Ministry of Defence approves the deployment of the Black Watch regiment of the British Army to Baghdad, Iraq after a request for assistance by the U.S. government. [25]
- The Royal Canadian Mint releases a circulating 25-cent coin featuring a black and red colored poppy. This is the world's first colorized business-strike coin in circulation. [3]
- October 23
- Brazil's "Operation Cajuana" launches its first rocket into space, the VSB-30, just 14 months after its space program experienced a deadly launch pad accident. [5] (October 24 [25])
- In Germany, Wilhelm Genazino wins the Georg Büchner Prize for Literature. [37]
- October 24
- The bodies of 49 Iraqi soldiers are discovered after being ambushed by insurgents. [25]
- October 26
- The Cassini probe passes within 1,200km of Titan. [25]
- October 27
- Details of the discovery of a new, recent species of fossil hominid, Homo floresiensis, from the island of Flores, Indonesia, are published. [25]
- October 29
- European heads of state sign in Rome the Treaty and Final Act establishing the first European Constitution. [25]
- October 30
- A 163-metre-high radio mast in Peterborough, United Kingdom collapses in a fire. [25]
- October 31
- Leftist candidate Tabaré Vázquez is elected President of Uruguay. [25]
- November 1
- A 16-year-old Palestinian Muslim blows himself up in an outdoor market in Tel Aviv, killing three Israelis. [25]
- November 2
- Death of H.H. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan-al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi and President of the United Arab Emirates (born 1918). [25]
- U.S. presidential election: U.S. President George W. Bush defeats Senator John Kerry. Republicans make gains in the House and Senate. [25]
- Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh is assassinated in Amsterdam, Netherlands by Mohammed Bouyeri. [25]
- November 6
- The Ufton Nervet rail crash in Berkshire, England kills seven people. [25]
- In Côte d'Ivoire, National Army bombings kill nine people, including French United Nations soldiers. French United Nations forces retaliate by destroying the National Army's air force. [25]
- November 7
- U.S. forces launch a major assault on the Iraqi town of Fallujah, in an effort to rid the area of insurgents before the Iraqi elections in January. [25]
- November 8
- Microsoft agrees to pay US$536 million to Novell to settle legal claims related to Novell's NetWare operating system. [4]
- November 9
- Microsoft releases the Halo 2 video game for the Xbox in the USA. First day sales total 2.4 million units in North America, for US$125 million revenue. [9]
- Mozilla releases the Firefox 1.0 Web broswer. 5.6 million copies are downloaded in the first two weeks. [4]
- November 11
- Death of Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (born 1929). [25]
- November 13
- After six days of intense battles, the Iraqi town of Fallujah is fully occupied by U.S. forces. [25]
- November
- A US 1885 Trade Dollar graded Proof-63 sells at auction for US$1,006,250. [505.56]
- November 16
- The European Space Agency probe, Smart 1, passes from Earth orbit into the orbit of the Moon. [25]
- A train crash near Bundaberg in Queensland, Australia, injures 150 people. [25]
- The People's Republic of China agrees to invest $20 billion dollars in Argentina, a deal signed days before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to be held in Santiago, Chile. [25]
- NASA's hypersonic Scramjet breaks a record by reaching a velocity of about 7,000 mph in an unmanned experimental flight. It obtains a speed of Mach 9.6, almost ten times the speed of sound. [5] [25]
- November 17
- (to November 21) The APEC Summit is held in Santiago, Chile. [25]
- November 18
- A cargo ship explodes and breaks in half at the port of Paranagua in southern Brazil, spreading a slick of fuel oil, diesel fuel and methanol. [522]
- November 19
- Buena Vista Pictures Distribution releases the Touchstone Pictures live-action feature film National Treasure in theaters in the USA. [6]
- November 21
- Nintendo releases the Nintendo DS handheld video game system in the US and Canada. It features two 3-inch diagonal screens, stereo speakers, microphone, IEEE 802.11 wireless communications with range about 30 feet. Size is 5.85 x 3.33 x 1.13 inches. Price in the US is US$149.99. 500,000 units are sold in the first week; 1.2 million in the first month. [9]
- In the final round of presidential election in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych is declared the winner. International election observers express severe criticism, and large crowds gather in a protest rally in Kiev. (Twelve days later, the Supreme Court annuls the result, and a new poll is scheduled.) [25]
- The Terra Nova offshore oil platform malfunctions and spills 166,000 litres of oil off Newfoundland, Canada. [522]
- November 25
- The Indian political party Congress Jananayaka Peravai merges into the Indian National Congress. [25]
- November 26
- A group of Iraqi political leaders, primarily from Sunni and Kurdish parties, advocate a six-month delay in popular elections scheduled for January 2005. [25]
- An oil tanker sppills as much as 1.8 million litres of crude oil into the Delaware River between Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, USA. [522]
- November 28
- An explosion occurs in a coal mine in China. [25]
- Ricardo Lagos, President of Chile, promises economic compensation to 28,000 torture victims of Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship. [25]
- A male Po'o-uli dies of avian malaria at the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda before it can breed, making the species in all probability extinct. [25]
- November 30
- Longtime Jeopardy! (TV show) champion Ken Jennings finally loses after 74 wins, leaving him with $2,520,700, television's all-time biggest game show haul. [5] [457]
- December 2
- David Bieber, a 38-year-old former American marine, is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a Leeds policeman and the attempted murder of two others following an incident on December 26, 2003. The trial judge recommends that he should never be released from prison. [25]
- Nintendo releases the Nintendo DS handheld video game system in Japan. 500,000 units are sold in the first four days. [9]
- December 3
- The Colombian government extradites Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela to the United States. Orejuela is one of the most powerful drug dealers in the world, arrested in 1995 and 2003. [25]
- December 6
- Terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing several people. [25]
- December 7
- IBM announces it will sell its PC division to Lenovo Group of China, for about US$1.75 billion. [4]
- The MSC Ilona container ship collides with another container ship near the mouth of South China's Pearl River, spilling about 525,000 litres of oil, causing a slick 17km long. [522]
- December 8
- The biggest Chinese personal computer producer Lenovo announces its plan to purchase IBM's global personal computer business, which would make it the third largest world PC maker after Dell and Hewlett-Packard. [25]
- December 10
- New Zealand bans smoking in all public places (bars, restaurants, hotels, school, etc.). [25]
- Malaysian freighter Selendang Ayu carrying 1.8 million litres of fuel oil snaps in two off Unalaska Island, Alaska, USA, releasing thousands of litres of fuel oil. [522]
- December 11
- Tests show that Ukrainian opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with a large dose of dioxin. [25]
- December 12
- Sony Computer Entertainment releases the PlayStation Portable in Japan. It features Memory Stick port, USB port, UMD drive, 4.3-inch 16:9 ratio 480x272 pixel display, Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, headphone jack, speaker. Batteries power the unit for about four hours. Price is 19800 yen (about US$185). 200,000 units sell out quickly. [9]
- December 13
- Software giants Oracle Corporation and PeopleSoft agree to merge in a US$10.3 billion deal, creating the second largest maker of business applications software. [25]
- December 14
- The world's tallest bridge, the Millau bridge over the River Tarn in the Massif Central mountains, France, is opened by President Jacques Chirac. [5] [25]
- A Kuwaiti tanker collides with a dredger in the Suez Canal, dumping about 8.3 million litres of crude oil. [522]
- December 15
- Albanian terrorists take a bus and its passengers hostage in Athens, Greece and demand one million euros in ransom money. [25]
- December 16
- The House of Lords rules that the British Government breaches human rights legislation by detaining without trial foreign nationals suspected of being terrorists. [25]
- Information technology security company Symantec Corp signs a definitive agreement to merge with Veritas Software Corp, valued at $13.5 billion, in an all-stock transaction. [25]
- December 21
- Iraqi insurgents attack a U.S. military base in the city of Mosul, killing 22 people. [25]
- December 22
- Armed robbers in Northern Ireland steal over 22 million pounds sterling from the headquarters of the Northern Bank. Unionist politicians and the Police Service of Northern Ireland blame the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and stall the peace process. [25]
- December 26
- One of the worst natural disasters in recorded history hits Southeast Asia when the strongest earthquake in 40 years hits the entire Indian Ocean region. The massive 9.3 magnitude earthquake, epicentered just off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, generates enormous tsunami waves that crash into the coastal areas of 14 nations including Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. 228,000 people are killed or missing in 12 countries, and 1.7 million are left homeless. The tsunami causes more casualties than any other in recorded history and is recorded nearly world-wide on tide gauges in the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. [25] [46.463] [53] [240.48] [383.A8] [521]
- The re-run of the second round of the Ukrainian presidential election takes place. Opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko is declared the victor. [25] [255.65]
- December 28
- The Ukrainian transport minister, Heorhiy Kyrpa, is found shot dead, in a suspected suicide. [25]
- December 30
- A fire in a Buenos Aires night club (República Cromagnon) kills 194 people during a rock concert. [25]
- December 31
- Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper in the world, standing at a height of 1,670 feet (509 metres), officially opens. [25]
- Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich resigns. [25]
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