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2001

September: 9/11
People around the world watch their screens in stunned disbelief as the events of 11 September play out. Nearly 3,000 people lose their lives in terrorist attacks on New York City, Washington DC and in Pennsylvania, where a hijacked plane crash-lands. It is the single deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in US history.

11 September 2001: A firefighter pauses amid debris from terror attacks on New York. Image: Getty

The programme of the Last Night of the Proms on 15 September is revised. A minute’s silence is held and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Symphony Orchestra, under its new American conductor Leonard Slatkin, marks the tragedy with works including Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, a piece long associated with American mourning (it was played at the funeral of Franklin D Roosevelt and after the assassination of John F Kennedy).

Composer and New Yorker Steve Reich is deeply affected by the tragedy. He creates a new work for string quartet and pre-recorded tape, WTC 9/11, that captures something of the pain, darkness and shock of the event, incorporating audio recordings of air traffic control, police and firefighters from the day.

September: The Blue Planet
On 12 September, ´óÏó´«Ã½ One premieres The Blue Planet, a groundbreaking eight-part nature documentary presented by Sir David Attenborough. The show introduces viewers to never-before-seen species including the dumbo octopus and the hairy anglerfish. Its score, by George Fenton, wins awards including an Ivor Novello, a BAFTA and the Emmy Award for Best Television Score. Watch Blue Planet on ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer.

2003

March: Start of the Iraq War
On 20 March, UK troops join those of the United States, Australia and Poland in invading Iraq with a “shock and awe” bombing campaign. Saddam Hussein’s regime is overthrown, but conflict in the region will endure until US troops officially withdraw in 2011.

Composer Max Richter has composed the music of The Blue Notebooks, “a protest album about Iraq” and “a meditation on violence” in the run-up to the war, recording the week after mass demonstrations take place in more than 600 cities around the world on 15 February.

2004

May: Nicola Benedetti wins ´óÏó´«Ã½ Young Musician of the Year
The 16-year-old Scottish violinist wins the ´óÏó´«Ã½’s annual competition for young artists with an outstanding performance of Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto. She will go on to become one of the most famous violinists of her generation and a tireless advocate for music education.

Sixteen-year-old Nicola Benedetti at the final of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Young Musician of the Year 2004. Image © ´óÏó´«Ã½

Since its beginnings in 1978, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Young Musician competition has spotted some of the UK's greatest classical and jazz talents right at the start of their careers. Benedetti joins the ranks of talented former winners oboeist Nicholas Daniel, cellist Natalie Clein and violinist Jennifer Pike. For a full list of winners, see the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Young Musician website.

May: The launch of Strictly
Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly present a new ballroom dancing competition on ´óÏó´«Ã½ One that becomes a runaway success. Strictly is not the ´óÏó´«Ã½’s first ballroom dancing show: .

The updated format, which pairs celebrities with professional partners, turbo-charges its popularity. The "Strictly" of its title is a nod to the 1992 Baz Luhrmann film Strictly Ballroom starring Guy Pearce, which is credited with bringing ballroom dancing back into the mainstream.

December: The Boxing Day Tsunami
On 26 December, an 8.9 magnitude earthquake near Aceh in north Indonesia triggers a series of huge waves that kill more than 230,000 people and displace two million more. Fourteen countries are affected: many are reliant on fishing and tourism and have to rebuild these industries from the ground up.

Posters outside Kings Cross Station appealing for information on missing people after the terror attacks of 7/7. Image © ´óÏó´«Ã½

2005

February: Launch of The Apprentice
Sir Alan Sugar fronts where aspiring entrepreneurs compete to be taken on as his latest hire. In each episode, contestants face a series of business challenges and one unlucky hireling is eliminated with the catchphrase: “You’re fired!” The show uses the Dance of the Knights from Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet as its theme tune.

July: 7/7 attacks in London
Terrorists strike at London’s public transport network, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds more.

Three suicide bombers detonate devices on underground trains just outside Liverpool Street and Edgware Road stations, and on another travelling between King's Cross and Russell Square. Another explosion occurs around an hour later on a bus in Tavistock Square, near King’s Cross.

2007

June: First generation iPhone released
The Apple iPhone is released in the US on 29 June. Unlike other mobile phones, it functions as a telephone, a camera, a music player and an internet browser. Its sleek design, innovative touchscreen operation and connectivity quickly make it Apple’s biggest-selling product and set the stage for the modern smartphone.

August: The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms
Young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel brings the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra to the Proms, where they pull off one of the most memorable concerts of this or any other season.

Many of the musicians on stage are the product of El Sistema, a classical music programme founded to benefit impoverished young Venezuelans. The young players don jackets in the colours of the Venezuelan flag for a series of high-energy choreographed encores: spinning their instruments, dancing around the stage, leading the packed audience in a series of Mexican waves and bringing it to its feet in screaming adulation.

October: Doris Lessing wins a Nobel
At 88, Lessing (pictured) is the oldest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. A famously down to earth author, she finds out about her win when she arrives home in a taxi to find a crush of journalists waiting in her front garden.

Author and Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing in 2008. Image © ´óÏó´«Ã½

2007-8: A new financial crisis
In November 2007, the Today Programme reports on a mortgage crisis in the US that may signal recession for the US economy. By 2008, economies around the world will be affected by the greatest financial crisis to hit since the Great Depression of 1929. For many, life will never be the same again.

2008

September: Big Bang Day
10 September. One hundred metres under the ground, somewhere between Geneva International Airport and the Jura mountains, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator is switched on. Scientists at CERN are hoping to recreate conditions a few moments after the Big Bang, smashing protons together with cataclysmic force.

2009

January: Barack Obama becomes President of the United States
Obama, a Senator for Illinois, becomes the first African American man to hold the office of US President. In his inauguration speech, Obama calls on Americans to enter a “a new era of responsibility” and paraphrases the Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields musical Swing Time: “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

April: Wolf Hall is published
Author Hilary Mantel has spent five years researching and writing the first novel in what will become her Tudor trilogy. Her hero is Thomas Cromwell who, she tells the ´óÏó´«Ã½, far from being simply a scheming advisor to Henry VIII, just had an image problem. The novel will go on to win the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.