| 2nd January 2008 | The price of petroleum hits $100 per barrel for the first time. |
| 11th January 2008 | Edmund Hillary dies at the age of eighty-nine. He was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. |
| 17th February 2008 | A suicide bombing by a Taliban member kills up to eighty people in Kandahar, Afghanistan. |
| 18th February 2008 | The British government introduces emergency legislation to temporarily nationalise Northern Rock, the fifth largest mortgage bank in the United Kingdom, due to the bank's financial crisis. |
| 1st March 2008 | In the Gaza Strip, at least fifty-two Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers are killed in the most intense Israeli air strikes since 2005. |
| 21st May 2008 | Manchester United win the UEFA Champions League, beating Chelsea on penalties in Moscow. |
| 25th May 2008 | NASA's “Phoenix” spacecraft becomes the first to land on the northern polar region of Mars, enabling research into microbial life and the history of water on the planet. |
| 27th June 2008 | President Robert Mugabe is re-elected with 85.5% of the vote in the second round of the controversial Zimbabwean presidential election. |
| 15–20th July 2008 | World Youth Day takes place in Sydney, Australia. Pope Benedict XVI appears at the event. |
| 8–24th July 2008 | The 2008 Summer Olympics take place in Beijing, China. |
| 17th August 2008 | American swimmer Michael Phelps surpasses Mark Spitz in Gold Medals won at a single Olympic Games. He wins a total of eight. |
| 20th August 2008 | Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport with 172 on board. 154 passengers are killed, with only eighteen surviving. |
| 22nd August 2008 | Pirates hijack German, Iranian, and Japanese cargo ships off the coast of Somalia, in the latest of seven such attacks since 20th June. |
| 3rd September 2008 | Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani of Pakistan survives an assassination attempt near Islamabad, while on his way to meet British Leader of the opposition, David Cameron. |
| 26th September 2008 | Paul Newman, American actor (b. 1925) dies of lung cancer. |
| 3rd October 2008 | U.S. President George W. Bush signs the revised Economic Stabilisation Act, creating a $700 billion Treasury fund to purchase falling bank assets. |
| 4th November 2008 | Barack Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States, becoming the first ever African-American President-elect. Joe Biden is elected the 47th Vice President, completing a historic year for American politics. Biden is the first ever Roman-Catholic to be elected into this position. |
| 26th November 2008 | Pakistan-based Islamic militants launch a series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai, killing 195 people and injuring a further 250. |
| 31st December 2008 | An extra leap-second is added to the end of the year. The last time this occurred was in 2005. |