A look at some of the people who made the headlines in 2015.

January

The slogan “Je suis Charlie” is used around the world to express outrage at the attack by Islamic fundamentalists on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Its editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, is among ten people killed. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, urges her supporters to boycott the subsequent “unity march”, attended by more than 50 world leaders, because she was not invited. The Greek election is won by anti-austerity party Syriza, led by former communist Alexis Tsipras. He installs Yanis Varoufakis (pictured), a leather jacket-wearing Marxist, as his finance minister, promising a referendum on Greek debt.

February

The 87th Academy Awards are criticised for being the least diverse in years, with all 20 acting nominations going to white actors. Director Ava DuVernay and actor David Oyelowo miss out on nominations in their categories for Selma, about the story of Martin Luther King’s march for civil rights. David Cameron remarks that Russia is trying to make “some sort of point” after Ukraine peace talks fail and Vladimir Putin flies bombers off the coast of Cornwall. As the general election campaigns pick up, Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman is widely ridiculed for heading out in a pink bus to canvass women voters. Other politicians fare worse: Labour MP Jack Straw and Conservative Malcolm Rifkind are caught in a cash-for-access media sting (they’re later cleared of wrongdoing), and Green Party leader Natalie Bennett suffers a “mind blank” and is unable to explain her party’s policies during an excruciating live radio interview.

March

Jeremy Clarkson is sacked from BBC’s Top Gear for punching a producer who’d failed to provide him with a hot dinner. Six months later he signs a deal to present a new series for Amazon, for a reported £9.6m a year. At 50, Monica Bellucci becomes the oldest ever Bond girl, a title she asks to be changed to “Bond lady”. Before she has formally announced her intention to run for the US presidency, Hillary Clinton comes under fire as it emerges she bypassed her official email account while she was secretary of state, and stored communication instead on a private server at her home. The remains of Richard III, discovered beneath a car park in 2012, are laid to rest in Leicester Cathedral amid much pomp and ceremony.

April

Andreas Lubitz, a pilot with a history of depression who has been declared unfit to fly by a doctor, locks his co-pilot out of the cockpit and crashes Germanwings flight 9525 into the French Alps, killing all 144 passengers and six crew members. Zayn Malik announces he is leaving the pop group One Direction. Fans are disconsolate until astrophysicist Stephen Hawking comforts them with the thought that theoretical physics could prove the existence of an alternate universe where the band remains united. Nicola Sturgeon is the unexpected winner of the first televised leaders’ debate of the election campaign: viewers praise the SNP chief’s forthright style. At 71, Ranulph Fiennes becomes the oldest Briton to complete the “toughest footrace on Earth”, running 156 miles across the Sahara desert.

May

Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana of Cambridge, fourth in line to the throne, is born amid another frenzied media stake-out at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. In the final days before the general election, Ed Miliband unveils his six key campaign pledges engraved on an 8ft-high stone tablet. “Who does he think he is?” asks Boris Johnson. “Moses?” When exit polls come out, Paddy Ashdown says he’ll eat his hat if they prove correct. They do: in defiance of all the opinion polls, the Tories get a 12-seat majority, and David Cameron hails the “sweetest victory”. Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage all resign as party leaders – although Farage is back at the UKIP helm within days. Twenty-year-old Mhairi Black of the SNP becomes the country’s youngest MP, unseating Lib Dem Douglas Alexander. Her maiden speech, in which she fiercely attacks Tory austerity policies, becomes a viral hit. Ross Ulbricht, a 31-year-old former boy scout from Texas, is discovered to be the mastermind behind Silk Road, an Amazon-like online market for drugs. He is sentenced to life in prison without parole.

June

Sepp Blatter says he’ll resign as president of Fifa – four days after winning the fifth term of his 17-year reign – following accusations of “rampant, systemic corruption”. He fails to do so, however, and is eventually suspended four months later. Caitlyn Jenner (pictured) – formerly the Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner – unveils her new female identity when she appears on the cover of Vanity Fair in a white silk basque. Rachel Dolezal, a US civil rights activist and former Africana Studies lecturer, is outed as white by her parents, but insists she identifies as black. “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” says the British scientist Tim Hunt at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul. “Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.” His words trigger a furore and he is forced to resign his honorary post at University College London. Donald Trump announces that he is running for US president. The real-estate mogul tells his supporters he won’t need to rely on their donations: “I’m using my own money. I’m really rich.”

July

A “new” Harper Lee novel, thought to be a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird (though written before), is published. Go Set A Watchman dismays Atticus Finch fans (and his many namesakes) by reintroducing the lawyer as a disgruntled old racist. The cover of New York magazine features pictures of 35 women who accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault or rape. In the first exclusively Conservative Budget in two decades, George Osborne tries to soften the blow of £12bn of welfare cuts by announcing a hike in the minimum wage. Labour peer Lord Sewell resigns from the House of Lords after a tabloid sting reveals footage of him cavorting with call girls and snorting cocaine off their breasts.

August

Jennifer Aniston gets married without the press finding out by disguising her wedding to Justin Theroux as a birthday party. Walter Palmer, a big-game hunter and dentist from Minnesota, pays $50,000 to shoot a Zimbabwean lion named Cecil with a crossbow. After the details of Cecil’s end are made public, Palmer hires armed bodyguards and goes into hiding. An eagerly awaited production of Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch opens to mixed reviews. German Chancellor Angela Merkel announces that all Syrian refugees will be eligible to claim asylum in Germany, triggering an influx of migrants. Kids Company, the charity run by Camila Batmanghelidjh is closed down after going bankrupt. Noel Biderman, founder of the infidelity website Ashley Madison, steps down after the third mass leak of company data, some of which suggests that, despite previous denials, he has himself had several adulterous affairs.

September

The dark horse candidate of the Labour leadership elections, Jeremy Corbyn, storms to victory with nearly 60% of the vote. Two of his rivals, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, refuse to serve in his shadow cabinet. David Cameron announces that Corbyn’s win makes the Labour Party “a threat to national security”. Vladimir Putin says he is offering Syrian president Bashar al-Assad some “quite serious help” in the form of Russian bombers to deal with the regime’s enemies. Iran offers Assad its own support in the form of ground troops led by its top general Qasem Soleimani. The body of a three-year-old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, is washed up on a Turkish beach, provoking an outpouring of public sympathy for victims of the worsening refugee crisis, and demands for action. Britain offers to take in “thousands more” Syrian migrants. Queen Elizabeth II breaks Queen Victoria’s record of 63 years, seven months and two days on the throne to become the longest-reigning British monarch. A 27-year-old human rights barrister, Charlotte Proudman, uses social media to publicly scold a 57-year-old solicitor, Alexander Carter-Silk: when contacting her on the professional networking site LinkedIn, he had described her profile picture as “stunning”. David Cameron is forced to publicly deny claims made in a biography by Lord Ashcroft and journalist Isabel Oakeshott that he “inserted a private part of his anatomy” into the mouth of a pig during an initiation ceremony for the Piers Gaveston Society at Oxford.

October

The Labour MP Tom Watson is condemned for his role in hyping up spurious child abuse allegations relating to senior Tory figures including Edward Heath and Leon Brittan. Some 14.5 million people watch as Nadiya Jamir Hussain (pictured), a 4ft 11in British Bangladeshi woman, wins The Great British Bake Off. The US vice-president, Joe Biden, announces he won’t run for office in 2016, giving Hillary Clinton’s campaign a boost. To the fury of human rights campaigners, China’s President Xi Jinping is granted the full red-carpet treatment during a four-day state visit to Britain.

November

The Islamic State murderer known as “Jihadi John”, Mohammed Emwazi, is killed by a drone strike in Syria. The last British resident of Guantánamo Bay, Shaker Aamer, is released and flown home. General Sir Nicholas Houghton is accused of straying beyond his brief for saying that he would worry if Jeremy Corbyn became PM, because of his stance on Trident. Following weeks of rumours, actor Charlie Sheen reveals that he was diagnosed as HIV-positive four years ago. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy wins a landslide victory in Burma’s first openly contested national election in 25 years. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell provokes widespread mockery by quoting from a copy of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book during his response to the Autumn Statement. He later defends the move, insisting that the stunt was a joke. Belgian jihadi Abdelhamid Abaaoud is killed during a clash with French police five days after allegedly masterminding the Paris terrorist attacks in which 129 people died. Mark Clarke, a leading figure in the Tory youth wing, is expelled from the party amid allegations of blackmail and bullying. Adele’s new album, 25, shifts a record 3.38 million copies in its first week in the US.

December

Mark Zuckerberg celebrates the birth of his first child, a daughter called Max, by announcing that he and his wife plan to give 99% of their Facebook shares, currently valued at $45bn, to charity. Andy Murray delivers Britain its first Davis Cup victory since 1936. South Africa’s top appeals court finds athlete Oscar Pistorius guilty of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, overturning a previous conviction for culpable homicide. Marine Le Pen’s National Front fails to win a significant breakthrough in France’s regional elections, despite doing well in the first round of voting. Major Tim Peake blasts into the history books when he becomes the first British astronaut to go into space, to the sound of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now.