I'll add to this if I think of any other goodies, but 'til then, what springs to mind if I say:
The Euro, Y2K, 9/11, 7/7, Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, Anthrax, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Darfur, al-Qaeda, Mumbai, iPhone, Blackberry, Bali disco bombs, Steve jobs, Bird flu, Swine flu, WMD, anti-war demos, migration and emigration, Burma, Usain Bolt, Tiger Woods, Wacko, Bush, Blair and Brown, Florida recounts (stipples? dipples?), Clinton and Lewinsky, Ricky Gervais, Tyson, Jonny Wilkinson, Ellen MacArthur, Zidane's headbutt, Flintoff's Ashes, CO2, digital cameras, Al Gore, Hedge Funds, Sarah Palin, Jade Goody, The Hadron Collider, Hubble, Wii, Wind farms and all that bollocks, Blu-Ray discs, subprime mortgages, 'progress', Google (maps too), Botox, trout pout, Viagra, X Factor, Britain's Got Talent, Harry Potter, Obama, Alan Greenspan, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Putin, Tate Modern, Section 28, YouTube, The Human Genome Project, Elian Gonzalez, Slobodan Milosevic, Boutros Boutros Ghali, bonkers Britney, Benazir Bhutto assassinated, Wikipedia, Foot and Mouth, Jordan and Peter Andre, Sarah Payne, Civil Partnerships, Tamil Tigers, Mayor Giuliani, Microsoft Antitrust, Kings of Leon, Israel and the West Bank/Gaza Strip, Daniel Pearl, Ukraine elections, Williams sisters, Dot-com bubble, Moscow hostage gas goes wrong, Bush fires, Ricin, Chechnya, David Kelly and the Hutton Enquiry, Uday and Qusay Hussein, Michael Schumacher, various eclipses (solar and lunar), the Rugby World Cup, SMS, suicide bombers, Harold Shipman's suicide, The Lord of the Rings, Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo, Twitter, General Electric closes down, fox hunting, Reagan dies, John Paul II dies, Maddie, Fritzl, Foxy, Scottish Parliament, loooooads of suicide bombers, Iceland banks crash, Lost is on TV,  worldwide smoking bans, Enron, ETA, the Kyoto Protocol, George Galloway and Oil For Food, IRA ends armed campaign, Facebook, first face transplant, Russian and Ukraine gas arguments, Playstation 3, Castro resigns, Michael Phelps, Lehman Brothers, water on the moon, latte, Al Jazeera, HBO, Bennifer, Brangelina, MMPORGs, Jack Bauer, Abu Ghraib, Kanye, Sex & The City, Craigslist, vampires, slow food, auto-tune, cheese-eating surrender monkeys, blogging, true love, your family and friends.



Now, how many of these were actually good news? It's interesting what we choose to record. 


ps - In 2000, the world population was 6,070,581,000. It's now 6,793,800,000. Health and wealth have never been so abundant, but outside warfare, 20th century governments murdered 7.3% of their people, through needless famine, labour camps, genocide and other crimes. That compares with 3.7% in the 19th century and 4.7% in the 17th century.