Can someone please provide a quick tutorial or primer on how domain deletion works?

For example:

July 14, 2004 - randomdomainname.com is purchased for one year.

Assuming the original owner decides to not renew and just abandons the domain. What is the timeline?

Does the domain instantly become available on July 14 of 2005? Is it held in limbo for a quasi grace period for a few days or even a month to give the original owner the chance to maintain ownership?

I hear phrases like pending delete and redemption, etc. and I cant make heads or tails of it.

domain life cycle http://www.domain-retriever.com/images/life.gif

Copyright: Bashar

You can also check when the domain name will be dropped at:

http://justdropped.com/

It is pretty accurate

another addon is snapcheck.com too

and a paid service is exody.com , not sure if they categorize it or just give you the whole list and you use softwares like domain name analyzer to filter them etc..