Funny New Stories of the Decade
January 12, 2010: Hundreds of thousands of people are killed after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake strikes the island nation of Haiti.
April 20, 2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico causes the biggest marine oil spill in history.
May 2, 2010: The European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund sign off on a €110 million bailout of Greece, to save the EU country from default.
June 27, 2010: The FBI arrests 10 Russian spies caught living deep undercover in the United States.
Just days later, the group was taken to Vienna, Austria, where they were turned over to Russian authorities in exchange for four Russian nationals accused of being double agents, The Guardian reported at the time.
October 13, 2010: 33 miners are rescued after spending 69 days trapped in a Chilean copper mine.
December 8, 2010: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange turns himself in to British police after Swedish authorities put out a warrant for his arrest in connection to a rape accusation.
Assange denied the allegation and said the extradition order was just a way to get him to Sweden so that he could be extradited to the US for his role in publishing information embarrassing to the American government, according to The New York Times.
While out on bail in the UK in June 2012, Assange sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London as a way to avoid his extradition to Sweden. He lived there for seven years before his asylum was withdrawn in April 2019, following disputes with Ecuadorian authorities, and he was rearrested by British police.
However, Swedish authorities announced they were dropping the rape investigation into Assange in November 2019.
December 17, 2010: The suicide of a Tunisian street vendor serves as a catalyst for the Arab Spring.
Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire outside the local governor's office when government authorities confiscated his wares, according to The New York Times.
The incident caused revolutionary protests in Tunisia, and the toppling of the government within a month. Similar protests broke out in several other North African and Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria.
January 28, 2011: "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen enters rehab, a day after the actor was rushed from his home to the hospital for abdominal and chest pains, according to CBS Los Angeles.
Sheen, who had been in an out of rehab multiple times in his life up until that point, according to USA Today, went on the "Today" show just a few weeks later and said that Alcoholic Anonymous doesn't work on people like him, people with "tiger blood."
He was subsequently fired from his hit TV show. Four years later it would emerge that Sheen was HIV positive.
February 11, 2011: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns under pressure from revolutionaries, giving up the seat he had held for three decades.
Anti-government protests in Egypt broke out a month earlier, as part of the larger Arab Spring, Al Jazeera reported. When Mubarak resigned, the military took control of the government.
Amnesty International said that at least 840 people were killed in the protests that transpired over 18 days.
Mubarak was put on trial for the protester deaths, but acquitted in 2017, according to Al-Ahram.
March 2011: Civil war breaks out in Syria after military defectors create the Free Syrian Army, to combat those loyal to President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Protests had broken out in Syria after police tortured teenagers caught making anti-regime graffiti, according to Mother Jones.
March 11, 2011: An earthquake in Japan causes the second-worst nuclear accident in history.
The Great Sendai Earthquake of 2011 caused a tsunami in Japan's northeastern Fukushima prefecture. That tsunami in turn damaged backup generates at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which went into partial meltdown, prompting the government to order the evacuation of nearly 50,000 residents, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
April 29, 2011: 3 billion people tune in to watch Britain's Prince William marry college sweetheart Kate Middleton in a ceremony at Westminster Cathedral in London
Source: The New York Times
May 1, 2011: President Barack Obama addresses the nation to announce the death of terrorist Osama bin Laden, after a successful Navy SEAL raid on the 9/11 mastermind's compound in Pakistan.
Source: NPR
May 14, 2011: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is pulled off a Paris-bound flight in New York and charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
Three months later, prosecutors decided to drop the case after they lost faith in the credibility of the accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, The New York Times reported at the time.
Strauss-Kahn has always maintained that he did not rape Diallo, but in 2012 he settled with the hotel worker for an undisclosed sum after she sued him for sexual assault, according to The Guardian.
July 7, 2011: Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid shutters after it was revealed that staffers hacked into the phones of prominent figures like Prince William to mine for stories.
Sources: CNN, CSM
July 22, 2011: A right-wing Christian extremist kills 77 people — most of them children — in attacks on Oslo, Norway, and the nearby island of Utoya.
In August 2012, the attacker was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum possible sentence since Norway doesn't have the death penalty, according to CNN.
July 23, 2011: Grammy Award-winning singer Amy Winehouse, 27, is found dead at her home in north London.
Though the troubled songstress had released just two studio albums in her career, the second, "Back to Black," was a critical and popular success. Rolling Stone ranks it #451 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
A coroner later determined the singer's cause of death was from drinking too much alcohol, according to the BBC.
September 17, 2011: The Occupy Wall Street movement begins with about 1,000 people protesting in downtown Manhattan's Zuccotti Park.
The group's main issue was the power and influence held by the richest Americans.
The group held the park for about three months before police kicked them out on November 15. By then, similar protest camps had been started in other cities across America, according to The Week.
October 3, 2011: American Amanda Knox, 24, is freed from an Italian prison after her conviction in the 2009 murder of her British roommate is overthrown.
Knox served nearly four years of a 26-year sentence before she was cleared, according to CNN.
October 20, 2011: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is captured and killed by revolutionaries, bringing an end to his 42-year regime.
November 7, 2011: Michael Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray, is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection to the late singer's overdose death.
July 20, 2012: A shooter opens fire at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight," in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others.
The shooter was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
September 11, 2012: US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans are killed after a mob storms the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Source: CNN
October 22, 2012: After being accused of conducting an elaborate doping scheme, American cyclist Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France medals and banned from cycling competitions for life.
He initially denied the accusations before telling Oprah Winfrey in 2013 that they were true.
October 29, 2012: Superstorm Sandy causes widespread death and damage, especially in the Northeastern US.
Source: Business Insider
November 6, 2012: Voters in Colorado and Washington vote to legalize recreational marijuana, becoming the first states in the US to do so.
February 28, 2013: Basketball legend Dennis Rodman travels to North Korea and meets leader Kim Jong-un, becoming the first American to meet the new leader since he assumed office two years prior.
March 13, 2013: Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected pope, becoming the first South American to lead the Roman Catholic Church. He assumes the name Pope Francis.
Pope Francis was elected after his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, abdicated, becoming the first pope to voluntarily resign since Celestine V in 1294.
April 15, 2013: Two pressure cooker bombs explode at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 250 others.
Brothers Tamerlan, 26, and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, 19, initially escaped the scene, and the city of Boston was effectively shut down for days as law enforcement teams hunted for the bombers.
Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police four days later. A wounded Dzokhar was arrested later that morning, after seeking shelter in a dry-docked boat.
Two years later, Dzokhar was sentenced to death for his role in the bombings.
May 16, 2013: The now-defunct news site Gawker publishes a video showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.
Ford initially refuses to step down, and his increasingly bizarre behavior over the coming weeks and months make international headlines.
His term as mayor came to an end on November 30, 2014, after he dropped out of the race to deal with a cancer diagnosis. But he still won for city councilor of his old constituency with 58% of the vote. He served just two years in that role before dying at the age of 46 in March 2016.
May 6, 2013: Three women who had been missing for about a decade are rescued from the Cleveland, Ohio, home of Ariel Castro.
Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, had each disappeared between 2002 and 2004. They finally escaped after Berry kicked down a screen door and yelled at a neighbor to call 911, according to CBS News.
Castro, 53, later pleaded guilty to several charges to avoid the death penalty, only to die by suicide in his cell a month later.
June 6, 2013: The Guardian and the Washington Post publish stories based on information leaked to them by government contractor Edward Snowden.
Snowden flees the country and is eventually allowed asylum in Russia.
July 6, 2013: "Glee" star Cory Monteith is found dead in a Vancouver, British Columbia, hotel room after succumbing to a drug and alcohol overdose.
July 7, 2013: Scottish tennis player Andy Murray becomes the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.
Source: Tennis.com
July 13, 2013: The Black Lives Matter movement begins after George Zimmerman is acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin.
On February 26, 2012, Zimmerman shot dead Martin because he thought he was an intruder in his Sanford, Florida, neighborhood. But Martin lived in the same neighborhood and was just returning home after a trip to the convenience store to buy an iced tea and candy. The incident caused national outrage over the treatment of black people, especially black boys.
July 22, 2013: Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, gives birth to a baby boy named Prince George, who becomes third in line to the British throne, behind his father and grandfather.
December 5, 2013: Nelson Mandela, South Africa's trailblazing first black president, dies at the age of 95.
Source: Business Insider
February 1, 2014: Dylan Farrow writes an essay describing how her father, director Woody Allen, molested her as a child. Allen was never charged and denies the allegation.
The accusation against Allen wasn't new, but it was the first time that his daughter had spoken publicly to give her side of the story.
February 2, 2014: Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dies at the age of 46 from a drug overdose.
Source: The New York Times
February 18, 2014: A 39-year-old Jimmy Fallon starts his tenure as host of "The Tonight Show".
March 2014: Russia invades Ukraine and annexes the Crimea, after Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, is toppled in anti-government protests.
Sources: Business Insider, Vox
March 8, 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously vanishes off radar while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
Parts of the Boeing 777 would later wash up on islands off the southeastern coast of Africa, but not the fuselage.
March 25, 2014: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow announces her separation from her Coldplay frontman husband Chris Martin on her blog Goop, saying they have decided to "consciously uncouple".
Source: Harper's Bazaar
April 2014: The Flint water crisis begins as the Michigan city tries to cut costs by getting their water from the Flint River instead of getting it from Detroit.
Doctors would later tell residents to stop using the water after finding high lead levels in children's blood.
March 23, 2014: The World Health Organization reports that there has been an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, the start of the largest outbreak of the virus in history.
The virus spread as far as the US, after a man infected with the virus flew to Dallas in October and got sick after landing. He later died, and two nurses became infected while treating him but recovered.
There was another scare when a medical aide worker became infected with the virus after returning to New York City from Guinea.
Seven other people were flown to the US to get treatment for the virus, most of whom were medical workers. Of those seven, six survived and one died.
When Guinea was finally Ebola-free in June 2016, more than 28,600 people had contracted the disease, and 11,325 died.
May 24, 2014: Rapper Kanye West marries reality star Kim Kardashian in a lavish wedding in Florence, Italy.
Source: ABC News
May 31, 2014: The US government agrees to release five Taliban commanders in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had gone missing from a base in Afghanistan five years prior.
President Barack Obama was criticized by some for agreeing to the exchange, since Bergdahl was a deserter, according to the Washington Post.
August 19, 2014: American photojournalist James Foley is beheaded in a video recorded by ISIS, marking the beginning of the terrorist group's rise to power.
Source: Business Insider
August 9, 2014: Unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown is shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, causing several days of riots in the community and fueling the Black Lives Matter movement.
November 24, 2014: Hackers breach the network of Sony Pictures Entertainment and release embarrassing information against the company.
The hackers demanded that Sony cancel its upcoming film "The Interview," which involved a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The FBI later blamed the hack on North Korea.
January 7-9, 2015: Paris is the target of multiple terror attacks that leave 17 people dead.
The shootings took place at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a kosher grocery store, and the Paris suburb of Montrouge. Police killed the three suspects, according to CNN.
February 1, 2015: The New England Patriots win Super Bowl XLIX thanks to an interception with just seconds left in the game.
With just 25 seconds left in the game, the Seattle Seahawks looked on track to overtake the Patriots.
At New England's one-yard line, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson decided to throw the ball instead of rush, and the Patriots' undrafted rookie Malcolm Butler intercepted it. The Patriots won the game 28-24.
March 24, 2015: Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 crashes in the Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
French accident investigators later released a report pinning blame for the crash on the co-pilot, saying he deliberately caused the plane to descend and was dealing with mental health issues, according to the BBC.
May 2015: An outbreak of the Zika virus spreads to Brazil, and eventually moves its way up into Central America and the Caribbean.
Women are warned to be careful traveling to these regions since there is a connection between the virus and babies being born with microcephaly, an issue where a baby's head is abnormally small, according to the World Health Organization.
Adding to the fears, scientists discover that the virus can be passed through sex, as well.
June 6, 2015: American Pharoah wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first horse in 37 years to earn the Triple Crown of American horse racing.
Source: Business Insider
June 6, 2015: Joyce Mitchell, a worker at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, helps two convicted murderers escape.
David Sweat and Richard Matt spent nearly three weeks on the run. Matt was later killed in a shootout with police, while Sweat was shot and survived, according to CNN.
June 16, 2015: New York City real estate mogul Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president with a speech at Trump Tower calling Mexican immigrants "rapists."
Source: Business Insider
June 26, 2015: The Supreme Court issues a 5-4 ruling that gay marriage is legal, legalizing same-sex unions nationwide.
Source: Business Insider
July 11, 2015: Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escapes for a second time from his cell at a Mexican high-security prison.
He was recaptured six months later and extradited to the US for trial.
July 20, 2015: Diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba are restored, decades after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
Source: Business Insider
August 21, 2015: Three American men, including two active military members, thwart a terrorist attack on a French train.
Source: Business Insider
August 26, 2015: WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward are shot dead while filming a live TV segment in Virginia.
The gunman, a disgruntled former employee, died by suicide hours later, the AP reported at the time.
November 13-14, 2015: Terror attacks strike Paris for a second time in a year, resulting in the deaths of 130 people and nearly 500 wounded.
Source: CNN
December 18, 2015: "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is released, earning more than $2 billion at the box office worldwide.
Source: Business Insider
April 3, 2016: A group of news outlets around the world publish stories based on the Panama Papers, a leak of 11.5 million documents from a Panamanian law firm, showing the shady ways wealthy people use offshore accounts.
Source: The New York Times
April 21, 2016: Music legend Prince is found dead in the elevator of his Minnesota estate. An autopsy would later find that the singer died of an overdose of the opioid fentanyl.
Source: USA Today
June 2, 2016: Brock Turner, a former Stanford swim team member, is sentenced to just six months in jail for sexually assaulting an inebriated woman outside a campus fraternity.
The lenient sentence eventually led voters in Palo Alto to to recall Judge Aaron Persky.
June 12, 2016: A gunman opens fire inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53.
Source: CNN, Business Insider
June 24, 2016: Britain votes to leave the European Union.
Source: The Guardian
July 7, 2016: Five Dallas police officers are killed while working at a Black Lives Matter rally. Authorities killed the gunman with a bomb delivered by a robot.
Sources: CNN, AP
August 5-21, 2016: The 2016 summer Olympics are held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
- Tongan Pita Taufatofua becomes an internet sensation as his country's flag bearer, walking in the opening ceremony shirtless with his chest greased up.
- American gymnast Simone Biles became a breakout star, winning four gold medals and one bronze.
- American swimmer Ryan Lochte is roped into a scandal after he's caught lying about an assault on a night out in Rio.
September 15, 2016: Angelina Jolie files for divorce from husband Brad Pitt.
Source: CNN
October 7, 2016: The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issue a joint statement warning that the Russians are trying to interfere in the presidential election.
Source: Department of Homeland Security
October 8, 2016: The Washington Post publishes a video from a 2005 interview between "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush and Donald Trump, in which the latter said he can grab women "by the p---y" because he's a star.
Source: Washington Post
November 3, 2016: The Chicago Cubs break the Billy Goat curse and win their first World Series in 108 years.
The Billy Goat curse haunted the team since 1945, when William "Billy Goat" Sianis bought a ticket for himself and his goat Murphy for Game 4 of the Cubs' World Series game against the Detroit Tigers, according to NBC News.
When the two were kicked out of the stadium for Murphy's smell, Sianis reportedly said, "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more!"
November 8, 2016: Donald Trump is elected president, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in a landmark upset.
Source: Business Insider
January 20, 2017: Donald Trump is sworn in as the nation's 45th president.
Trump's speech famously declares: "This American carnage stops right here and stops right now."
In the days following, Trump and the White House press secretary Sean Spicer go on the offensive when the media observes that the crowds weren't as big as Obama's inauguration.
January 21, 2017: Hundreds of thousands of people gather in Washington, D.C. and cities around the world to take part in the Women's March, protesting Trump's election.
Source: The New York Times
January 28, 2017: Serena Williams beats her sister Venus to win the Australian Open, while secretly eight weeks pregnant with her first child.
Source: Newsweek
February 26, 2017: "La La Land" is mistakenly announced as the Best Picture winner at the Oscars, instead of "Moonlight."
Source: "Today"
April 19, 2017: Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez dies by suicide in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the June 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.
Source: NBC Sports
June 1, 2017: Trump announces his intention to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.
Source: Business Insider
July 8, 2017: The New York Times publishes a report on how members of Trump's campaign — including his son Donald Jr. — met with Russian agents in Trump Tower in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election.
Source: The New York Times
October 2017: Famous men are culled in the #MeToo movement.
Movie producer Harvey Weinstein was the first to fall when The New York Times and New Yorker published sexual misconduct allegations against him in early October.
The outrage encourage other people in Hollywood and other industries to speak out about sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace.
Among the men who had their reputations tarnished include: Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Al Franken, and Louis C.K.
October 1, 2017: Fifty-eight people are killed and more than 850 are injured after a gunman opens fire on a Las Vegas music festival from a 32nd floor room in the Mandalay Bay casino.
Source: Business Insider
October 12, 2017: Trump announces that the Pakistani military has rescued Canadian-American couple Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman and their children from the Haqqani network.
Their rescue came nearly five years to the day that they were captured while backpacking through Afghanistan, according to The Guardian.
November 15, 2017: The San Juan, an Argentine navy submarine, goes missing. It was found at the bottom of the ocean almost a year later, with all 44 crew dead from an explosion that happened in the vessel.
Source: NPR
November 21, 2017: Dramatic video emerges showing a North Korean soldier defecting to South Korea while being shot at.
Source: AP
January 14, 2018: A teen girl escapes from her family home in southern California and calls police to rescue the rest of her 12 siblings from their abusive parents.
David and Louise Turpin were sentenced to life in prison in April 2019.
February 9-25, 2018: The Winter Olympics are held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
- North and South Korean athletes walk out under the same unified flag during the opening ceremonies and compete as a single country.
- American Chloe Kim, 17, becomes the youngest woman ever to win gold in the women's halfpipe.
February 4, 2018: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots to win their first-ever Super Bowl and stun viewers with a now-classic trick play.
The highlight of the game was a trick play by the Eagles called "Philly Special," in which quarterback Nick Foles had tight end Trey Burton throw the ball to him for a touchdown.
February 14, 2018: Seventeen students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, are killed, and another 17 are injured, in a horrific shooting.
Source: Business Insider
March 24, 2018: Hundreds of thousands take part in the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., organized by survivors of the Parkland shooting to call for gun control reform.
Source: The New York Times
April 13, 2018: The US, Britain, and France conduct air strikes against Syria in response to President Bashar al-Assad's suspected use of chemical weapons on citizens in a civil war gripping the country.
"These are not the actions of a man," Trump said of the suspected chemical attack, according to The New York Times. "They are crimes of a monster instead."
The conflict in Syria began in 2011, and still rages on today.
April 6-June 20, 2018: Under its "zero tolerance" immigration policy, the Trump administration separates thousands of children from their migrant parents at the border, causing widespread outrage on a national level.
Source: Business Insider
April 24, 2018: DNA submitted to an ancestry database helps investigators catch who they believe to be the "Golden State Killer", a murderer and rapist who tormented the Bay Area in the 1970s and '80s.
Source: Washington Post
May 19, 2018: Millions around the world tune in to watch Britain's Prince Harry marry American actress Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle.
Source: CNBC
June 24, 2018: Saudi Arabia lifts its ban on allowing women to drive.
Source: NPR
July 10, 2018: 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach are rescued from a flooded cave after more than two weeks stuck in the cavern.
Source: Business Insider
October 2, 2018: Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is murdered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
Source:Insider
January 10, 2019: Jayme Closs, a 13-year-old Wisconsin girl who went missing three months prior, escapes from a rural home where she was being held captive by her parent's killer. He later pleads guilty to the crimes.
Sources: Insider, NPR
March 2019: Governments around the world banned the Boeing 737 Max from their airspaces after two crashes in 5 months killed 346 people.
Source:Business Insider
March 12, 2019: Federal prosecutors in Boston charge at least 50 people in the "Varsity Blues" scandal, accusing many of them of using bribes to get their students into college. Among the defendants are actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
Source: Insider
March 15, 2019: Fifty people are killed and another 50 are injured in attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Source:Insider
July 7, 2019: The US women's national soccer team wins the World Cup for a fourth time in a row.
Source: NPR
August 7, 2019: The bodies of Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky are found in Manitoba, Canada. Police suspect the friends went on a killing spree across the country, and had been searching for them for 20 days.
Source: Insider
October 31, 2019: The House votes to formalize its impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine.
Source: Business Inisder
If you or someone you know is experiencing depression or has had thoughts of harming themself or taking their own life, get help. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) provides 24/7, free, confidential support for people in distress, as well as best practices for professionals and resources to aid in prevention and crisis situations. Help is also available through the Crisis Text Line — just text "HOME" to 741741.
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) or visit its website to receive confidential support.
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Source: https://www.insider.com/biggest-news-stories-of-the-2010s-decade
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