Directory

2010 CE

A year shaped by the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Arab Spring's precursors, and the rise of the iPad and Instagram.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • U.S. President Barack Obama signed the New START treaty with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April, committing both nations to further reductions in deployed strategic nuclear warheads.
  • The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1929 in June, imposing a fourth round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear enrichment program.
  • A popular uprising in Tunisia began in December following the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, triggering protests that would spread across the Arab world.
  • Tensions escalated on the Korean Peninsula after North Korea shelled Yongpyeong Island in November, killing four South Koreans in the most serious cross-border attack in decades.
  • WikiLeaks published over 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables beginning in November, exposing confidential communications between the State Department and embassies worldwide.
  • Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other officials died in an aircraft crash near Smolensk, Russia in April while traveling to a commemoration of the Katyn massacre.
  • The United Kingdom held a general election in May resulting in a hung parliament. Conservative leader David Cameron formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg.
  • Israel's naval interception of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara flotilla in May resulted in nine deaths, straining Israeli-Turkish relations and drawing international condemnation.
  • Myanmar held its first general election in twenty years in November, though the process was widely criticized as neither free nor fair by international observers.
  • Ethiopia's ruling party won 99.6% of parliamentary seats in May elections, consolidating Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's control and drawing criticism from opposition groups and Western governments.

Conflict & Security

  • The United States maintained approximately 96,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of President Obama's surge strategy announced in late 2009, marking the peak of American military deployment.
  • U.S. combat operations in Iraq formally ended on August 31, with the remaining 50,000 troops transitioning to an advisory role under Operation New Dawn.
  • A car bomb in Times Square, New York failed to detonate in May. Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad was arrested and convicted in connection with the attempted attack.
  • Ethnic violence erupted in Kyrgyzstan's southern city of Osh in June, killing hundreds and displacing approximately 400,000 people, predominantly ethnic Uzbeks.
  • Mexico's drug war intensified, with an estimated 15,000 drug-related killings during the year. Violence concentrated in border cities including Ciudad Juarez and Monterrey.
  • The Stuxnet computer worm was discovered, later attributed to a joint U.S.-Israeli operation targeting Iran's nuclear centrifuges at the Natanz facility.
  • Al-Shabaab carried out twin bombings in Kampala, Uganda in July during the FIFA World Cup final, killing 74 people in its first major attack outside Somalia.
  • A hostage crisis at a Manila bus in August resulted in the deaths of eight Hong Kong tourists, severely damaging Philippines-Hong Kong relations.
  • Naxalite insurgents in India carried out a series of attacks including the derailment of a passenger train in West Bengal in May, killing 148 people.
  • Thailand experienced its worst political violence in decades as security forces dispersed Red Shirt protesters in Bangkok in May, resulting in over 90 deaths across the extended crisis.

Economy & Finance

  • The European sovereign debt crisis intensified. Greece received a 110 billion euro bailout from the EU and IMF in May after its bond yields reached unsustainable levels.
  • Ireland accepted a 67.5 billion euro bailout package in November as its banking sector crisis overwhelmed state finances.
  • The U.S. Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in July, the most comprehensive financial regulation legislation since the 1930s.
  • U.S. unemployment remained above 9% throughout the year, with long-term unemployment reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression.
  • China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP, a symbolic shift in the global economic hierarchy.
  • The U.S. Federal Reserve under Chair Ben Bernanke launched a second round of quantitative easing (QE2) in November, purchasing $600 billion in Treasury securities.
  • Gold prices reached record highs, surpassing $1,400 per ounce in November as investors sought safe-haven assets amid sovereign debt fears and currency uncertainty.
  • The European Financial Stability Facility was established in June as a temporary rescue mechanism for eurozone member states facing financial distress.
  • Brazil's economy grew at 7.5%, its fastest rate in over two decades, driven by commodity exports and domestic consumption under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's final year in office.
  • The Flash Crash on May 6 saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge nearly 1,000 points in minutes before largely recovering, exposing vulnerabilities in automated trading systems.

Technology & Infrastructure

  • Apple released the iPad in April, creating the modern tablet computing category and selling over 15 million units in its first year.
  • Instagram launched in October as a photo-sharing mobile application, reaching one million users within two months.
  • Google launched its social networking platform Google Buzz in February, facing immediate privacy backlash over automatic follower lists drawn from Gmail contacts.
  • The number of global mobile phone subscriptions surpassed 5 billion, with the fastest growth occurring in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
  • Netflix began its international expansion, launching streaming services in Canada in September as the company shifted from DVD-by-mail to digital delivery.
  • China's high-speed rail network expanded rapidly, with the Shanghai-Nanjing and other intercity lines opening, extending the world's largest high-speed network.
  • Pinterest launched as an invitation-only platform in March, introducing a visual bookmarking model that would influence social media design.
  • 4G LTE wireless networks began commercial deployment in the United States and Scandinavia, promising significantly faster mobile data speeds.
  • The Stuxnet worm represented the first publicly known cyberweapon targeting industrial control systems, marking a new era in state-sponsored cyber operations.
  • Twitter usage surged past 100 million active users, with the platform playing an increasingly prominent role in news distribution and political communication.

Science & Discovery

  • Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute created the first synthetic bacterial cell in May, inserting a chemically synthesized genome into a recipient cell that then replicated.
  • NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory launched in February, providing unprecedented high-resolution imaging of the Sun's surface and atmosphere.
  • The Neanderthal genome was sequenced by Svante Paabo's team at the Max Planck Institute, revealing that modern humans of non-African descent carry 1-4% Neanderthal DNA.
  • The Planck space telescope released its first all-sky survey image in July, mapping the cosmic microwave background radiation with unprecedented precision.
  • SpaceX successfully launched and recovered the Dragon capsule in December, making it the first commercial spacecraft to orbit Earth and return safely.
  • The Kepler space telescope identified over 700 candidate exoplanets during its initial survey period, dramatically expanding the catalog of potential worlds beyond our solar system.
  • Researchers at CERN trapped antihydrogen atoms for the first time, holding antimatter for a fraction of a second in the ALPHA experiment.
  • Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft returned to Earth in June carrying samples from asteroid Itokawa, completing the first asteroid sample-return mission.
  • A study published in Science identified a bacterium from Mono Lake, California that researchers initially claimed could incorporate arsenic into its DNA, sparking major scientific debate.
  • The Large Hadron Collider at CERN achieved its first high-energy proton collisions at 7 TeV in March, advancing the search for the Higgs boson.

Health & Medicine

  • The WHO declared the H1N1 influenza pandemic over in August, approximately 14 months after the initial declaration. Estimated global deaths ranged from 151,700 to 575,400.
  • Haiti's cholera outbreak began in October, eventually killing over 10,000 people. The strain was later traced to a UN peacekeeping camp.
  • The Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Obama in March, representing the most significant expansion of U.S. health coverage since Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.
  • An experimental HIV vaccine trial (RV144) showed modest efficacy of approximately 31% in a Thai cohort, providing the first evidence that an HIV vaccine was possible.
  • The FDA approved the first therapeutic cancer vaccine, sipuleucel-T (Provenge), for treatment of advanced prostate cancer in April.
  • Maternal mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa remained among the highest globally, with WHO reporting limited progress toward Millennium Development Goal 5.
  • Pakistan's devastating floods displaced over 20 million people and overwhelmed the country's healthcare infrastructure, triggering outbreaks of waterborne diseases.
  • Researchers reported that early antiretroviral treatment could reduce HIV transmission by 96%, a finding that transformed prevention strategies for the virus.
  • Global polio cases fell to approximately 1,350, concentrated in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, as the eradication campaign continued its final push.
  • China's healthcare reform program expanded insurance coverage to over 90% of the population, though disparities between urban and rural access persisted.

Climate & Environment

  • The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers. The resulting BP oil spill released approximately 4.9 million barrels over 87 days, the largest marine oil spill in history.
  • Pakistan experienced catastrophic flooding beginning in July, affecting approximately 20 million people across the Indus River basin and submerging one-fifth of the country.
  • A heat wave in Russia killed an estimated 55,000 people during the summer, destroying one-third of the grain harvest and triggering a wheat export ban.
  • Global average temperature tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record at the time, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
  • The COP16 climate summit in Cancun produced the Cancun Agreements, establishing the Green Climate Fund and formalizing the goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
  • The volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland in April disrupted European air traffic for weeks, grounding approximately 100,000 flights and affecting 10 million travelers.
  • China's rare earth export restrictions raised international concern about supply chain vulnerability for critical minerals used in electronics and clean energy technologies.
  • A magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile in February, triggering a Pacific-wide tsunami warning and causing an estimated $30 billion in damage.
  • The UN declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity, though a major assessment found that governments had failed to meet the 2010 targets for halting biodiversity loss.
  • Arctic sea ice extent continued its long-term decline, with the September minimum ranking as the third-lowest in the satellite record at the time.

Culture & Society

  • The first FIFA World Cup held in Africa took place in South Africa from June to July. Spain won its first World Cup title, defeating the Netherlands in the final.
  • The Chilean mining disaster captivated global audiences as 33 miners were rescued after 69 days trapped underground in the San Jose mine in October.
  • The "It Gets Better" campaign launched in September in response to a series of suicides by LGBTQ youth in the United States, drawing participation from public figures and organizations worldwide.
  • Haiti suffered a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on January 12, killing an estimated 220,000 people and displacing over 1.5 million in one of the deadliest natural disasters in the Western Hemisphere.
  • The global population approached 6.9 billion, with demographic projections indicating it would reach 7 billion by late 2011.
  • Wikileaks founder Julian Assange became one of the most divisive public figures of the year, facing both praise for transparency advocacy and criminal charges in Sweden.
  • Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in Myanmar on November 13, after spending 15 of the previous 21 years in detention.
  • The Winter Olympics were held in Vancouver, Canada in February, with Canada leading the medal count. The Summer Youth Olympics debuted in Singapore in August.
  • Social media usage continued its rapid expansion, with Facebook surpassing 500 million active users and becoming the dominant global social networking platform.
  • The Tea Party movement gained significant political influence in the United States, contributing to Republican victories in the November midterm elections that shifted control of the House of Representatives.