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April 20, 2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico causes the biggest marine oil spill in history.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica

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.

Source: The Guardian

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.

Sources: CNN, Encyclopedia Britannica

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 He lived there for seven years before his asylum was withdrawn in April 2019, following disputes with Ecuadorian authorities, and he was rearrested by British police.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.

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 Stoneranks 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.

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.

Nine other states have since followed suit, from Alaska to Maine.

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.

Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica, The New York Times

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.

Source: USA Today

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.

Source: Business Insider

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".

Source: The New York Times

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.

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.

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119 stories that gripped the world in the 2010s - INSIDER