2013
Pope Francis elected
An Argentine Jesuit named Jorge Mario Bergoglio walked onto St. Peter's loggia, asked the crowd to bless him before he blessed them, and chose the name Francis. The first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit, the first Francis. He paid his own hotel bill the next morning and rode the bus.
Snowden revelations
An NSA contractor named Edward Snowden, hiding in a Hong Kong hotel room, gave The Guardian and The Washington Post the largest leak of intelligence documents in history. The agency had been hoovering up the metadata of millions of Americans and the private conversations of foreign leaders alike. He fled to Russia. The internet's innocence formally ended.
Rana Plaza collapse
A poorly built eight-story garment factory outside Dhaka collapsed onto the seamstresses making clothes for Western brands, killing more than 1,130 people, mostly young women earning a few dollars a day. Survivors were pulled from the concrete for weeks. The disaster forced an awkward conversation about the blood-cheap economics of fast fashion that mostly faded by next season.
Typhoon Haiyan flattens Tacloban
One of the most powerful storms ever recorded made landfall in the central Philippines with sustained winds over 195 mph and gusts approaching 235. A storm surge swept through the coastal city of Tacloban like a tsunami. More than 6,300 people died. Climate scientists, careful with attribution, allowed themselves to say what everyone already suspected.
Maidan begins in Kyiv
After Ukraine's president Viktor Yanukovych abruptly declined to sign an association agreement with the European Union under heavy pressure from Moscow, students began gathering on Kyiv's Independence Square, known as the Maidan. The protests grew, faced beatings and snipers, and three months later toppled Yanukovych. Russia answered by seizing Crimea. The decade's longest war had its prologue.
Boston Marathon bombing
Two pressure-cooker bombs detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding hundreds more, many of whom lost limbs. Two Chechen-American brothers were identified within days through surveillance footage. A four-day manhunt locked down the entire city before the surviving bomber was found bleeding in a backyard boat in Watertown.