2014
Russia annexes Crimea
Soldiers in unmarked green uniforms appeared at airports and government buildings across the Crimean peninsula within days of Yanukovych's fall. Within three weeks a hastily organized referendum produced a 97% vote to join Russia, conducted at gunpoint. The West imposed sanctions, Putin annexed anyway, and the post-Cold War European order took its first deep wound.
ISIS takes Mosul
A few thousand Islamic State fighters routed several Iraqi divisions from Iraq's second-largest city in three days of astonishing military collapse. Mosul's Sunni residents initially welcomed them as liberators from Shia domination. Days later, on a mosque pulpit, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate from Aleppo to Diyala, and the world rediscovered a horror it thought was finished.
Ferguson and the birth of BLM
A white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot an unarmed Black eighteen-year-old named Michael Brown and left his body in the street for hours. The protests that followed, met with armored vehicles and tear gas, made Black Lives Matter a movement and police use of force a permanent national conversation.
Boko Haram abducts Chibok girls
More than two hundred Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped from a boarding school in Borno State by Boko Haram fighters and disappeared into the dense Sambisa Forest. The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls trended globally, with everyone from Michelle Obama to the Pope holding signs. A few escaped, some were freed, some were married off to fighters. Many never came home.
MH370 disappears
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with 239 people aboard vanished from radar an hour after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur. Search teams from twenty-six countries combed the Indian Ocean for years. A few barnacled fragments washed up on African shores. The plane was never found, and conspiracy theories filled the empty space.
Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement
Tens of thousands of Hong Kong students and professionals occupied the heart of the city's financial district, demanding genuine universal suffrage. They opened umbrellas against police pepper spray, which became the movement's symbol. After 79 days the camps were cleared without concessions. The 2019 protests would be louder, harder, and final.
MH17 shot down over Ukraine
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 298 people aboard, was hit by a Russian-made Buk missile fired from Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. All on board died, including eighty children. Sunflower fields filled with debris and bodies. The war in Donbas suddenly had a global audience and a demand for accountability.