2021
Taliban return to Kabul
As the last American troops withdrew, the Taliban swept through Afghanistan's provinces in days and entered Kabul without a fight. Ashraf Ghani fled by helicopter. Desperate Afghans clung to American transport planes lifting off from the airport. Twenty years of war, two trillion dollars, ended in a bitterly familiar tableau.
U.S. Capitol stormed
A pro-Trump mob, summoned to Washington to protest the certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory, broke past police lines and ransacked the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers fled or hid under their desks. Five people died in the chaos. The president watched on television and tweeted encouragement. American democracy had survived, but the air around it had changed permanently.
Myanmar coup
Hours before parliament was to convene, the Tatmadaw arrested Aung San Suu Kyi and her cabinet and declared a state of emergency. A decade of fragile civilian rule ended in a morning. Resistance committees and ethnic armies took to the jungle. By year's end Myanmar was again at war with itself.
Omicron variant emerges
South African scientists alerted the world to a new coronavirus variant carrying an alarming number of mutations. Within weeks Omicron had reached every continent and was causing the largest case waves of the pandemic, though the vaccines and prior infection blunted the worst. Most countries quietly stopped counting after this.
Squid Game eats the world
A bleak Korean survival drama in which indebted contestants play deadly children's games for cash became, within a month, the most-watched show in Netflix's history, viewed in ninety countries simultaneously. Pink jumpsuits appeared at Halloween parties from Berlin to Buenos Aires. K-content, K-pop, K-cinema: the Korean wave had become a kind of global lingua franca.
Ever Given blocks the Suez
A 1,300-foot container ship called the Ever Given turned sideways in the Suez Canal during a sandstorm and lodged itself between the banks. Three hundred ships piled up at either end. Memes proliferated. Tugboats freed the giant after six days, and a fragile global supply chain learned how thin its margins really were.
James Webb Space Telescope launches
After two decades of development, $10 billion in costs, and dozens of delays that nearly killed the program, NASA's successor to Hubble lifted off from French Guiana on a Christmas morning. It unfolded its tennis-court sunshield and gold-coated mirrors over a tense month. Six months later it sent home images of galaxies older than anyone had ever seen.