Major News and Culture Moments From the Last 10 Years
Events, trends and breakthroughs that defined the decade
by Sarah Elizabeth Adler, AARP, December 31, 2019
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PHOTO BY: HBO
2011: Game of Thrones Reshapes TV
HBO’s star-studded adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels was overwhelmingly popular from day one, as millions of Thrones fans tuned in weekly for eight seasons of battles, betrayals, surprise deaths, and dragons. The show’s final season wrapped this year, but its legacy lives on: In 2018, an estimated 4,500 babies in the U.S. were named after characters — yes, even Khaleesi — from the series.
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PHOTO BY: Bill Pugliano/Getty
2012: Tesla’s Model S Takes Off
Electric efficiency met luxury stylings in Tesla’s Model S sedan, which was rolled out to U.S. consumers in 2012 and quickly became a coveted status symbol for those willing to put down a $5,000 deposit to get on the reservation list. Tesla’s popularity also brought company founder Elon Musk and his other ventures, like Mars exploration program SpaceX, into the spotlight.
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PHOTO BY: Natali_Mis/Getty
2012: CRISPR Revolutionizes Gene Editing
The gene editing tool CRISPR, which works like a pair of DNA-snipping scissors, got a major boost in 2012, when researchers published a paper showing that they could use it to alter a genome in any place they desired. In addition to eradicating genetic diseases in people, scientists hope CRISPR could one day be used to make crops more nutritious and help protect livestock from viruses.
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PHOTO BY: Boston Globe/Getty
2014: Ice Bucket Challenge Goes Viral for a Cause
The steps were simple: Film yourself being doused in a bucket of ice water and share the video on social media, asking others to either do the same or donate to the fight against neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The chilly challenge — filmed by everyone from Britney Spears to Bill Gates — raised more than $115 million for the ALS Foundation and helped fund the discovery of a new ALS-linked gene in 2016.
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PHOTO BY: Taylor Hill/Baltimore Sun/Getty
2014: Serial Popularizes Podcasts, True Crime
The investigative podcast Serial, which retraced the 1999 murder of a high school student in weekly installments, quickly became the must-listen craze of 2014. An estimated 175 million people have downloaded the podcast’s first season, which stoked audience demand for audio storytelling (hundreds of thousands of active podcasts are now available to listeners around the world) and precipitated the popularity of the true-crime genre.
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PHOTO BY: Ellen DeGeneres/Getty
2014: Ellen DeGeneres’s Legendary Oscar Selfie
The comedian gathered a gaggle of stars like Bradley Cooper and Meryl Streep for a selfie that quickly became the most-shared photo on Twitter, racking up 3.2 million shares by the end of the decade. DeGeneres had good timing: That same year, Merriam-Webster added the word “selfie” to the dictionary. As for the origin of the trend? That would be the now-ubiquitous smartphone app Instagram, which launched in 2010 and popularized the art of the front-facing photo.
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PHOTO BY: New York Daily News/Getty
Natural Disasters Make Global Headlines
Natural disasters cost billions and tested resilience worldwide, beginning with the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010 and touching nearly every corner of the globe, including the 2011 earthquake-triggered Fukushima nuclear disaster; deadly hurricanes Sandy (2012), Harvey (2017) and Maria (2017); and California’s massively destructive 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed more than 150,000 acres of land over the course of 17 days.
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PHOTO BY: Wikipedia
2015: Dress Meme Breaks the Internet
White and gold, or blue and black? That question unleashed digital pandemonium as people debated the mind-bending color palette of “The Dress,” later confirmed to be blue and black by the garment’s retailer. The definitive explanation came two years later in a paper published in Journal of Vision, which chalked the debate up to individual differences in color perception.
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PHOTO BY: Noam Galai/Getty
2017: Women’s March Brings Millions to D.C.
A sea of demonstrators donning hand-knit pink hats gathered on the National Mall for the 2017 Women’s March, which brought millions of activists to the nation’s capital for a peaceful call to action and day of intergenerational solidarity.
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PHOTO BY: Image Group LA/Getty
2017: Moonlight Wins Best Picture (After an Onstage Mix-Up with La La Land)
It was a historic Oscar win — with an unforgettable twist. Thanks to an accidental backstage envelope swap, presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly announced that La La Land was the 2017 best picture winner, an honor that really belonged to director Barry Jenkins’ coming-of-age drama Moonlight. Jenkins and his cast eventually made it to the stage, where they accepted the honor with grace and good humor.
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PHOTO BY: JANE BARLOW/Getty
2018: The Royal Wedding Captivates the World
Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s lavish nuptials didn’t mark the first Windsor wedding of the decade (that spot was claimed by Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011), but their union was certainly groundbreaking. An accomplished actress, Markle was the first American to wed into the royal family in decades and is proudly outspoken about her biracial identity.
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PHOTO BY: National Science Foundation/Getty
2019: Scientists Capture First-Ever Picture of a Black Hole
A team of astronomers stunned the world with the first-ever image of a black hole, a feat previously thought impossible because no light escapes from these mysterious space regions. Using a special network of telescopes and techniques honed over a decade, the researchers were finally able to capture a direct view of the halo of glowing gas surrounding the black hole known as M87*, located a cool 53 million light-years from Earth.
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PHOTO BY: null/Getty
2019: Avengers: Endgame Is the Highest-Grossing Movie of All Time
The fourth and final installment of the megapopular Avengers series brought together beloved Marvel characters like Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans) and the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) for one last race to save the universe in this blockbuster, which opened to sold-out theaters in April and quickly grossed more than $2.7 billion at the global box office.