The year in review

January

A massive earthquake devastates the island of Haiti, killing 230,000 people, injuring another 300,000, and leaving more than a million homeless. As corpses pile up in the streets of Port-au-Prince, the stricken island nation is deluged with relief workers, pledges of international aid, and well-dressed U.S. news anchors combing the rubble for potential interviewees. The Rev. Pat Robertson weighs in, blaming the disaster on the founders of modern Haiti, who he says swore a “pact with the Devil.” On the first anniversary of his inauguration, President Obama sees his approval rating—once as high as 68 percent—slip below 50 percent for the first time, to 47 percent, with people expressing disappointment with his handling of the still-stagnant economy. Obama’s plan to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, meanwhile, suffers a major setback when Republican Scott Brown wins a special election in Massachusetts to replace the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, depriving Democrats of their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 25, declares that the age of privacy has ended. The new “social norm,” says Zuckerberg, is to share one’s personal information “more openly and with more people.”

February

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In Nashville, the populist conservative movement known as the Tea Party holds its first convention. The keynote speaker—for a $100,000 speaking fee—is Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate. Speaking from notes written on her hand, Palin rips into President Obama, inquiring of the boisterous crowd, “How’s that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya?” Wrangling continues over the health-care bill, with President Obama releasing a blueprint for reform aimed at making a bill already passed by the Senate more palatable to House Democrats. Shamed golfer Tiger Woods emerges from seclusion to give an emotional press conference. Apologizing for his serial infidelities, Woods says he has no immediate plans to return to professional golf, and instead will focus on healing his marriage and “living a life of integrity.”

March

Congressional Democrats use a procedural trick to circumvent a threatened Republican filibuster, and President Obama signs into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the first major expansion of social welfare since Medicare in 1965. Not a single Republican votes for it. The bill is an attempt to remedy the fact that more than 50 million Americans are without insurance, and requires all citizens to purchase health insurance, beginning in 2014. It prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to those already sick. Republicans are unanimous in their outrage and vow repeal. A South Korean warship, the Cheonan, sinks after a torpedo strike—most likely from a North Korean submarine—killing 46 seamen.

April

A military airliner crashes in Russia, killing Polish President Lech Kaczynski and dozens of Polish officials. President Obama is due to attend Kaczynski’s funeral, but the trip is canceled when the Ejyafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupts, spewing potentially engine-clogging ash into the atmosphere. The ash cloud lingers for weeks, grounding millions of passengers in Europe and costing the global airline industry around $200 million a day. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signs into law a controversial bill empowering state police to demand the papers of anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” of being an illegal immigrant. In the Gulf of Mexico, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes, killing 11 oil workers and injuring another 17 before sinking to the ocean floor. Two days later, the Coast Guard reports some “surface sheening” of the ocean around the sunken platform, suggesting that as much as 1,000 barrels a day may be seeping from the ruptured well.

May

BP raises its estimate of how much oil is flowing into the Gulf to 5,000 barrels a day, making this already the worst manmade environmental disaster in North American history. Days later, the U.S. Geological Survey ups the figure to between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels a day, and BP engineers begin a series of increasingly desperate attempts to cap the leak, including forcing a mixture of golf balls and shredded tires into the ruptured well. Nothing works. In Washington, D.C., President Obama nominates Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 50, to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. Debate rages over whether or not Kagan’s sexuality is fair game for public scrutiny, until the White House reveals that despite never marrying, and having once been photographed playing softball, Kagan is in fact heterosexual.

June

Israeli troops board a relief ship headed for Gaza, and when they’re met with resistance from club-wielding activists, the commandos open fire, killing 10. The outraged international reaction leads Israel to loosen its strict blockade of Gaza and the 1.5 million Palestinians who live there. In the Gulf, BP engineers finally succeed in fitting a “containment cap” to the ruptured oil well that will capture up to 15,000 barrels of oil a day. But government experts revise their flow rate to 60,000 barrels a day. Facing criticism of his low-key handling of the spill, President Obama says he is in urgent consultation with experts on the scene, in part to determine “whose ass to kick.” The most likely candidate is one Tony Hayward, the boyish, curly-haired CEO of BP, who fails to endear himself to the American people by saying in a posh British accent, “I want my life back.” Hayward also helpfully reminds the public that the oil is spilling into “a very big ocean.”

July

Spain wins soccer’s World Cup. Facebook announces it now has 500 million users. WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy website, publishes 92,000 classified U.S. military documents from the ongoing war in Afghanistan, revealing intense frustration by commanders on the ground over Afghan corruption and the Taliban’s military resiliency. In the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers finally stanch the flow of oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon rig, but not before an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil—206 million gallons—have spilled into the water, one of the country’s prime fisheries. A new controversy erupts around plans to build an Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan, two blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center. Sarah Palin, weighing in via her Twitter account, calls on Muslims to “refudiate” the planned mosque, explaining—when it’s pointed out that there is no such word—that “Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!” President Obama signs into law a sweeping package of new regulations on the financial industry. “Thanks to this bill,” says Obama, “the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes.”

August

In Copiapó, Chile, a cave-in at a copper mine traps 33 miners nearly a half-mile underground, and they are feared dead. Fierce rainstorms inundate Pakistan, leaving more than 20 percent of the country underwater and 20 million people homeless. In Washington, Fox News’ Glenn Beck holds a rally to “Restore Honor” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Voting largely along party lines, the Senate confirms Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. In California, a federal judge overturns Proposition 8, a state ballot initiative banning gay marriage, though he imposes a stay on his own ruling in anticipation of appeals. In Chile, 17 days after the cave-in, workers drilling an exploratory bore-hole in the search for the missing miners find a note taped to the end of their drill-bit: “We are alive in the refuge,” it reads in Spanish, signed “Los 33.”

September

After a seven-year campaign that cost the lives of 4,400 U.S. troops and at least 100,000 civilians, the last U.S. combat unit leaves Iraq. With 50,000 “support troops” remaining in the country—and mindful of his predecessor’s premature declaration of “Mission Accomplished”—President Obama describes the pullout only as “a milestone in the Iraq war.” At home, a decidedly tepid economic recovery is underway, with growth at a sluggish 1.6 percent and unemployment stalled at 9.6 percent. The Census Bureau reports that 14 percent of Americans are living below the poverty line—the highest percentage since 1994. Amid the general gloom, President Obama’s approval rating sinks to another new low of 42 percent. Another round of GOP primaries brings victories for more Tea Party candidates.

October

After 69 days underground, the 33 Chilean miners return to the surface, one by one, in a specially designed rescue capsule, stepping out to the cheers and hugs of jubilant family members and the glare of media superstardom. WikiLeaks publishes a trove of 400,000 classified U.S. military documents, this time from the war in Iraq. Computer-security experts tell the world of an ultra-sophisticated computer virus named “Stuxnet,” seemingly engineered to locate and destroy the industrial centrifuges being used in Iran’s nuclear program. Commentator Juan Williams is fired from National Public Radio for admitting he feels uncomfortable flying with passengers dressed in “full Muslim garb.” Fox News promptly gives Williams a multiyear, $2 million contract. With Republicans poised for huge gains in the midterms, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declares, “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for Barack Obama to be a one-term president.”

November

As expected, the Republican Party cleans up in the midterm elections, seizing back the House of Representatives with a record net gain of 63 seats. In the Senate, the GOP wins 24 of 37 races, leaving Democrats with a meager six-seat majority. A visibly shaken President Obama describes the results as a “shellacking,” but largely blames his party’s dismal showing on poor messaging and public frustration with the moribund economy. The midterms are a mixed bag for Sarah Palin, who sees some prominent candidates she endorsed win, but about half lose. The New Oxford American Dictionary names “refudiate” its Word of the Year, and TLC debuts Sarah Palin’s Alaska, an eight-part reality show following the former governor and her family as they hike, paddle, hunt, and fish their way around Palin’s telegenic home state. North and South Korea exchange artillery fire, raising tensions along their disputed border to their highest level in more than a decade.

December

WikiLeaks publishes another massive trove of documents: 251,000 secret diplomatic cables containing a wealth of sensitive and embarrassing revelations. In Washington, Senate Republicans reach agreement with President Obama on a deal to extend unemployment benefits to the tens of millions of Americans still out of work in return for a temporary extension of the Bush-era tax cuts—including those for people earning more than $250,000 a year. After some Democrats denounce the extension as a betrayal, an irritated Obama chides Republicans for “holding the nation hostage” and liberals for holding him to “some abstract ideal.” In a scene from Sarah Palin’s Alaska that chills vegetarians and Democrats everywhere, Palin clubs to death a huge halibut that one of her family members caught, and then triumphantly holds up its still-beating heart. In a TV interview, Palin says she’s confident that she could beat President Obama in 2012. If other Republicans “don’t have a shot at winning,” Palin says, “I would offer myself up.”