January: Hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets in Cairo, demanding that President Hosni Mubarek step down. On Feb. 11, he resigned. A deranged gunman named Jared Loughner shot U.S. representative Gabrielle Giffords in the head at a Tucson mall parking lot. Giffords survived, but six others did not.
February: The “Arab Spring” of pro-democracy protests continued throughout the Middle East in Yemen and Morocco. And in Libya, the four-decade dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi saw the beginning of its downfall with Gadhafi vowing to die as a martyr.
March: A 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the island of Japan, causing a massive tsunami and severe damage to the nuclear plant in Fukushima. Over 15,000 are reported dead.
April: An estimated two billion people watched the wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London.
May: President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden, the founder and leader of the militant group Al-Qaeda, and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil, was killed during an American military operation in Pakistan.
U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner sent a link to a sexually suggestive photograph of himself to a woman following his Twitter account.
June: “Arab Spring” continues as thousands of Syrians flee to Turkey as Syrian troops begin killing protestors. Anthony Weiner resigns from Congress.
July: 76 people are killed in twin terrorist attacks in Norway after a bombing and shooting by 32-year old right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik.
The world’s first artificial organ transplant is achieved, using an artificial windpipe coated with stem cells.
August: In the Battle of Tripoli, Libyan rebels took control of the nation’s capital, effectively overthrowing the government of Gadhafi. And it was also the beginning of the end for GOP presidential hopeful Michelle Bachman after she informed listeners, “the founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery.”
September: Herman Cain, a former executive in the pizza industry, became the surprise frontrunner in the logjam of GOP presidential candidates. At the south end of the world’s most famous island, activists begin a protest that would swell across the country and “Occupy Wall Street” brings memories of the Sixties with a movement against corporate greed.
October: Steve Jobs, who partnered with Steve Wozniak, the inventor of the Apple computer, and turned it into a multi-billion dollar corporation, died from cancer at the age of 56. Jobs was 16 when he, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded Apple computer in the garage of Jobs’ parents. Moammar Gadhafi’s reign ends when he is shot and killed in Sirte, the city where he was born. Cain says he has little if any knowledge of foreign policy.
November: Greece teeters on the abyss of financial collapse as Europe’s leaders scramble to keep their continent out of economic disaster. In the GOP race, Cain has to confront sexual impropriety allegations while former Texas Governor Rick Perry gaffes when he can’t remember the name of the Department of Energy.
December: What began in 2003 with an invasion by the United States under the administration of President George W. Bush and the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Tony Blair comes to an end as the last U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq on December 18. Cain suspends his campaign and other hopefuls in the race also lose hope. But instead of Mitt Romney surging ahead, a familiar name jumps in front of him. Newt Gingrich isn’t lacking in confidence when he tells ABC News it’s hard to not see himself as the nominee.