Top 10 Stories of 2012: Year in Review

It was an all-around bad year for guys named Armstrong: not only did Neil take his final moonwalk; we also lost a hero in Lance. The cyclist had been denying doping allegations for a while, until everyone came out of the woodwork to testify against him. He was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, banned from competition and lost sponsorships left, right and center.

When CERN announced they had probably found the elusive Higgs boson, they finally proved that smashing atoms together at high speeds was more than just a crazy expensive hobby. The implications of this discovery are far-reaching, so we soon might know why…things…mass…okay we don’t really know, but if we were science nerds we’re pretty sure we’d be pumped.

2012 was a good year to be a Londoner – unless you hate tourists. The city marked Queen Elizabeth’s 60 years on the throne with her never-ending Diamond Jubilee celebrations, they used the Summer Olympics to remind us they have produced plenty of their own celebrities, thank you very much, and Princess Kate is knocked up. What more could you ask for?

It’s nothing new for humans to put equipment on Mars, but the Curiosity rover is so high-tech and so huge that it’s kind of a big deal. In fact, not only was this one of NASA’s most expensive projects, it was also one of their most successful: that nothing at all went wrong was basically a miracle. We may soon find out if life ever existed on the red planet. And, in the meantime, we’re reading one of the most adorable twitter feeds for an inanimate object that we’ve seen in a while.

On May 18th, Facebook held the largest initial public offering in internet history, with the company being valued at $104 billion. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg changes his relationship status to married. But that bubble burst pretty fast: trading was held up by tech hiccups at Nasdaq, and it quickly became obvious that the stock was priced way too high. Lawsuits started popping up, and that was the kiss of death. Well Zuck, you can’t win ‘em all.

One lone nut makes a movie bashing Islam. The next thing you know, 75 people are dead from demonstrations and protests, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya. Anti-American sentiment ran high in other countries like Egypt and Yemen, but things eventually cooled down. Seriously, has no one learned the lesson yet about depicting Muhammad? We know about the First Amendment and everything, but, like, use your head?

The Gaza Strip is back on the front pages, for all the wrong reasons. No one thought this dispute was over, but things in the Middle East certainly escalated towards the end of the year, especially once the United Nations voted to give Palestine non-member observer state status. Thousands of rockets were fired, a lot of he-said-she-said about who shot first came up, but one thing was clear: the Israeli-Palestinian clash gave Anderson Cooper another chance to look impossibly cool.

October 29th was a bad day to be in or near New York: that’s when Hurricane or Superstorm Sandy touched down, after it ravaged countries like Jamaica and Haiti. It wasn’t quite as costly as Katrina, but the Northeastern United States was devastated: subways flooded, boardwalks washed away, houses burned, sand was found in some very strange places, and celebrities sang. Are we convinced about climate change YET?

There weren’t any Joe the Plumbers or “lipstick on a pig” soundbites in this year’s presidential election campaign, but that didn’t mean it was any less entertaining, or any less packed with gaffes and memes. Here are a few of our favorites: “I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too;” “So it’s almost like an Etch-a-Sketch; you can kind of shake it up and restart all over again;” “I think it’s called Romnesia;” “They brought us whole binders full of women.” This is why we’re glad there are only elections every four years…

Born out of 2011’s Arab Spring, this conflict is at an impasse. It’s a bloody battle between supporters and detractors of President Bashar al-Assad’s Ba’ath Party, and tens of thousands have been killed. Only this year did the international Red Cross officially acknowledge it as a civil war and so far the West has stayed out of it, but Syrians have been fleeing their country is huge numbers to escape the near-constant carnage and the potential use of chemical weapons.

There were many other important stories in 2012: Here are some of the other headlines.

Montage

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