Boiled down to its chaotic standout moments, 2011 feels simultaneously like it was both a but few weeks and a whole lifetime ago. Earthquakes wrought havoc in New Zealand and Japan, with a magnitude 6.3 event killing 185 and injuring thousands more in Christchurch. Then, just over two weeks later, a magnitude 9 strike dwarfed it and launched a 30ft tsunami towards the Japanese mainland, reportedly killing over 22,000 and causing an explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant – the second worst nuclear accident in history. Osama Bin Laden – the al Qaeda founder and suspected mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks a decade earlier – was killed by special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, ending one of the biggest manhunts i...
