Tragedy, terror, triumph in ’10

Associated Press

The disruptions of earthly existence came from some unlikely places in 2010: ash from an Icelandic volcano; the contents of an airline passenger’s underwear; a website called WikiLeaks spilling the secret cables of international diplomacy onto front pages across the world.

More than ever, for good and or bad, history became an experience shared worldwide, from the horror of Haiti’s earthquake at the start of 2010 to the thrill that coursed across the continents in October as Chilean miners trapped underground for 10 weeks were winched to safety.

The year opened with two images — one of triumph, another of tragedy. The world’s tallest skyscraper, more than 160 stories high, was inaugurated in the Persian Gulf state of Dubai, only to be eclipsed within days by the elegant white presidential palace of Haiti, collapsed in an earthquake that killed 230,000 people.

And near year’s end came another defining image, this time from a London street — Prince Charles and his wife Camilla looking shocked and frightened as a mob inflamed by Europe’s deepening financial meltdown besieged the couple’s Rolls-Royce as they headed to the theater.

Here’s a look at the things that the world saw — and will remember — from 2010.

TERRORISM

It struck far and wide _ in Kampala, the Ugandan capital; on a Stockholm street; in the Moscow subway. Other bombings claimed many more lives in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Authorities on three continents aborted a multipronged terror attack aimed at the U.S. from Yemen, seizing two explosive packages addressed to Chicago-area synagogues and packed aboard cargo jets. A car bomb was planted at Times Square in New York City but didn’t go off, and in November, the FBI said it thwarted a plot by a Somali teen to bomb a crowd of thousands in Portland, Ore.

CONFLICT AND DEFENSE

In Afghanistan, the U.S. escalated its war on the Taliban and suffered rising casualties to more than 480 troops confirmed dead as Christmas approached, the worst year since the 2001 invasion, compared with just over 300 in 2009. In August, the last combat brigade withdrew from Iraq, with all remaining U.S. military personnel to be gone by next December. But a similar broad pullback from Afghanistan looked unlikely before 2014.

U.S. President Barack Obama signed a nuclear- arms-reduction deal with Russia, but his effort to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians sank into limbo.

On the Korean peninsula, hostilities worsened.

DISASTERS

Natural and man-made, they took their toll. Heavy floods took some 2,000 Pakistani lives and at one point put a fifth of the country under water. Earthquakes struck not just Haiti but Turkey, China, Chile and New Zealand. Indonesia suffered deadly volcanic eruptions. In October, a deluge of toxic red sludge from an aluminum plant engulfed several Hungarian towns and burned people through their clothes. The BP oil spill in April was the worst in U.S. history.

The interlinked nature of modern life was reflected in a different way when an Icelandic volcano erupted in April, spewing so much ash that flights in northern Europe were grounded for five days and millions of passengers were stranded.

MONEY CRISIS

Europe’s headlines were dominated by joblessness and the harsh remedies prescribed by its governments. Striking workers shut down much of Portugal. Ireland faced its deepest budget cuts in decades. David Cameron, elected in May as the kingdom’s first Conservative prime minister in 13 years, sharply hiked college fees, provoking the riots that reached Prince Charles and his wife.

TRIUMPHS

2010 was the year in which American scientists created the first functional synthetic genome, and the International Space Station set a record for a full decade of continuous human presence. A giant Swiss drill finished Earth’s longest tunnel, and the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border finally started smashing atomic particles to investigate fundamental mysteries the universe.

But the year’s most memorable drama of human ingenuity and compassion unfolded in the Atacama Desert of Chile. There, on Oct. 13, a thin, metal tube came up from the depths carrying Florencio Avalos, the first of the 33 miners to be rescued. They had been trapped 2,300 feet underground for 69 days, during the first 17 of which no one knew if they were alive or dead.