2010-2019: Ten years of heartbreak and hope, in photos

2011
In a major breakthrough for regenerative medicine, the world’s fi rst synthetic organ  transplant was conducted by Swedish surgeons, led by professor Paolo Macchiarini (second from right). A 36-year-old man, suff ering from terminal cancer of the trachea, received a completely new windpipe. The cells used to regenerate the trachea were the patient’s own, thus reducing chances of rejection by his immune system. Five years later, controversy would erupt over the transplant’s success rate.

2012
The US rover, Curiosity, takes a selfi e on Mars. The photograph was taken from Vera Rubin Ridge on the Red Planet, capturing its surface.

2013
The world said goodbye to anti-apartheid revolutionary and peace activist Nelson Mandela on December 5. He was buried at Qunu, in the Eastern Cape province, where the ceremony was attended by 4,500 people, and included a 21-gun salute and a formation fl yover.

2014
Malala Yousafzai became the youngest ever recipient of a Nobel Prize. The Pakistani activist won for her struggle against the suppression of children, and the right of all children to education.

2015
Worldwide electric car ownership reached 1 million. Pure electric car sales were led by Japan with a 28 percent market share of global sales, followed by the United States (26 percent), China (16 percent), France (11 percent) and Norway (7 percent). On a per capita basis, the leaders by far were Norway (6.1 percent) and the Netherlands (5.55 percent). The biggest electric car companies were Nissan, GM/Opel, Toyota, Tesla and Ford.

2016
In the Brexit referendum of June 23, 52 percent of the voting British public opted to leave the European Union. The wheels were set in motion for the United Kingdom to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, but the Britons continue to be in turmoil over leaving.

2017
#MeToo: Allegations of sexual abuse against fi lm producer Harvey Weinstein led to a wave of similar accusations against more powerful personalities in Hollywood and other industries of primarily the English-speaking world. It saw some justice served in 2018 when Weinstein turned himself in to face rape and sexual assault charges. It’s worldwide ramifi cations: A rethinking on the part of men of the nature of consent.

2018
A data mining scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, the sale of data from some 50 million Facebook users, a Congressional grilling for founder Mark Zuckerberg,  and the loss of $119 billion in stock value in a single day spelled a terrible year for the world’s leading social media network. In other Big Tech news, Apple became the fi rst American publicly traded company to reach $1 trillion in value, beating other Silicon Valley giants such as Amazon and Microsoft.

2019
In one of the largest climate mobilisations in history, an international protest by young people and adults addressed the climate crisis and demanded action just before the UN Climate Summit was held in September in New York. Later, 500,000 people marched in a protest led by activist Greta Thunberg and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Montreal. In its fi rst report since 2005, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned that biodiversity loss is “unprecedented”, with over a million species now threatened with extinction, largely as a result of human actions.