2011
- A protester at Occupy Wall Street, which begins the Occupy movement;
- Protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, killed in October;
- Celebrating the independence of South Sudan, the world's newest country;
- Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastates Eastern Japan and kills nearly 20,000 people while initiating a major nuclear accident, becoming the most expensive natural disaster on record;
- Attacks in Norway kill 77 and mark the rise of Right-wing terrorism across the west;
- U.S. national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room to monitor progress of Operation Neptune Spear, resulting in the death of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden;
- A drought in East Africa kills 50,000–260,000 people;
- A block from Minecraft, released this year, which later becomes the world's best-selling video game;
- Anti-government protests known as the "Arab Spring" spread across the Middle East and North Africa, sparking revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria.
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2011 (MMXI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2011th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 11th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 2nd year of the 2010s decade.
The year marked the start of a series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, and in some cases sparking civil wars such as the Syrian civil war and the first Libyan civil war, the latter giving way to the second Libyan civil war. The year also saw the rise of the Occupy movement, including Occupy Wall Street, a protest movement against social and economic inequality, corporate influence, and the financial system that spread across numerous countries worldwide.
U.S. Navy SEALs killed al-Qaeda leader and terrorist Osama bin Laden in his compound in Pakistan on May 2. The Curiosity rover, which was to land on Mars in August of the following year, launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26. In December, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who had been the supreme leader of North Korea since the death of his father Kim Il Sung in 1994, died while traveling by train to a place outside Pyongyang. He was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Un.
2011 was designated as:
- International Year of Forests
- International Year of Chemistry
- International Year for People of African Descent
In 2011, the nation of Samoa only had 364 days as it moved across the International Date Line skipping December 30, 2011; it is now 24 hours ahead of American Samoa.