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2020 Playing Card Holiday Gift Guide
My favourite decks from the past year
Playing cards make the ideal gift, particularly the many beautiful custom decks available nowadays. Almost everyone can use a deck of cards at some point, so they have an instant and universal appeal, especially if a deck has some customized artwork and is packaged in an appealing tuck box. In this list I want to focus on some of my favourite decks that have come out in the past year 2020. This year has been a challenging year for many of us in light of the coronavirus that has swept across the world. But in the middle of all this darkness, there have also been some bright spots, which include the brand new crop of custom decks that have appeared in the marketplace. The suggestions I'm making are very much a matter of personal choice, and other playing card enthusiasts might make other choices. I haven't seen each and every deck that hit the market in the past year, and there are undoubtedly plenty of other worthy decks that qualify for a list like this. I've also not included any decks that have haven't yet been produced, even if they have been crowdfunded. This list strictly covers decks that you should be able to obtain from online retailers and resellers. I've also not included so-called "hype decks" that sell out almost immediately at the publisher level (e.g. Fontaines), but only those that enter retail channels and are more widely and readily available. I've also included links to where you find them at PlayingCardDecks so that you can see images of the tuck boxes and cards for each item, and because they're the retailer I personally buy playing cards from the most. But you should be able to find these decks at most online retailers.
Popular Series
Several series of playing cards have become brands of their own, and achieved nearly cult status from collectors. This past year has seen some great additions to the line-ups from popular series that include big names like Jerry's Nuggets, Cherry Casino, and NOC. ● Jerry's Nugget Aqua Playing Cards - Jerry's Nuggets are a modern icon in the world of playing cards, due to the cult status of this deck, which was praised by cardists around the world. It was originally printed in the early 1970s, and was so much in demand in recent decades that copies fetched over $500 in the secondary market. A very successful reprinting of the original blue and red decks happened in 2019, and in the past year we've seen multiple reprints in different colours. Among my favourites in this series are the bright colours like orange, yellow, and green, which have all appeared in the past year. But there's also something for those who prefer a more muted look, such as steel and black. For more in this series, seeJerry's Nugget decks. ● Cherry Casino Tropicana Teal Playing Cards - The Cherry Casino decks capture a retro vibe, and are a throwback to the old fruit machines from gambling halls, with their distinctive cherry artwork. For me the real appeal of this series lies in the gorgeous card backs, which have a metallic sheen making them feel instantly different from all other decks. The face cards are all quite standard, so that makes them ideal for card games or card magic. Multiple new colours continue to appear in this series, such as Flamingo Quartz Pink, and most recently McCarran Silver. For more in this series, seeCherry Casino decks. ● NOC 3000X2 Purple Playing Cards - The acronym NOC originally stood for Nothing Only Colour, and in line with this the initial decks in this series were all very minimalist. Many people like to collect and use the NOC decks, and over time the series has evolved somewhat. The most recent releases show some new splashes of creativity, and with the NOC 3000X2 deck we travel into the future, past the year 3000. Vibrant purples and pinks inhabit the landscape of the cards, for a very modern and flashy look that is particularly well suited to cardistry. This particular deck is also available in a matching pink version. For more in this series, seeNOC decks.
Popular Brands
There are several big brands that you can count on for quality, and this year was no exception, with big companies like Theory11, Ellusionist, and Art of Play all continuing to contribute wonderful playing cards to the market. ● James Bond 007 Playing Cards - When it comes to glamorous tuck boxes, it doesn't get much better than the luxury of playing card producer Theory11. This wonderful deck is a tribute to agent 007, James Bond. I collect most of the Theory11 decks, and this one is particularly terrific, with a supreme tuck box, and Bond-inspired paraphernalia on the court cards and on the card back. Close observers will find many Bond gadgets and more. Theory11 have put out several stylish releases in the past year, another one being the Hollywood Roosevelt deck. For more, seeTheory11 decks. ● Shadow Masters Legacy v2 Playing Cards - One of the companies at the forefront of the custom playing cards movement was Ellusionist and their Black Tiger deck continues to be a modern icon. While they've since been overshadowed by the many custom decks produced in the crowd-funding era over the past decade, they continue to produce some memorable decks from time to time that are worth picking up. The Shadow Masters Legacy v2 is a black deck in the classic Ellusionist style, and represents the kind of thing that made them great to begin with. A jet black background is the chief feature of this deck, and the red and white used for the artwork and pips stands out beautifully against the inky black. This deck compares favourably with any other deck from the modern era. For more, seeEllusionist decks. ● Yellow Wheel Playing Cards - The brand Art of Play is the home of influential cardists Dan and Dave Buck. Their Red & Blue Wheel decks are among my all-time favourite decks, with gorgeous metallic inks as part of a split-pip design. The Yellow Wheel deck is their latest entry in the Wheel series, that retains the original card backs but now in yellow. But the highlight is the card faces, with the split pips employing a stunning metallic silver that complements the cards beautifully. This is a completely custom deck that is certain to impress anyone who sees it. Art of Play produces many new decks each year, and their Henry & Sally deck is a fun novelty release also worth checking out. For more, seeArt of Play decks.
Popular Designers
They are a very select group, but there are some notable designers in the playing card industry who have developed a real name for themselves, have generated a large following of loyal fans, and continue to produce high quality custom decks on a regular basis. ● Italia Radiosa Playing Cards - Italian designer Giovanni Meroni is the man behind Thirdway Industries, and his playing cards are in high demand from collectors around the world. His signature style is immediately recognizable in each of his decks, and this one is no exception. Along with its companion Italia Segreta, it's themed around the wonders and secrets of Italy. The unique court cards are the real highlight, showcasing Giovanni's usual creativity and style. The number cards are also fully custom. These are the kinds of decks that will hold their value well in years to come. If you want even more vibrant colours, check out Modern Idols, from the same creator. For more, seeGiovanni Meroni decks. ● Postage Paid Playing Cards - Behind the brand Kings Wild Project is Jackson Robinson, who is one of the few professional designers that actually makes a living out of designing playing cards. This deck was inspired by the idea of playing cards functioning as postcards, each with its own stamp and post paid stamp. All 50 US states are represented on different cards, and everything about this deck is fully customized. This deck was produced in only limited numbers, so it will be out of stock in most places. But if you're quick, you can still grab Jackson Robinson's General Admission deck, which applies a similar concept to tickets, with each card representing a vintage ticket stub from the early 20th century. For more, seeJackson Robinson decks. ● Kodiak Playing Cards - From popular designer Jody Eklund and his Black Ink Playing Cards Company, comes this delightful deck of playing cards that is geared to the poker player and collector. The cards have a very classic look, but offer a fresh take on the designs of the court cards and pips. Jody is highly respected for his approach to graphic design, and these cards will prove an excellent choice if you like playing card games, and want to bring something stylish and attractive to the table. For more, seeJody Eklund decks.
Magician Decks
Most magicians can perform their magic with any deck, but typically they prefer to do card magic with a deck where novelty and customization are minimal, so as not to distract from their magic. These decks are well suited to performing magic, and contain bonus gaff cards or other secrets that enable them to produce miracles not possible with ordinary decks. ● Card College Playing Cards - These decks are a tribute to the most outstanding modern teacher of the fundamentals of card magic, Roberto Giobbi. Mr Giobbi is the author of Card College, a series of best-selling books which are the modern gold standard for learning card magic. Available in red and blue, these decks are simple and practical for the working magician, and as a bonus each contains two double backer gaff cards. If you want more luxury, check out the stunning Luxury 3 Deck Set, which has even more stylish cards, individually numbered tuck boxes with unique origami style features, packaged in an attractive acrylic box - the ideal collectible or gift for magicians. ● Remedies Royal Blue Playing Cards - The Remedies decks come from popular creators Daniel Madison and Daniel Schneider, and this is a successor to the Remedies Scarlet Red deck. Many collectors love the Black Roses brand of playing cards, and collect whatever they produce. This blue Remedies deck has a classic and minimalist look with bold blue card backs, and is very functional and practical. The inclusion of a special Angle Zero gaff makes it ideal for magicians. ● DMC Elites Red v5 Playing Cards - Of all the marked decks I own, the DMC Elites is easily my first choice whenever I want a marked deck with cards that can be easily read from a distance, due to the clever and yet almost invisible marking system it uses. This deck has previously been released in several different colours, and now incorporates Tamariz's Mnemonica stack. All you need is the deck, but there is a terrific Passport book available separately, which will give you some great ideas for routines you can pull off with this great marked deck. For more, seeMarked decks.
Cardistry Decks
Card flourishing has really boomed in recent years, and especially shines when cardists use a deck that has colourful and striking patterns optimized for cardistry, that enhance the visual aesthetics of cards in motion, as these decks show. ● Neon Orange Cardistry Playing Cards - This deck represents Bicycle's attempt to meet a demand for a relatively low-cost deck geared towards card flourishing. The card backs have a geometric design, and the faces are all identical and completely non-standard, showcasing the latest evolution in playing cards optimized entirely for cardistry. Bright colours ensure that the cards look visually appealing in fans, spreads, and flourishing moves. Alongside this vibrant orange deck is its blue companion, the Neon Blue Aurora deck. ● Autumn Circle Cardistry Playing Cards - Tally Ho is a classic brand that USPCC has been producing for a long time. The circle back design of the typical Tally Ho deck has become iconic, and is especially appreciated by those who enjoy card flourishing. Each year the folks at Bicycle produce some in-house decks for special occasions, and the Autumn Circle Back deck is a lovely result. The colours capture the warmth and glow of autumn leaves and the mood of harvest time, while the pattern on the card backs is perfect for cardistry. ● ArrowDynamix Cardistry Playing Cards - Given the high volume of cardistry decks appearing all the time, it can be difficult to come up with something completely original, but this minimalist deck has accomplished exactly that. Each card features a giant vertical arrow on the card backs, and a giant horizontal arrow on the faces. With carefully choreographed sequences and moves, you can create truly unique patterns and effects that you simply can't achieve with any other cardistry deck.
Animal-themed Decks
Do you love animals, or do you have an animal lover in your life? There are a lot of wonderful custom decks that are tributes to our four legged friends, or depict some of our favourite creatures. ● Woof and Whiskers Dog Playing Cards - The real appeal of this deck is the cute tuck box, which has cardboard ears that fold up, to complete the look of the friendly dog on the front of the box. I would have liked to see some more customization with the number cards, but it's still a very charming deck, with delightful custom artwork on the court cards and aces. This is one of two Zoo 52 decks, so if you like the Dog deck, you'll also want to pick up the Playful Paws Cat deck, which is equally cute. ● Aviary Playing Cards - There are a lot of independent creators that produce Bicycle branded playing cards with the help of industry giant USPCC, but this big name producer also releases its own in-house decks. This is my favourite of their four newest releases that hit the market at the end of 2020, and is a very classy looking deck with artwork inspired by a traditional look, but with adjustments to give it a custom feel, and the presence of several birds carefully positioned throughout the deck. Of the four new releases from Bicycle, the Sea King deck is also proving to be very popular. ● King of Tigers Playing Cards - If you're looking for a deck with bling, this is it. The card backs have a borderless tiger skin pattern, which has been printed with some of the latest technology that makes use of foil for a truly eye-catching look. The tuck box is even more glamorous. While the court cards are clearly inspired by traditional courts, the Jokers bring back the tiger theme strongly, and the tiger skin look recurs throughout the deck.
Food-themed Decks
Recent years have seen some wonderful novelty decks themed around different kinds of food. These are always a great way to whet your appetite for a card game, or to show off to family or friends, and have proved a real hit with collectors. ● Squeezers V3 Playing Cards - Good luck getting your hands on decks from this extremely popular series from Organic Playing Cards, because they sell out quickly. These fruit inspired decks have delightful tuck boxes, and this grapefruit themed deck even comes in a tuck box that looks like a juice box, and is actually scented like grapefruit. The cards themselves are quite practical, but add humorous grapefruit themed elements to the court cards, and new bold colours. OPC's 2020 releases also included the watermelon-themed Carvers deck, while their current release sees the brand go in a slightly new direction with the corn-themed Shuckers. ● Noodlers Chicken Playing Cards - If you like the concept behind the Organic Playing Cards series, you'll probably also enjoy this deck, which has a similarly styled tuck box to the Squeezers decks, but represents a packet of ramen noodles. The orange colour on the card backs and pips has also been inspired by the noodles theme. The artwork on the court cards has a quaint and cute style, with each character depicted in a light hearted style quite different from standard courts, and all holding a bowl of noodles. For a final laugh, the Jokers provide us with the necessary packet of "chicken seasoning" to add to our noodles. ● Citrus Playing Cards - Created by Flaminko, the Deliciousness series has been somewhat overshadowed by the more successful fruit inspired cards from Organic Playing Cards. But I love the Flaminko decks, because they apply customization to all elements of the cards, including the pips. This novelty deck is well suited for card flourishing, card games, and collectors, and cleverly captures all that is juicy and wonderful about citrus fruit.
Music-themed Decks
Music is another evergreen theme, and there's a solid range of lovely decks for the music lover, whether your taste is classical or more contemporary rock-and-roll. ● Composers Mozart Playing Cards - This deck is part of a series that also includes other composers like Bach. These decks are true collector pieces, and make a wonderful tribute to some of the greatest composers of all time. The tuck boxes have a very classical look, and metallic ink enhances the gorgeous card backs. Meanwhile completely custom artwork on the faces emphasizes a vintage and classical feel. They are great for music lovers and collectors, but if classical music isn't your thing, then check out the Rock and Roll deck. ● Piano Player Playing Cards - If the piano is your instrument of choice, this is a deck for you. The creative tuck box is available in two styles, one with two black keys and the other with three black keys, which means you can place two decks alongside each other to create a larger keyboard. Fully custom characters inhabit the court cards, with the keyboard motif returning in the details of the artwork. Small touches like this really make this creative deck a thing of unique beauty. ● Soundboards v3 Midnight Playing Cards - Remember the old walk-man cassette players? In the 1980s these revolutionary electronic devices were among the first to make your personal music collection portable. The Soundboards deck replicates the look of a classic walk-man, and the Jokers complete the look by bringing the cassette tape look into the box. This Midnight edition has a dark look, so you might also want to consider the red deck if you prefer a more traditional colour.
Fiction & Film themed Decks
Most of us love a good story, whether it's in the pages of a novel or on our screens. Here are some great custom decks that are loving tributes to some of the best from the worlds of fiction and film. ● Jane Austen Playing Cards - Fans of the classic novel will appreciate the loving treatment that Jane Austen's famous novels have received in this delightful tribute from the Art of Play label. Each suit represents a different novel, with the court cards featuring the lead characters in the story. The design of the characters is inspired by period costumes and reflects the fashions from the time in which the stories are set. The classy tuck case ensures that everything is nicely packaged and well presented. ● Star Wars Playing Cards - Theory11 achieved a real coup by acquiring the rights to bring the Star Wars brand to playing cards. They were the perfect company to ensure that the result was a classy deck that did justice to the world of the films. This pair of Light Side and Dark Side decks begins with a top quality and highly attractive tuck case, as we've come to expect from Theory11. The court cards all feature different characters from the movies, and the design is the perfect blend of customization and playability, making this a practical deck you can bring out for your favourite card game, or to give to the Star Wars fan in your life. A similar pair of decks was produced later in the year in White and Black. ● King Arthur Playing Cards - The result of a collaboration between Riffle Shuffle and Studio Muti, this pair of red and green decks tell the story of the famous Arthurian legend. For me it's a personal and nostalgic childhood favourite, in light of the adventure and imagination it evokes. But as impressive as these decks are, they pale besides the King Arthur Gold deck, which has gold metallic ink on the faces, and gold foil on the card backs, for a truly extravagant look. Inside and out, this is a stunning tribute to a timeless classic from the world of fiction.
Space-themed Decks
So I cheated. I already have a section devoted to cardistry, so I figured I'd sneak in a second category, by including some cardistry decks that all have a space theme. These decks all feature colourful visuals that work well for flourishing, but can also be enjoyed by collectors who appreciate their vibrant colours and exuberant designs. ● Solokid Constellation Playing Cards - This set of twelve decks captures the twelve different star signs. It was produced by Bocopo, a company well known for producing colourful custom decks that appeal especially to cardists and collectors. These decks are typical Bocopo offerings, with evocative colours that are unique to each different deck, to help capture a different feeling for each and every constellation. If you like vibrant colour, you'll certainly find something to enjoy here. ● Stargazer New Moon Playing Cards - Several different decks have now appeared in the Stargazer series, but the recent New Moon deck is probably my favourite. The circular moon that appears on all the card backs makes it an ideal deck for card flourishing moves like spins and twirls. The face cards have some truly vibrant colours, and capture well the feel of a night sky bursting with colour and life. ● Sirius B v3 Playing Cards - I fell in love with the style of the original Sirius B deck, so this third edition was always going to win me over. The court cards consist of a blur of colours that look like paints mixed together, and this style has also been applied to the pips. The colours are the real appeal here, and the signature design of the card backs also looks very nice in card flourishes.
Transformation Decks
I personally adore transformation cards, and consider them to be one of the most fascinating and memorable types of playing cards there is. The idea is that you take the pips and incorporate them into a larger picture that forms a unique work of art, for each and every card in the deck. ● Cotta's Almanac #1 Reproduction Playing Cards - This historic deck was first created in 1805 by J.C. Cotta, and was the very first of its kind. Themed on the "Joan of Arc" play by Schiller, the beauty and creativity of these cards will still win over collectors today. Lovingly produced in a high quality modern edition, this recreation is the first of the entire series of Cotta transformation decks that is being reproduced by PCD. ● 5th Kingdom Playing Cards - This deck is possibly my favourite original release from PCD in the past year. It is an outstanding example of the creativity and originality of a semi-transformation deck, where the pips have been cleverly incorporated into the artwork. Each suit represents a different culture, turning each individual card into a work of art that can be admired and enjoyed. ● Pack of Dogs V2 Playing Cards - This transformation deck is the work of John Littleboy, who has produced a number of such decks in his inimitable style, including Pack of Dogs, Kitten Club, Mermaid Queen, and Bag of Bones. The number cards are my favourites, and in this deck each of these represents a larger art piece with a dog. Each suit has a progressive image, so they don't feel totally unique from each other. It's more like a series of consecutive snapshots, and you can use flip animation to tell the story. Littleboy's Kitten Club V2 deck applies a similar concept to cats.
In-House Decks
PlayingCardDecks doesn't just sell playing cards, but Will Roya also uses his wealth of experience to team up with designers and graphic artists to produce high quality custom decks under the PCD label. Here are some great custom decks that were published in-house over the course of 2020. ● Astronaut Playing Cards - This novelty deck is a delightful creation that will please anyone who has an interest in space and space travel, in light of its unique theme. The Kings are all depicted as astronauts, while the Queens and Jacks represent space travellers. The card backs have a futuristic look with neon lights, and this look carries over to the number cards, which are highly customized with unique red and blue pips. ● Beekeeper Playing Cards - There are plenty of bee themed playing cards already on the market, but the artwork style gives this one a truly unique feel. Two decks were produced, one with light card backs and the other with dark card backs. This is a great novelty deck for the collector, because there's especially some delightful creativity to be found with the bee-inspired pips, and the detailed custom artwork on the court cards. ● Testament Classic Playing Cards - This is a Biblical themed deck created by artist Ben Green. It's intended as an art deck, with the images on the cards depicting Biblical characters from well-known narratives. Representing a dual love for playing cards and a love for Bible-inspired art, this deck will especially appeal to the collector.
Out-of-the-Ordinary Decks
I'm a sucker for highly unusual decks with a high degree of novelty, and even though these are not ones I'd typically use for playing card games, they have very unique features that make them stand out from your average custom deck. ● Starry Night Puzzle Playing Cards - Fancy a deck that doubles as a jigsaw puzzle? This clever deck takes its inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting, The Starry Night. The artwork on the card faces is all taken from the painting, and all the cards can be pieced together to make a single giant picture, thus effectively functioning as a large puzzle. Yet each card has clear indices so it's still something you can use for card games too. Definitely unique and out of the ordinary, this set of playing cards is a perfect choice for fans of classic art and paintings. ● Falcon Razors Deluxe Throwing Playing Cards - Rick Smith Jr has made multiple world records in throwing playing cards. His baseball background holds him in good stead, but anybody can learn to throw playing cards if you use the techniques Rick teaches. These throwing cards were a collaboration with legendary flourisher De'vo, and were featured in one of this year's viral videos from Dude Perfect, which featured Rick and his amazing card throwing. The cards are slightly thicker than standard Bicycle stock, to ensure extra durability and performance for card throwing. ● AQUA Invisible Plastic Playing Cards - If you're looking for something completely different, this might hit the mark. This is a ground-breaking deck that is the closest thing to being invisible. All the cards are made out of completely transparent plastic, after which a high gloss transparent printing is applied to selected areas of the cards to produce the designs and pips. So each card is effectively completely transparent, and yet you can see its unique artwork and determine its value and suit. The handling is surprisingly better than you'd expect for a completely plastic deck, and it's certainly something unique.
Other Gift Ideas
Do you want to let your gift recipient make their own decision about what to get, or are you not quite sure what to buy? Here are a couple of special gift ideas that might help out, even if it is to give your family or friends a convenient way to enable you to select your own gift! Firstly, there's a wide range of accessories available for playing cards, like card clips, card cases, and more. Alternatively, consider a gift card, which is available in amounts of $10, $25, $50, $100, and $200. There's also the popular Pip Box Club, which has been around for over two years. Subscribers get a selection of decks and goodies shipped to them each month, and offers great value with each box. Boxing Day Sale: Right now you can take advantage of a special sale at PlayingCardDecks, and save $10 off any order over $30 by using the code box20. This coupon is valid from Boxing Day until the end of 2020. Happy shopping, and happy holidays!
October 31, 2019: The House votes to formalize its impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine.
August 10, 2019: Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in his Manhattan jail cell where he was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
August 7, 2019: The bodies of Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky are found in Manitoba, Canada. Police suspect the friends went on a killing spree across the country, and had been searching for them for 20 days.
July 7, 2019: The US women's national soccer team wins the World Cup for a fourth time in a row.
April 18, 2019: A redacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign's possible collusion is released to the public.
March 15, 2019: Fifty people are killed and another 50 are injured in attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
March 12, 2019: Federal prosecutors in Boston charge at least 50 people in the "Varsity Blues" scandal, accusing many of them of using bribes to get their students into college. Among the defendants are actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
March 2019: Governments around the world banned the Boeing 737 Max from their airspaces after two crashes in 5 months killed 346 people.
January 10, 2019: Jayme Closs, a 13-year-old Wisconsin girl who went missing three months prior, escapes from a rural home where she was being held captive by her parent's killer. He later pleads guilty to the crimes.
October 2, 2018: Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is murdered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
September 27, 2016: More than 20 million people tune in to watch the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
July 10, 2018: 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach are rescued from a flooded cave after more than two weeks stuck in the cavern.
June 24, 2018: Saudi Arabia lifts its ban on allowing women to drive.
May 19, 2018: Millions around the world tune in to watch Britain's Prince Harry marry American actress Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle.
April 24, 2018: DNA submitted to an ancestry database helps investigators catch who they believe to be the "Golden State Killer", a murderer and rapist who tormented the Bay Area in the 1970s and '80s.
April 6-June 20, 2018: Under its "zero tolerance" immigration policy, the Trump administration separates thousands of children from their migrant parents at the border, causing widespread outrage on a national level.
April 13, 2018: The US, Britain, and France conduct air strikes against Syria in response to President Bashar al-Assad's suspected use of chemical weapons on citizens in a civil war gripping the country.
March 24, 2018: Hundreds of thousands take part in the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., organized by survivors of the Parkland shooting to call for gun control reform.
February 14, 2018: Seventeen students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, are killed, and another 17 are injured, in a horrific shooting.
February 4, 2018: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots to win their first-ever Super Bowl and stun viewers with a now-classic trick play.
February 9-25, 2018: The Winter Olympics are held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
January 14, 2018: A teen girl escapes from her family home in southern California and calls police to rescue the rest of her 12 siblings from their abusive parents.
November 21, 2017: Dramatic video emerges showing a North Korean soldier defecting to South Korea while being shot at.
November 15, 2017: The San Juan, an Argentine navy submarine, goes missing. It was found at the bottom of the ocean almost a year later, with all 44 crew dead from an explosion that happened in the vessel.
October 12, 2017: Trump announces that the Pakistani military has rescued Canadian-American couple Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman and their children from the Haqqani network.
October 1, 2017: Fifty-eight people are killed and more than 850 are injured after a gunman opens fire on a Las Vegas music festival from a 32nd floor room in the Mandalay Bay casino.
October 2017: Famous men are culled in the #MeToo movement.
July 8, 2017: The New York Times publishes a report on how members of Trump's campaign — including his son Donald Jr. — met with Russian agents in Trump Tower in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election.
June 1, 2017: Trump announces his intention to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.
May 22, 2017: Twenty-two people leaving an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena are killed in a terrorist bombing. Another 50 people were injured.
April 19, 2017: Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez dies by suicide in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the June 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.
February 26, 2017: "La La Land" is mistakenly announced as the Best Picture winner at the Oscars, instead of "Moonlight."
January 28, 2017: Serena Williams beats her sister Venus to win the Australian Open, while secretly eight weeks pregnant with her first child.
January 21, 2017: Hundreds of thousands of people gather in Washington, D.C. and cities around the world to take part in the Women's March, protesting Trump's election.
January 20, 2017: Donald Trump is sworn in as the nation's 45th president.
November 8, 2016: Donald Trump is elected president, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in a landmark upset.
November 3, 2016: The Chicago Cubs break the Billy Goat curse and win their first World Series in 108 years.
October 8, 2016: The Washington Post publishes a video from a 2005 interview between "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush and Donald Trump, in which the latter said he can grab women "by the p---y" because he's a star.
October 7, 2016: The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issue a joint statement warning that the Russians are trying to interfere in the presidential election.
September 12, 2016: The Indianapolis Star publishes a report detailing how USA Gymnastics failed to report sexual abuse committed by Michigan State University physician Dr. Larry Nassar.
September 15, 2016: Angelina Jolie files for divorce from husband Brad Pitt.
August 26, 2016: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sits on the bench during the national anthem, saying "I have to take a stand for people that are oppressed."
August 5-21, 2016: The 2016 summer Olympics are held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
July 7, 2016: Five Dallas police officers are killed while working at a Black Lives Matter rally. Authorities killed the gunman with a bomb delivered by a robot.
June 24, 2016: Britain votes to leave the European Union.
June 12, 2016: A gunman opens fire inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53.
June 2, 2016: Brock Turner, a former Stanford swim team member, is sentenced to just six months in jail for sexually assaulting an inebriated woman outside a campus fraternity.
April 21, 2016: Music legend Prince is found dead in the elevator of his Minnesota estate. An autopsy would later find that the singer died of an overdose of the opioid fentanyl.
April 3, 2016: A group of news outlets around the world publish stories based on the Panama Papers, a leak of 11.5 million documents from a Panamanian law firm, showing the shady ways wealthy people use offshore accounts.
December 18, 2015: "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is released, earning more than $2 billion at the box office worldwide.
November 13-14, 2015: Terror attacks strike Paris for a second time in a year, resulting in the deaths of 130 people and nearly 500 wounded.
August 26, 2015: WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward are shot dead while filming a live TV segment in Virginia.
August 21, 2015: Three American men, including two active military members, thwart a terrorist attack on a French train.
July 20, 2015: Diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba are restored, decades after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
July 11, 2015: Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escapes for a second time from his cell at a Mexican high-security prison.
June 26, 2015: The Supreme Court issues a 5-4 ruling that gay marriage is legal, legalizing same-sex unions nationwide.
June 16, 2015: New York City real estate mogul Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president with a speech at Trump Tower calling Mexican immigrants "rapists."
June 6, 2015: Joyce Mitchell, a worker at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, helps two convicted murderers escape.
June 6, 2015: American Pharoah wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first horse in 37 years to earn the Triple Crown of American horse racing.
May 2015: An outbreak of the Zika virus spreads to Brazil, and eventually moves its way up into Central America and the Caribbean.
March 24, 2015: Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 crashes in the Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
February 1, 2015: The New England Patriots win Super Bowl XLIX thanks to an interception with just seconds left in the game.
January 7-9, 2015: Paris is the target of multiple terror attacks that leave 17 people dead.
November 24, 2014: Hackers breach the network of Sony Pictures Entertainment and release embarrassing information against the company.
September 4, 2014: Comedian Joan Rivers dies while undergoing plastic surgery to her throat.
August 9, 2014: Unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown is shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, causing several days of riots in the community and fueling the Black Lives Matter movement.
August 19, 2014: American photojournalist James Foley is beheaded in a video recorded by ISIS, marking the beginning of the terrorist group's rise to power.
August 11, 2014: Beloved actor and comedian Robin Williams is found dead from a suicide at his home in California.
May 31, 2014: The US government agrees to release five Taliban commanders in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had gone missing from a base in Afghanistan five years prior.
May 24, 2014: Rapper Kanye West marries reality star Kim Kardashian in a lavish wedding in Florence, Italy.
May 5, 2014: TMZ obtains footage showing Beyoncé getting between her husband and sister when the two come to blows while riding in an elevator after the Met Gala.
March 23, 2014: The World Health Organization reports that there has been an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, the start of the largest outbreak of the virus in history.
April 2014: The Flint water crisis begins as the Michigan city tries to cut costs by getting their water from the Flint River instead of getting it from Detroit.
March 25, 2014: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow announces her separation from her Coldplay frontman husband Chris Martin on her blog Goop, saying they have decided to "consciously uncouple".
March 8, 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously vanishes off radar while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
March 2014: Russia invades Ukraine and annexes the Crimea, after Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, is toppled in anti-government protests.
February 18, 2014: A 39-year-old Jimmy Fallon starts his tenure as host of "The Tonight Show".
February 2, 2014: Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dies at the age of 46 from a drug overdose.
February 1, 2014: Dylan Farrow writes an essay describing how her father, director Woody Allen, molested her as a child. Allen was never charged and denies the allegation.
December 5, 2013: Nelson Mandela, South Africa's trailblazing first black president, dies at the age of 25.
July 22, 2013: Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, gives birth to a baby boy named Prince George, who becomes third in line to the British throne, behind his father and grandfather.
July 13, 2013: The Black Lives Matter movement begins after George Zimmerman is acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin.
July 7, 2013: Scottish tennis player Andy Murray becomes the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.
July 6, 2013: "Glee" star Cory Monteith is found dead in a Vancouver, British Columbia, hotel room after succumbing to a drug and alcohol overdose.
June 6, 2013: The Guardian and the Washington Post publish stories based on information leaked to them by government contractor Edward Snowden.
May 6, 2013: Three women who had been missing for about a decade are rescued from the Cleveland, Ohio, home of Ariel Castro.
May 16, 2013: The now-defunct news site Gawker publishes a video showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.
April 15, 2013: Two pressure cooker bombs explode at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 250 others.
March 13, 2013: Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected pope, becoming the first South American to lead the Roman Catholic Church. He assumes the name Pope Francis.
February 28, 2013: Basketball legend Dennis Rodman travels to North Korea and meets leader Kim Jong-un, becoming the first American to meet the new leader since he assumed office two years prior.
December 14, 2012: A mentally-disturbed shooter kills 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, before killing himself.
November 9, 2012: Gen. David Petraeus resigns as director of the CIA after the FBI uncovers the fact that he shared classified information with his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.
November 6, 2012: Voters in Colorado and Washington vote to legalize recreational marijuana, becoming the first states in the US to do so.
October 29, 2012: Superstorm Sandy causes widespread death and damage, especially in the Northeastern US.
October 22, 2012: After being accused of conducting an elaborate doping scheme, American cyclist Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France medals and banned from cycling competitions for life.
September 11, 2012: US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans are killed after a mob storms the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.
July 20, 2012: A shooter opens fire at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight," in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others.
November 7, 2011: Michael Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray, is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection to the late singer's overdose death.
October 20, 2011: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is captured and killed by revolutionaries, bringing an end to his 42-year regime.
October 3, 2011: American Amanda Knox, 24, is freed from an Italian prison after her conviction in the 2009 murder of her British roommate is overthrown.
September 17, 2011: The Occupy Wall Street movement begins with about 1,000 people protesting in downtown Manhattan's Zuccotti Park.
July 23, 2011: Grammy Award-winning singer Amy Winehouse, 27, is found dead at her home in north London.
July 22, 2011: A right-wing Christian extremist kills 77 people — most of them children — in attacks on Oslo, Norway, and the nearby island of Utoya.
July 7, 2011: Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid shutters after it was revealed that staffers hacked into the phones of prominent figures like Prince William to mine for stories.
May 14, 2011: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is pulled off a Paris-bound flight in New York and charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
May 1, 2011: President Barack Obama addresses the nation to announce the death of terrorist Osama bin Laden, after a successful Navy SEAL raid on the 9/11 mastermind's compound in Pakistan.
April 29, 2011: 3 billion people tune in to watch Britain's Prince William marry college sweetheart Kate Middleton in a ceremony at Westminster Cathedral in London
March 11, 2011: An earthquake in Japan causes the second-worst nuclear accident in history.
March 2011: Civil war breaks out in Syria after military defectors create the Free Syrian Army, to combat those loyal to President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
February 11, 2011: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns under pressure from revolutionaries, giving up the seat he had held for three decades.
January 28, 2011: "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen enters rehab, a day after the actor was rushed from his home to the hospital for abdominal and chest pains, according to CBS Los Angeles.
December 17, 2010: The suicide of a Tunisian street vendor serves as a catalyst for the Arab Spring.
December 8, 2010: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange turns himself in to British police after Swedish authorities put out a warrant for his arrest in connection to a rape accusation.
October 13, 2010: 33 miners are rescued after spending 69 days trapped in a Chilean copper mine.
June 27, 2010: The FBI arrests 10 Russian spies caught living deep undercover in the United States.
May 2, 2010: The European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund sign off on a €110 million bailout of Greece, to save the EU country from default.
April 20, 2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico causes the biggest marine oil spill in history.
April 14, 2010: An eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano causes an ash cloud to spread across Europe, grounding flights in the region.
January 12, 2010: Hundreds of thousands of people are killed after a 11117.0-magnitude earthquake strikes the island nation of Haiti.
The grocery bags plopped down and he collapsed backward onto his couch, breathing heavily. He shook his head and rested. Wow, he was out of shape. His friends were right; he did have to lose weight after all. “Dammit,” he said, recovering. He’d always been a bit chubby, but since getting full-time at the warehouse, he’d gotten so much fatter. The long hours kept murdering his feet and knees, but after being in poverty for practically all his youth, the money more than made up for it, and his waistline expanded accordingly. Pulling the mail from his hoodie pocket, he glanced at each one. The credit card offers he pitched into his burn pile, and his paycheck he opened and checked carefully. They’d finally gotten his name—Manfred Voren—completely correct. Taking a deep breath, he huffed, and hoisted the six plastic bags into his kitchen and began unloading. Some of the items he chose carefully, as per a recipe he wanted to try. He read the list and arranged each ingredient. Since the recipe estimated a thirty-minute time of completion, he opened his medicine drawer and popped his medication. For the next half hour, he toiled away at the chicken and pasta dish until it very nearly resembled the picture. Scooping it onto his plate, he chowed down while reading comics on his laptop. The latest issue of Breaker featured the main heroine, a tall, muscular power house of a woman, ripping into the powered armor of a bad guy. He knew the lore quite well. First Breaker was a favorite of his. He’d been reading it since the mid-nineties, having picked it up at age twelve. What attracted him to it, as he had typed into a conversation defending it against arguments of it being outdated, was how unique it was as a comic. “First Breaker,” he had written, plumbing the depths of his childhood memories for the right words, “isn’t just a ‘hey, ‘let’s beat up bad guys and smile for the camera’ superhero story. The main character is Cyroya, a goddess from the fictional ‘Bakeru’ religion. She’s not actually a savior, or a good guy; she’s the main enemy, the Satan of her people’s beliefs. As the Goddess of Strength, she basically shows up in ancient Rome and nearly ends the world, cutting apart entire armies all by herself. Kareth, the God of Mercy and Creation, defeats her, at great cost and casts her into Pareion, basically their religion’s hell.” He remembered that exchange and how heated he became, even though he realized he was only staring at a computer screen. He’d also introduced several of his friends to it. “Cyroya is cast into the bad place for her many murders, and here’s where it really gets good,” he’d defended. “Where most comics from the late eighties to early nineties—the so-called Dark Age—were just blood and gore for no end, we see her get tortured in Pareion and repent her crimes. That’s when Kareth sends her to the modern world and she must use her powers for good to save humanity, or else spend the rest of eternity in Pareion.” “So,” his friend Shawn asked, “if this Kareth guy is so powerful, why doesn’t he intervene?” Manfred took that as his cue. “Because eventually, they encounter threats even beyond the Gods. There’s literally a moment where a guy tells her she can help him take over the universe, and she has a perfectly good chance to kill Kareth and be free of his threat forever. Instead, she helps him defeat the bad guy. It’s great because she’s clearly a recovering villain. You see her have to struggle with the fact that, no, these humans aren’t insects merely there to satisfy your violent urges. You see her literally become a better person.” He remembered the friend basically answering with, “that’s great, Manny,” and leaving it at that. It was his favorite comic. Shoveling pasta and chicken into his mouth, he pressed the space bar to move forward. Doctor Richard Felaru, the bad guy in the power armor, Manny read, clearly had thought his machine could duplicate the Godess’s power. He’d had her against the ropes, but with the strength of will, she ripped his armor apart. Manny felt like a little kid again. This storyline had been going for the better part of a year, and he was glad to see it end. “Wow,” he mouthed, reading the last page. The story had ended exactly as he wanted. After finishing his sizeable meal, he washed his plate and silverware, setting it in the drying rack and picking up his laptop. Sitting for too long made his legs hurt, so he walked around carrying it. He shopped for comics online before reading some other issues he had on his computer. Furious Thunder Comic issue 682 appeared full-screen, him clicking on it. He enjoyed it, even though the writing hadn’t always been great. Unlike First Breaker, Furious Thunder was a very traditional super hero story, although not the same as many others. Unlike most of the traditional stories that started in the early Silver Age of Comics, Furious Thunder had started with a female lead. A female lead character, in 1952, was unheard of. Somehow it had managed to avoid being absorbed by the bigger studios, but had suffered in the sixties thus. The new timeline, he saw, wasn’t quite as good as the one before, but he still kept reading. One of the things that annoyed him was that when the character was first drawn, she was a decently curved woman for sixties standards. Now, she was almost anorexic. It wasn’t unique; many of the big studios had the female supers being model thin, but she was supposed to be a major hero. At least she wasn’t drawn with comically exaggerated breasts—even being a guy, it became annoying and distracting after awhile. Once more, he noticed her pulling her cousin’s pod out of the river. Before it had been a mountain landslide, and the original reboot had it be a river. He knew the story by heart: Michelle Delanter, having been examining archaeological ruins in South America, touched an artifact and was magically transported to another world, where she was forced to fight for her survival for a hundred years, somehow not aging. When she finally succeeded, it was revealed the whole ordeal was an illusory test to see if she was worthy of the power contained within the artifact. She then became Capacitor, a hero that utilized otherworldly energy to possess great strength, speed, and energy abilities. He read on, seeing that the origin deviated just slightly, with her finding the artifact and the whole training ordeal montaged in a series of six panels. She apparently explained to her cousin that he had been put in stasis because of his disease, and the pod had cured him, right before the earthquake diverted the river through the area where the building was. She grabbed his hand, and shared some of her power with him. “We’ll talk later,” she told him. “Right now, help me save the people downstream.” The next few pages were of the two of them using their powers to save people from the flooding and earthquake. It was nice to see they’d updated her age. In the original 50’s and 60’s comics, she’d been a teenager and her cousin the same age. Now, she was five years older than him. His cellphone rang and he set down the laptop. The caller ID read a familiar name. “Yeah, Joey? What’s up?” he asked. “You still hanging out on Saturday?” Joey said. “Wouldn’t miss it,” Manny explained. “Shit, as much as I work these days, it’s the only time I can.” Joey let out a breath of a laugh. “Ain’t that the damn truth.” He coughed. “Well, if you’re busy right now, I’ll let you go.” “Eh, I think I’m just staying home,” he replied. “Nothing much to do ‘round here anyway.” He smiled. “See you then.” Both knew too well what he spoke of. Southern Illinois was well-known for a few major things: abandoned buildings where industry once was, being twenty miles from the nearest civilized anything. If he was going to a movie, it would be fifteen miles to Edwardsville, or eight miles to East Alton. There was one book store the Illinois side of the Mississippi river. He watched some shows on the internet. After that, closed his laptop. Normally, later in the week, he found himself not wanting to be bothered. Now, though, the thought of being around friends made him feel lonely. Still, the nearest mall worth going to would be almost thirty miles away in the Chesterfield, Missouri area. Popping his knuckles, he made up his mind. He didn’t want to be home alone. At least the mall, far away as it was, presented the possibility of running into friends. His gas gauge reading full, he started it up and headed towards the Missouri line. Miles of forested areas passed by as he left his house, which was just short of Jerseyville, and passed through Alton. The riverside showed block after block of abandoned buildings where jobs used to be, some fifty years prior. The riverboat casinos with their flashing lights stood in stark contrast to the rows upon rows of taverns and bars that segmented sections of former places of business. The economy had been rough and he was lucky to have gotten a job that paid well. After crossing the Clark Bridge, the economy seemed to get much better, with the businesses of the Florissant area passing by. After more than twenty minutes of driving, he made it to Chesterfield and one of the few remaining malls performing well in the downtrodden economy. The mall looked uncrowded as Thursday evenings weren’t major business. The first store he hit was the bookstore, checking out their manga collection. There seemed to be only twelve people walking around the store, and none of them he knew. He read a few volumes before he left the store. Walking around the mall, looking around, he felt a bit dumb. There weren’t that many things he wanted to buy, and none of his friends seemed to have thought to come out here. He popped into a dollar store and bought a generic cola. The man behind the counter looked at his shirt and smiled. “Hey, nice shirt,” he said. “Haven’t read a comic since I was a kid, but those movies are great.” The man looked to be nearly fifty. Manny regarded the man’s gray hair and lined face. “What’d you read growing up?” “Well, I read a bit of everything,” the man admitted. “I can’t say I remember much of it. Nice to see Hollywood finally giving a thought to it, though.” Manny let out a humph. “You can say that again,” he responded. “I think when I was a kid, there was the 1989 movie and other than that, a bunch of crap. Now it seems like everyone likes ‘em.” He shrugged. “It’s annoying. Where were these movies when I was in high school about two-thousand-one?” They shared a laugh and he left the dollar store. It raised his spirit to feel reassured he wasn’t alone. Entering the video and game store, he looked through the Blu-ray section. He came across a copy of the nineteen eighty-one Capacitor movie. They’d made a crappy sequel in two-thousand-five, and hinted at a Furious Thunder reboot, but he always enjoyed the original. He hadn’t seen it in years or had this updated disc, so he bought it to give himself a reason to have come. He started the car and set his bag in the passenger seat. Flipping the radio on, a news story talking about lights in the sky over various parts of the world, and what the experts had to say about such things. Even though it might have been interesting, he set his radio to Bluetooth and played music from his smartphone. Pressing the emergency brake off, he shifted into drive and left the parking lot. The highway back to southern Illinois signaled his experiment had failed and he had to return home. Miles of highway passed once again. Nothing much out of the ordinary appeared until he got about halfway home. Pulling the car over to the shoulder, he stared at the sky, both awed and weirded out. Streaks of color, vaguely reminiscent of aurora borealis made streaks across the evening blue. However, these were off-colored. Various pinks, oranges, and silvers streaked in with the green and red. It undulated in the sky like some cosmic worm wriggling. Eager, he checked his mirrors and got out. He clicked his phone’s camera app and pointed it at the sky. The image quality wasn’t fantastic, but he wanted to keep a record of this. Some ten minutes later, it faded, and he got back in his car. Since others were stopping and staring, he took his opportunity and left. Returning home, he uploaded the photo to his laptop and watched videos on the internet. He opened his bought movies and made sure they worked. After ten minutes, he checked the clock. Work the next morning would be a pain in the ass, so he decided to check in for the night. He set his phone’s alarm clock and changed into his pajamas. The usual evening routine came next: brush teeth, change into pajamas, swallow some pain medication since his feet hurt. Once the ibuprofen kicked in, his mind slipped away into dreams. The alarm interrupted his dream of driving through a vague pseudo-city consisting of several places he had been to, while fleeing some nondescript sense of dread. Waking up was an exercise in lifting himself to a sitting position and waiting for his sense of balance to kick in. Shaking his head to clear it, he stood up and stumbled a few steps before righting himself and walking to the bathroom. The routine became second nature: brush teeth, do business, shower. He had a half hour or so before he had to be there, so he made himself a few sandwiches for breakfast along with some coffee. He took a hit of his inhaler and dressed himself before heading out the door. The drive to the warehouse reminded him how much he hated it. His work was a decent paying job; it didn’t, however, mean he enjoyed it. The man at the door scanned his ID badge and he walked over to the counter to be assigned. The woman, a middle-aged smoking victim, regarded him with the same deadpan expression everyone got. The number he got was thirty-three with a ‘C,’ and that meant he would be on shampoo duty. If there existed a better demonstration of how to reduce a man to a robot than the next five hours, he would have loved to see it. His task consisted of taking finished shampoo two-packs, placing them in a cardboard box in their slot, sealing the box in plastic when full, and placing it on a palate for a forklift to retrieve when the palate filled. Other than a single fifteen-minute break, he did nothing else. When the lunch break came, he got in his car and drove to the truck stop across the road and bought a sandwich from the refrigerator along with a generic diet soda. After that, he went back to work and another five hours passed by. His knees and back ached, and his hands hurt, so when finished he popped two naproxen sodium and finished the last of his green diet soda. It was painful, but at least he was lucky. Some of the other warehouse companies that hired paid only minimum wage. Then again, he rationalized, most of them were staffed by stoners and ex-convicts. On the way home, he stopped by the video rental kiosk and chose some arthouse film one of his friends had recommended. It wasn’t normally the kind of film he watched, but it would be a welcome waste of time. The sun was still up and yet, he wanted nothing more than to plop into his chair and leave the day behind. It bothered him some of his friends worked as much as possible. Other than keeping the house clean—which was the responsibility of everyone with a home—these people exercised for three, sometimes four hours a day, and this is after an eight to ten-hour work shift, and then chores. Maybe by the time they were done, they’d have two, maybe two and a half hours to just relax and do nothing before going to bed at eight-thirty, nine at the absolute latest. His shift started at five-thirty, and he finished at three-thirty. He worked forty hours a week, his default four-day schedule. His arms and back often ached, but damn it, every weekend was three days, he made enough money to pay the bills on a house his parents left him, and that mattered most. Furthermore, if he skipped a few meals here and there, he could save enough money to buy something big. Five years ago, he’d skipped enough meals to buy a two-thousand, five-hundred-dollar gaming laptop. It kicked as much ass as he could hope for. Maybe next year, he would start saving for a new one. The movie was ok, not exceptional, but he was glad anyway, because it being Thursday, he wouldn’t have to be back at the warehouse until Monday. He pulled out his PC controller and plugged it into his laptop. He decided to play Inindo: Way of the Ninja, a role-playing game from nineteen ninety-three. A relatively obscure game, he’d rented it once as a kid from Blockbuster Video and enjoyed it so much he played it completely at least once a year. It wasn’t particularly breathtaking, but it was a fun way to pass the time. Noticing the clock on the wall was nine P.M., he saved, put his laptop into hibernation, and stretched his limbs. The night was calling and he didn’t want to stay up too late. Just not having to awake at four the next morning felt great. When he turned in the direction of his bookshelf, he saw the book occupying the top slot—volume one of the 2004 run of Capacitor in Furious Thunder Comics. Opening the graphic novel, he remembered the familiar opening. The heroine, Michelle Delanter, with her trademark red hair, reminiscent of the setting sun, flapping in the wind, stood poised to save lives. Her figure, not quite as anorexic as the new run, had the super-skinny frame of a waif model, which, absolutely did not mesh with her powerful expression. He’d been entering college during the original run of these issues, and they were always a fun time. Hard to believe, it had been more than ten long years since then. Replacing the book, he felt a mild static shock. It annoyed him, and he started towards the bathroom when he felt a mild burning sensation wash over him. He pulled his shirt off, having stripped down to his underwear. Furiously he slapped his hands on his torso, trying to locate if something was injured or in some way damaged. A few seconds passed with the feeling increasing before fading entirely. His head felt slightly dizzy and then became normal again. “What…” he uttered. Before he had a chance to finish the thought, he felt a yanking, a pulling. It came from his abdomen. In a scene of utter impossibility, he looked down to the source of the feeling, and saw—as he continued to feel—his large bulbous fat gut drawing in. His entire torso shrank before his very eyes. “No, oonooo!” Trapped in a panicked thought, that he was shriveling up into a corpse somehow, he grabbed and pinched at skin, pulling and yanking, trying desperately to fight it. After a few moments, there wasn’t enough fat left to grab handfuls of. He gasped and panted, wide-eyed at how small his torso had become. Now the pulling came over his limbs. From his waist to feet, and shoulder to fingertip, his flesh tightened and retreated. Coarse hair disappeared, scant, fair body hair appeared in its place. His mallet-like hand with stubby sausage fingers turned into a dainty palm with slender pianist digits extending from them. Legs became thin, smooth, with only faint hair that wasn’t too noticeable. Giant fat feet shrank several shoe sizes. Finally, a twinge travelled up his chest and to the top of his head. His saggy man-breasts became recognizable ‘B-cup’ women’s breasts. Hair grazed his shoulders. “Yeep!” he shouted, tugging at the intrusion, only to see the reddish hair attached to his own head. The voice registered clearly in an adult woman’s range. He stumbled to the bathroom mirror and stared. Twenty-year-old, redheaded, superhero,fictional character, Michelle Delanter, or, an incredible facsimile, stared back at him. He shook his head, slamming his eyes shut. No. This is impossible. He had spent years of his life thinking skeptically. It was the reason he’d left religion behind. No, what happened was, he’d gone insane. This was a hell of a hallucination; he hadn’t even had a history of mental illness. Sure, when he was ten, he had a phase where he wanted everyone to call him Batman, but even then, he knew he wasn’t turned into an imaginary character. He ran his hands over his face. The red-headed woman—who, now that he thought about it, had no reason to be a fictional character—rubbed her face the same way. He felt up and down the body, and sure enough, the hands in the mirror moved as well. He took a deep breath and let it go; this was an amazing degree of insanity. He’d really flipped. Not only had he somehow developed a separate personality, but the hallucination was so good, he couldn’t think his way out of it. A thought occurred to him. Had he been this red-haired woman all along? He fumbled through his wallet. His driver’s license was the same as it was that morning. Manfred Voren, Illinois Driver’s License, five foot nine, two hundred eighty pounds. He took a selfie, making sure to only photograph from the neck up, and sent it to a friend of his. “What do you see here?” he included with the text. Ten seconds later, his friend Jake responded. “Cute girl,” he said. “Nice hair. She your new girlfriend?” “She’s a friend,” he replied. He set the phone aside. He sat down on the toilet lid. Either he hallucinated the text, he figured, or else Jake had really seen the girl. That wasn’t evidence enough, he knew, but it was a good start. He honestly expected, had he simply gone crazy, for Jake to say something about why Manny would send a photo of himself. Still, he couldn’t trust his own mind. This wasn’t possible. He had a mountain of evidence to suggest he had spent thirty-one years as Manfred Voren. Thinking about it, he’d never so much as seen a single redhead, anywhere in his life that looked like her. He sent the photo to his perverted friend John. “Would you do her?” “Sure, I would,” he replied moments later. “Who’s she?” “Someone I had a pleasant conversation with earlier,” Manny texted. “Has anyone like her ever been around us before?” “No, dude, I wish,” John replied. “Don’t miss the opportunity on this one.” He set the phone down. Now he had more evidence. Still not enough to positively rule out his insanity, but two separate friends acknowledged that the photo he remembered taking a minute before was both not him, and not someone they’d seen before. Either he was insane enough to have hallucinated: transforming, taking a photo of the result, as well as his friends reactions, or something absolutely not possible was actually happening. He still didn’t want to accept what had never happened before in human history. He slapped himself to see if he was dreaming; he wasn’t. He stood in front of the mirror. In his mind, he could see an image of himself as this woman. He focused hard on the image. He imagined it turning back into him. Nothing happened. After a few minutes, he closed his eyes and saw the image even clearer. He did it again, and still nothing. He imagined both images side by side—himself, as he was before, and her. Nothing happened, except this time, he felt a presence in the back of his head. Not like a person or spirit, but as if a switch or lever had magically appeared in his brain. Obviously, it didn’t have a literal appearance of such a device, or any appearance at all, but he noticed it only when he summoned both images side by side. With thoughts, he manipulated it, imagined it changing. Once more, nothing happened. Almost a half hour passed with nothing changing. Opening his eyes, he stared once more at the red-haired woman he’d become. If this didn’t change, if he couldn’t change back, he’d have a lot of hell to deal with. Sooner or later, he figured he’d wake up in a nuthouse or a courthouse, having done something like beating a guy to death because he hallucinated the devil in him or some crap like that. Or, if the absurd turned out to be true, he would have no identifying papers as this woman, and no history whatsoever. He’d have no solutions. If he somehow overcame these problems, he’d be spending the rest of his life as this woman. Could he really commit to that? Could he really pull the trigger? Oh my god, he thought. It was a trigger! He coughed to calm himself. Okay, he rationalized. Let’s assume what, again, I know to be impossible, is really happening. Let’s say I’m somehow turning into a woman and back again, his mind fired. Wouldn’t it be damn inconvenient should, say, a random thought morph you in the middle of a crowded room? He was the kind of guy to imagine spiders crawling on the walls at random. He’d hate to have the kind of power to do that. So, he guessed, should there be a fail-safe, to guarantee that no random imagining of himself would cause the change to occur? He focused on the twinge in his head, the feeling the…whatever the hell it was. He imagined her morphing straight back into him. This time, he didn’t imagine himself manipulating the…well, hell, he just decided to call it the Trigger. He committed. He decided, firmly and completely, yes, he wanted to be fat, almost thirty, underpaid and overworked, Illinois native Manfred Voren. He felt the Trigger change to a different state. Like a bad CGI film, his body morphed back into Manfred Voren. The entire process took eleven seconds. His fingers were fat again, his gut stuck out again, and his penis and testicles had returned, along with his ungainly body hair. He could have cheered when he became normal again. He had never been so glad to be overweight. And then, his curiosity got the better of him. Oh hell, he realized. He couldn’t let it go. He stepped on the scale, and it read two seventy-nine. Hey, he realized, he’d lost two pounds from the month before. In his mind, he imagined the woman again. He pulled the Trigger by committing to the transformation. Hey, as far as insane ideas went, it was convenient, the equivalent of an “are you sure” before deleting the file from the hard drive. It snapped into its previous state, and the change happened again. This time, the burning was replaced by a tingling, almost like the cold mixed with electric prickling around fur rugs. He stared in bewilderment as the scale plummeted to one hundred and thirty-seven pounds. Wow, not just impossible, he thought, but ultra super-duper impossible, violating the Law of Conservation of Mass impossible. He reversed the transformation and the scale climbed again. He decided to go to bed. This insanity could wait until the morning. With thoughts raging on his mind, it took quite a while, but he managed to slip off to dream. The sun’s light peering in through the window and shining in his face woke him up. He rubbed his belly and face. He was still Manny and still fat. How much of what happened the night before had been real? He yawned and stretched. Stumbling to the bathroom, he splashed water on his face. Mental images of himself turning into the woman from the night before returned, and with it, a familiar presence. He pulled the Trigger once again. Eleven seconds later, the red-haired woman stared back at him in the mirror, blinking when he blinked. The possibility that this was a hallucination hadn’t diminished much. Much of what he saw continued to be impossible per all the scientific evidence he knew. He had two pieces of evidence he couldn’t necessarily trust because he could have hallucinated them as well. A decision entered his mind. Since what was going on didn’t appear to be harmful or destructive yet, one of the easiest ways to prove it real would be to do things that it would be utterly impossible for a hallucination to deliver. To get there, he had to know if he had been turned into Capacitor, or just a red-haired woman. Based on his current supermodel-thin build, it would be utterly impossible for an ordinary woman with red hair to lift a refrigerator. He knelt in front of it, and wrapped his arms around the large metal rectangular prism. He bent his womanly legs and expected his back to scream at him. Instead, he felt weight resistance on par with lifting a beach ball. At fully standing height, he yelped and immediately had to avoid three problems at once: hitting it on the ceiling, dropping it, or banging it into the wall. It felt like carrying a bag of groceries. So, not just an ordinary red-haired woman, he thought, but actually The Capacitor. Gingerly, he set down the fridge. Got it. He walked around the house a bit, curious as to how many of her powers he had in this form. If this were really happening, he took mental note, he’d already demonstrated strength. She had several more. He stared all around, trying to activate her see-through vision. What the writers had made sure to do, he remembered from the comics, was not to give her x-ray vision. Her vision was a form of psychic remote viewing, since they didn’t want to imply her eyes gave off harmful ionizing radiation. After long minutes of trying, he found wanting to see further caused layers to become transparent, allowing him to see behind and beyond them. With effort, he gained another small, possibly unreliable, piece of evidence that this wasn’t a hallucination. One layer at a time, he saw past the wall of his house, past the walls of the neighbor across the street’s house, and into the books on a shelf perpendicular to his vision in one of their rooms. One book, he had never once read, The Old Man and The Sea by Hemingway, he saw the cover, then the first page. The next page was backwards, obviously, when the first page became invisible as he saw past it. Exercising his will, his vision returned to himself, having remembered the text of the page as best he could. He downloaded a digital version of the book and read the first page. The text matched what he saw. Alright, I couldn’t have made that up, he realized. Unless somehow, he had read the book somehow and forgot that he read it while still remembering the text, which struck him as unlikely. He still couldn’t rule it out, but now, more evidence mounted. The best evidence, he figured, would be to act as though it were real and see how far it went. Certainly, real life broke down all barriers and the truth eventually came out. If he ventured out into the world, and this was a hallucination, it would come crashing down, wouldn’t it? Sure, it could be disastrous, but if he had the insanity to hallucinate to this degree, what could he trust? It also meant, the farthest and most unlikely scenario could be true. Something impossible could truly be happening, and the implications, he scarcely wanted to contemplate, for the whole universe was involved. Turning back into himself, he decided to push it. He transformed parts of his body into hers. Individual feet at first, then hands. He could even transfer much of his body fat to her form. This seemed practical, as it meant his clothes would fit her, but at the same time, it bothered him. He thought about it. Ultimately, he shook it off in favor of more pressing matters. Her being fat allowed him to put his clothes on and head outside to do some work. Grabbing the car keys, he headed for the park near Wood River, Illinois. There, he could find a quiet corner of the large open park and practice. The wooded areas had quite a few places off the beaten path where people hardly went. In a cluster of trees, he stood, focusing on what he knew. Alright, he thought, one of the most basic abilities she had was flight. She could, in the comics, fly incredibly fast. He focused on his presence and imagined himself moving. At first, just as he expected, nothing happened. Practice made perfect. It was just like riding a bike. After twenty boring minutes of trying different mental techniques, he focused on deciding to levitate upwards. Leaves blew away from him in a circle, as if he had a propeller blowing. His feet left the ground by an inch. I’m getting it! He thought. Then he fell backwards onto his butt. He stood, brushed himself off. Fly, already, he mentally commanded. Upwards! Fly! As though fired from a cannon he shot up. Uncontrolled at first, he slammed into a tree face first, having surprisingly tested his durability and upon issuing a mental yell of “stop!” he came crashing down with a thump. The thought occurred to him that direction and speed may not be the same mental process. He indicated the direction of up, and decided. Simultaneously, he indicated a speed of slightly above gravity and committed. Like a balloon, he levitated to the height of the tree. At the top, he changed his speed to exactly the speed of gravity. He came to a dead stop and floated alongside the treetop. Left, he focused and thought. Slow. He hovered in the direction of the next tree. What surprised him was that he continued facing the original direction as he moved sideways. He had to turn his body midair to face the direction he moved; it wasn’t automatic. Touching the tree, he stopped and lowered himself. Finesse and fine control would have to wait. He had other powers to practice. What surprised him was that flight worked much like the “trigger” that activated his power: he had to mentally force it so a random thought couldn’t interrupt it. Sensory powers were her next major task. Sure, he knew, he’d tested her sight, but now, he had hearing to test. This was easy to activate. Unfortunately, it was hard to focus. A thunderstorm erupted in his head. He heard everything from nearby cars starting all the way down to the footfall of a squirrel. Drowning out everything except people’s conversations proved hard. It wasn’t like the comics at all. Sure, with effort, he could hear what they were saying separately by paying attention to it, but just like regular hearing, everything else mixed in. Ironically, the easiest powers to learn were what he expected to be the hardest. Energy projection, which in the comics, manifested as her being able to emit laser-like beams from her hands and directly in front of her eyes, wasn’t hard at all. He thought of the type of energy to be fired. In this case, a powerful beam of laser light. He pointed at a log. Making the decision, the tip of his finger glowed red and a dot appeared on the log, slowly burning. He decided to increase power. The light turned from red to blue, and it ate through the log in seconds. Once stopped focusing, it vanished. The other, super speed, almost felt like turning a knob. He found the world frozen around him as he focused on it. The only disorienting part was movement. He found he could see and process all the information around him, even though he felt the tremendous speed at which he ran. The logical problem was that his clothes didn’t rip off. The only answer he could come up with was that the invulnerability extended somewhat during running. He shifted back into his normal male form. Within twenty minutes of testing individual body parts, he found he needed to transform his brain into hers to have any abilities at all. Furthermore, he found he needed at least half his internal organs to be changed to have strength or flight, but sensory powers only required his eyes and ears to change. After a few minutes of testing his sensory powers in his normal form, he realized, it bothered him somehow. It didn’t feel right to him to use powers in his male form. He pondered it a few moments, but shook his head. He had other work to do. Namely, the thing he wanted to do was, in fiction, usually the first thing the hero learned not to do. He’d read enough comics and manga to learn that one of the very first lessons a protagonist learned was not to use their powers for self-interest. It was wrong. To an extent, he knew why it was wrong. But as someone who worked ten-hour days, for less than fifteen dollars an hour, he didn’t care.
October 31, 2019: The House votes to formalize its impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine.
August 10, 2019: Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in his Manhattan jail cell where he was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
August 7, 2019: The bodies of Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky are found in Manitoba, Canada. Police suspect the friends went on a killing spree across the country, and had been searching for them for 20 days.
July 7, 2019: The US women's national soccer team wins the World Cup for a fourth time in a row.
April 18, 2019: A redacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign's possible collusion is released to the public.
March 15, 2019: Fifty people are killed and another 50 are injured in attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
March 12, 2019: Federal prosecutors in Boston charge at least 50 people in the "Varsity Blues" scandal, accusing many of them of using bribes to get their students into college. Among the defendants are actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
March 2019: Governments around the world banned the Boeing 737 Max from their airspaces after two crashes in 5 months killed 346 people.
January 10, 2019: Jayme Closs, a 13-year-old Wisconsin girl who went missing three months prior, escapes from a rural home where she was being held captive by her parent's killer. He later pleads guilty to the crimes.
October 2, 2018: Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is murdered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
September 27, 2018: More than 20 million people tune in to watch the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
July 10, 2018: 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach are rescued from a flooded cave after more than two weeks stuck in the cavern.
June 24, 2018: Saudi Arabia lifts its ban on allowing women to drive.
May 19, 2018: Millions around the world tune in to watch Britain's Prince Harry marry American actress Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle.
April 24, 2018: DNA submitted to an ancestry database helps investigators catch who they believe to be the "Golden State Killer", a murderer and rapist who tormented the Bay Area in the 1970s and '80s.
April 6-June 20, 2018: Under its "zero tolerance" immigration policy, the Trump administration separates thousands of children from their migrant parents at the border, causing widespread outrage on a national level.
April 13, 2018: The US, Britain, and France conduct air strikes against Syria in response to President Bashar al-Assad's suspected use of chemical weapons on citizens in a civil war gripping the country.
March 24, 2018: Hundreds of thousands take part in the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., organized by survivors of the Parkland shooting to call for gun control reform.
February 14, 2018: Seventeen students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, are killed, and another 17 are injured, in a horrific shooting.
February 4, 2018: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots to win their first-ever Super Bowl and stun viewers with a now-classic trick play.
February 9-25, 2018: The Winter Olympics are held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
January 14, 2018: A teen girl escapes from her family home in southern California and calls police to rescue the rest of her 12 siblings from their abusive parents.
November 21, 2017: Dramatic video emerges showing a North Korean soldier defecting to South Korea while being shot at.
November 15, 2017: The San Juan, an Argentine navy submarine, goes missing. It was found at the bottom of the ocean almost a year later, with all 44 crew dead from an explosion that happened in the vessel.
October 12, 2017: Trump announces that the Pakistani military has rescued Canadian-American couple Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman and their children from the Haqqani network.
October 1, 2017: Fifty-eight people are killed and more than 850 are injured after a gunman opens fire on a Las Vegas music festival from a 32nd floor room in the Mandalay Bay casino.
October 2017: Famous men are culled in the #MeToo movement.
July 8, 2017: The New York Times publishes a report on how members of Trump's campaign — including his son Donald Jr. — met with Russian agents in Trump Tower in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election.
June 1, 2017: Trump announces his intention to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.
May 22, 2017: Twenty-two people leaving an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena are killed in a terrorist bombing. Another 50 people were injured.
April 19, 2017: Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez dies by suicide in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the June 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.
February 26, 2017: "La La Land" is mistakenly announced as the Best Picture winner at the Oscars, instead of "Moonlight."
January 28, 2017: Serena Williams beats her sister Venus to win the Australian Open, while secretly eight weeks pregnant with her first child.
January 21, 2017: Hundreds of thousands of people gather in Washington, D.C. and cities around the world to take part in the Women's March, protesting Trump's election.
January 20, 2017: Donald Trump is sworn in as the nation's 45th president.
November 8, 2016: Donald Trump is elected president, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in a landmark upset.
November 3, 2016: The Chicago Cubs break the Billy Goat curse and win their first World Series in 108 years.
October 8, 2016: The Washington Post publishes a video from a 2005 interview between "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush and Donald Trump, in which the latter said he can grab women "by the p---y" because he's a star.
October 7, 2016: The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issue a joint statement warning that the Russians are trying to interfere in the presidential election.
September 12, 2016: The Indianapolis Star publishes a report detailing how USA Gymnastics failed to report sexual abuse committed by Michigan State University physician Dr. Larry Nassar.
September 15, 2016: Angelina Jolie files for divorce from husband Brad Pitt.
August 26, 2016: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sits on the bench during the national anthem, saying "I have to take a stand for people that are oppressed."
August 5-21, 2016: The 2016 summer Olympics are held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
July 7, 2016: Five Dallas police officers are killed while working at a Black Lives Matter rally. Authorities killed the gunman with a bomb delivered by a robot.
June 24, 2016: Britain votes to leave the European Union.
June 12, 2016: A gunman opens fire inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53.
June 2, 2016: Brock Turner, a former Stanford swim team member, is sentenced to just six months in jail for sexually assaulting an inebriated woman outside a campus fraternity.
April 21, 2016: Music legend Prince is found dead in the elevator of his Minnesota estate. An autopsy would later find that the singer died of an overdose of the opioid fentanyl.
April 3, 2016: A group of news outlets around the world publish stories based on the Panama Papers, a leak of 11.5 million documents from a Panamanian law firm, showing the shady ways wealthy people use offshore accounts.
December 18, 2015: "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is released, earning more than $2 billion at the box office worldwide.
November 13-14, 2015: Terror attacks strike Paris for a second time in a year, resulting in the deaths of 130 people and nearly 500 wounded.
August 26, 2015: WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward are shot dead while filming a live TV segment in Virginia.
August 21, 2015: Three American men, including two active military members, thwart a terrorist attack on a French train.
July 20, 2015: Diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba are restored, decades after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
July 11, 2015: Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escapes for a second time from his cell at a Mexican high-security prison.
June 26, 2015: The Supreme Court issues a 5-4 ruling that gay marriage is legal, legalizing same-sex unions nationwide.
June 16, 2015: New York City real estate mogul Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president with a speech at Trump Tower calling Mexican immigrants "rapists."
June 6, 2015: Joyce Mitchell, a worker at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, helps two convicted murderers escape.
June 6, 2015: American Pharoah wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first horse in 37 years to earn the Triple Crown of American horse racing.
May 2015: An outbreak of the Zika virus spreads to Brazil, and eventually moves its way up into Central America and the Caribbean.
March 24, 2015: Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 crashes in the Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
February 1, 2015: The New England Patriots win Super Bowl XLIX thanks to an interception with just seconds left in the game.
January 7-9, 2015: Paris is the target of multiple terror attacks that leave 17 people dead.
November 24, 2014: Hackers breach the network of Sony Pictures Entertainment and release embarrassing information against the company.
September 4, 2014: Comedian Joan Rivers dies while undergoing plastic surgery to her throat.
August 9, 2014: Unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown is shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, causing several days of riots in the community and fueling the Black Lives Matter movement.
August 19, 2014: American photojournalist James Foley is beheaded in a video recorded by ISIS, marking the beginning of the terrorist group's rise to power.
August 11, 2014: Beloved actor and comedian Robin Williams is found dead from a suicide at his home in California.
May 31, 2014: The US government agrees to release five Taliban commanders in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had gone missing from a base in Afghanistan five years prior.
May 24, 2014: Rapper Kanye West marries reality star Kim Kardashian in a lavish wedding in Florence, Italy.
May 5, 2014: TMZ obtains footage showing Beyoncé getting between her husband and sister when the two come to blows while riding in an elevator after the Met Gala.
March 23, 2014: The World Health Organization reports that there has been an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, the start of the largest outbreak of the virus in history.
April 2014: The Flint water crisis begins as the Michigan city tries to cut costs by getting their water from the Flint River instead of getting it from Detroit.
March 25, 2014: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow announces her separation from her Coldplay frontman husband Chris Martin on her blog Goop, saying they have decided to "consciously uncouple".
March 8, 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously vanishes off radar while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
March 2014: Russia invades Ukraine and annexes the Crimea, after Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, is toppled in anti-government protests.
February 18, 2014: A 39-year-old Jimmy Fallon starts his tenure as host of "The Tonight Show".
February 2, 2014: Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dies at the age of 46 from a drug overdose.
February 1, 2014: Dylan Farrow writes an essay describing how her father, director Woody Allen, molested her as a child. Allen was never charged and denies the allegation.
December 5, 2013: Nelson Mandela, South Africa's trailblazing first black president, dies at the age of 25.
July 22, 2013: Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, gives birth to a baby boy named Prince George, who becomes third in line to the British throne, behind his father and grandfather.
July 13, 2013: The Black Lives Matter movement begins after George Zimmerman is acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin.
July 7, 2013: Scottish tennis player Andy Murray becomes the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.
July 6, 2013: "Glee" star Cory Monteith is found dead in a Vancouver, British Columbia, hotel room after succumbing to a drug and alcohol overdose.
June 6, 2013: The Guardian and the Washington Post publish stories based on information leaked to them by government contractor Edward Snowden.
May 6, 2013: Three women who had been missing for about a decade are rescued from the Cleveland, Ohio, home of Ariel Castro.
May 16, 2013: The now-defunct news site Gawker publishes a video showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.
April 15, 2013: Two pressure cooker bombs explode at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 250 others.
March 13, 2013: Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected pope, becoming the first South American to lead the Roman Catholic Church. He assumes the name Pope Francis.
February 28, 2013: Basketball legend Dennis Rodman travels to North Korea and meets leader Kim Jong-un, becoming the first American to meet the new leader since he assumed office two years prior.
December 14, 2012: A mentally-disturbed shooter kills 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, before killing himself.
November 9, 2012: Gen. David Petraeus resigns as director of the CIA after the FBI uncovers the fact that he shared classified information with his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.
November 6, 2012: Voters in Colorado and Washington vote to legalize recreational marijuana, becoming the first states in the US to do so.
October 29, 2012: Superstorm Sandy causes widespread death and damage, especially in the Northeastern US.
October 22, 2012: After being accused of conducting an elaborate doping scheme, American cyclist Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France medals and banned from cycling competitions for life.
September 11, 2012: US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans are killed after a mob storms the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.
July 20, 2012: A shooter opens fire at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight," in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others.
November 7, 2011: Michael Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray, is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection to the late singer's overdose death.
October 20, 2011: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is captured and killed by revolutionaries, bringing an end to his 42-year regime.
October 3, 2011: American Amanda Knox, 24, is freed from an Italian prison after her conviction in the 2009 murder of her British roommate is overthrown.
September 17, 2011: The Occupy Wall Street movement begins with about 1,000 people protesting in downtown Manhattan's Zuccotti Park.
July 23, 2011: Grammy Award-winning singer Amy Winehouse, 27, is found dead at her home in north London.
July 22, 2011: A right-wing Christian extremist kills 77 people — most of them children — in attacks on Oslo, Norway, and the nearby island of Utoya.
July 7, 2011: Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid shutters after it was revealed that staffers hacked into the phones of prominent figures like Prince William to mine for stories.
May 14, 2011: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is pulled off a Paris-bound flight in New York and charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
May 1, 2011: President Barack Obama addresses the nation to announce the death of terrorist Osama bin Laden, after a successful Navy SEAL raid on the 9/11 mastermind's compound in Pakistan.
April 29, 2011: 3 billion people tune in to watch Britain's Prince William marry college sweetheart Kate Middleton in a ceremony at Westminster Cathedral in London
March 11, 2011: An earthquake in Japan causes the second-worst nuclear accident in history.
March 2011: Civil war breaks out in Syria after military defectors create the Free Syrian Army, to combat those loyal to President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
February 11, 2011: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns under pressure from revolutionaries, giving up the seat he had held for three decades.
January 28, 2011: "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen enters rehab, a day after the actor was rushed from his home to the hospital for abdominal and chest pains, according to CBS Los Angeles.
December 17, 2010: The suicide of a Tunisian street vendor serves as a catalyst for the Arab Spring.
December 8, 2010: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange turns himself in to British police after Swedish authorities put out a warrant for his arrest in connection to a rape accusation.
October 13, 2010: 33 miners are rescued after spending 69 days trapped in a Chilean copper mine.
June 27, 2010: The FBI arrests 10 Russian spies caught living deep undercover in the United States.
May 2, 2010: The European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund sign off on a €110 million bailout of Greece, to save the EU country from default.
April 20, 2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico causes the biggest marine oil spill in history.
April 14, 2010: An eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano causes an ash cloud to spread across Europe, grounding flights in the region.
January 12, 2010: Hundreds of thousands of people are killed after a 11117.0-magnitude earthquake strikes the island nation of Haiti.
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