Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump inside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. Demonstrators breached security and entered the Capitol as Congress carried out the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. | AFP-JIJI
From military coups to supply chain woes and new tech, the world continued to see significant changes in 2021. The year began in shocking fashion with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in Washington, while the climate crisis remained front of mind and tensions in Asia grew ever more severe.
Afghan people sit inside a U.S. military aircraft in Kabul on Aug. 19, after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. | AFP-JIJIActress Paing Phyoe Thu holds up the three-finger salute, a symbol from the ‘Hunger Games’ series, on Feb. 17 during one of many protests in Yangon, Myanmar, against a military coup that swelled to hundreds of thousands of people in a few days. | THE NEW YORK TIMESA screen shows Chinese President Xi Jinping during a show commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party at National Stadium in Beijing on June 28. Authorities strengthened their grip on the country in 2021, cracking down on China’s tech sector and shoring up Xi’s position as the nation’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. | REUTERSA pedestrian walks past apartment buildings at China Evergrande Group’s City Plaza development in Beijing on Dec. 10. The property developer was officially labeled a defaulter, a key moment of reckoning faced by China’s highly indebted real estate sector. | BLOOMBERGU.S. President Joe Biden smiles during a virtual news conference with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (not pictured) at the White House in Washington on Sept. 15. The announcement of a major security deal between the three nations drew China’s ire and also undermined relations with France. | REUTERSA pilot prepares to take off on a F-CK-1 Ching-kuo Indigenous Defence Fighter at an air force base in Tainan, Taiwan, on Jan. 26. China’s increased incursions into the island’s air defense zone and a wider ratcheting up of tensions led to greater talk of the possibility of invasion by Beijing. | REUTERSVisitors in front of an immersive art installation titled ‘Machine Hallucinations – Space: Metaverse’ by media artist Refik Anadol, which was later converted into a non-fungible token and auctioned online at Sotheby’s, at the Digital Art Fair in Hong Kong on Sept. 30. NFTs, ‘web3’ and the ‘metaverse’ were just some of the tech buzzwords that gained greater traction in 2021. | REUTERSPeople board a ferry during an evacuation as a wildfire burns in the village of Limni, on the island of Evia, Greece, on Aug. 6. Natural disasters continued to afflict the world in 2021, adding greater urgency to the U.N. COP26 climate talks held in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12. | REUTERSA satellite image shows the Suez Canal in Egypt blocked by the stranded container ship Ever Given on March 25. The disruption to supply chains caused by the stricken vessel presaged even greater woes later in the year. | ROSCOSMOS / VIA REUTERS
