Top 10 major events that shook the world in 2024

The year 2024 has been a dramatic and heartbreaking, to say the least. Wars raged on in West Asia (Middle East) and Ukraine, while a civil war entered its second year in Sudan, leaving thousands dead and millions in the grip of hunger and bereft of human rights and dignity.

Some of the most important and powerful nations in the world went to polls, and two autocratic rulers were dramatically ousted. Many parts of the world suffered natural calamities of unprecedented scales and we had an aeroplane door flying off midair.

Here are 10 of the most momentous events that left an indelible mark on the year that was.

10. Natural disasters that rocked the world

On the very first day of the year, the Noto Peninsula Earthquake in Japan left at least 250 dead and injured thousands. And then, extreme weather events continued to wreak havoc across the world for the rest of the year.

Over March-April, unseasonal heavy rain and flash floods in Afghanistan and Pakistan killed over 1,000 people, and injured many more. May was particularly bad in terms of extreme weather events. Heavy rains and torrents of cold lava and mud flowing down a volcano’s slopes on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island triggered flash floods, leaving many dead.

Brazil saw one of its worst floods that same month, while the arid Afghanistan saw several deaths due to another spate of heavy flooding in Baghlan province. Hundreds died and lakhs were displaced in floods across Kenya and Tanzania, while the deadly Papua New Guinea landslides buried 2,000 people alive.

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Floods in Spain left hundreds dead in October, while super typhoon Kong-rey hit Taiwan late that same month. France faced floods as well, while the Philippines were hit by several major storms in a single month, including by a super typhoon, Man-yi, in November.

China, Thailand, Nepal, and Japan saw deadly floods, while even the Sahara desert turned into an ocean due to flooding. Wildfires swept through Brazil and North America while two major hurricanes, Beryl and Helene, brought catastrophe to North America.

9. Boeing’s ever-growing troubles

Aircraft, and now spacecraft, manufacturer Boeing was plagued by a series of incidents in the past year.

On January 5, a window and piece of fuselage of a Boeing 737 Max plane belonging to Alaska Airlines flew out minutes after take-off. Again, in April, an engine cover of a Boeing 737-800 plane ripped open and fell off during take-off from Denver airport.

During the year, Boeing pleaded guilty to a criminal fraud charge arising out of two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019 with its 737 Max planes. The planes were subsequently grounded globally for more than 18 months.

But then, Boeing’s much-hyped Starliner, which transported NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station after a series of delays and hiccups, had to be flown back without the astronauts after thruster malfunctions and helium leaks.

Boeing has had a management shake-up, faced workers’ strikes, and slashed 17,000 jobs. Will the beleaguered company’s fortunes turn in the new year?

8. Two British royals’ battle with cancer

It all started with speculations around the “missing” Princess Kate. Following growing concerns about her health, it was finally revealed that Kate had been diagnosed with cancer.

But Kate was not the only British royal to be detected with the dreaded disease. While Kate disclosed it to the public only in March after being diagnosed in January, Buckingham Palace announced in February that King Charles was battling the disease as well.

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Both spent the better part of the year taking chemotherapy and Kate announced in a candid video in September that she was done with the therapy. While she has now resumed her public duties, concerns over King Charles’s failing health have reportedly sped up preparations for William and Kate to assume their future roles as king and queen.

What lies ahead for the British royals? The new year will reveal.

7. Year of elections and government collapses

2024 was a year of elections. In the UK, the Keir Starmer-led Labour Party defeated the governing Conservative Party, led by Rishi Sunak, in a landslide victory in July, ending the Tories’ 14-year tenure as the helm.

France was in for high political drama as the government collapsed on December 4 as Prime Minister Michel Barnier lost a no-confidence motion in parliament prompted by budget disputes. While Barnier became the shortest-serving prime minister in France’s modern republic (91 days), France got its fourth prime minister in 12 months when President Emmanuel Macron named Francois Bayrou as Barnier’s successor.

Similarly, in Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government lost a no-confidence vote and an early election will be held on February 23.

In Sri Lanka, the Marxist Anura Dissanayake became the president after a landslide win for the National People’s Power in the November general elections, ushering in a new era for the country that saw a people’s revolt oust then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022.

And in Pakistan, drama continued around former Prime Minister Imran Khan as all political parties barring his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) joined hands to form the government under PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister.

Protests by the PTI and crackdowns continue in highly volatile Pakistan even as Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi continue to face new cases, the number against Khan now going up to 188.

6. Dramatic imposition of martial law in South Korea and fallout

South Korea witnessed high drama on December 3–4 as President Yoon Suk Yeol suddenly declared martial law after accusing his country’s main opposition party of sympathising with North Korea and of “anti-state activities”. The decree survived only six hours as the National Assembly unanimously voted against it and martial law was withdrawn, but not before it wreaked havoc on the equity markets.

Yoon’s presidential powers and duties were subsequently suspended as the South Korean parliament impeached him, and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo has taken over presidential powers. The impeachment motion alleged that Yoon “committed rebellion that hurt peace in the Republic of Korea by staging a series of riots”.

South Korea’s former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, accused of playing a lead role in the failed imposition of martial law, unsuccessfully tried to die by suicide in a detention centre. The fate of Yoon and his men will be further unravelled in the new year.

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5. Trump survives an attack, then storms to White House

2024 will be remembered as the year of Donald Trump’s comeback. Down and out after facing a series of criminal cases, Trump became the Republican presidential candidate once again and managed to march all the way to the White House, dashing many a dream of seeing the first woman take the mantle of US president.

While the Democrats blundered early on, with an ageing Joe Biden fumbling through the debates against Trump, his subsequent stepping down and the entry of his fiery deputy Kamala Harris into the fray did nothing for the Leftists’ sagging fortunes.

Trump returned with his anti-climate, anti-migrant rhetoric but not before surviving an attempt on his life while speaking at an open-air campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. As the bullet grazed his ear, Trump was saved by a whisker, quite literally.

4. 1,000 days of Ukraine war

The war in Ukraine raged on for the third consecutive year since its genesis in February 2022. With other crises grabbing more attention, Ukraine nearly vanished from headlines but made an entry in November as outgoing US President Joe Biden hurriedly gave permission to the war-ravaged country to use long-range missiles supplied by the US against Russia.

Biden’s move came as the Democrats lost the US elections to the Republicans, with Donald Trump set to return to the White House in January. Trump has openly declared that the US’s weapons supplies to Ukraine would come to a halt, and Biden possibly intended the missile nod as a final leg-up to Ukraine.

Talks of a possible peace deal kept cropping up intermittently throughout the year, with both Moscow and Kyiv agreeing to India acting as the mediator, but there appear to be no signs of that as the year ends, and Ukraine goes into winter with a severely debilitated power infrastructure.

In fact, Russia’s renewed attack on Ukraine and the assassination of Russian chief of nuclear protection forces, Igor Kirillov, have worsened the situation. What will be Ukraine’s fate in the new year? We’ll know sooner than later.

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3. Hasina’s dramatic flight and ongoing violence in Bangladesh

A major shocker came on August 5 when Sheikh Hasina hurriedly resigned as the prime minister of Bangladesh and fled for her life to India as student protesters prepared to march to Dhaka seeking her ouster.

Hasina, long criticised by the West and hated in her country for her autocratic ways, dislike for dissent, and tendency to lock up opposition members, returned to power in January in an election dubbed farcical. But soon, she started facing students’ protests over an unjustified quota system, which reached its pinnacle in July.

Hasina let loose her police, the army, and the entire state machinery on the young protesters and several students died in the onslaught. Finally, with the army on its side, the students forced her to flee on short notice and installed Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus as the head of the interim government.

However, what transpired next was possibly not in their calculation. While the unfairly-locked-up activists of the opposition came out of prisons, so did hardcore Islamists and criminals. The country descended into anarchy and the demoralised police refused to take the initiative to restore order.

Amid repeated reports of atrocities on minorities and rising inflation, the interim government is now under immense pressure even as the fates of an election and of Hasina seem uncertain. Of late, the murder of a Muslim lawyer and the subsequent arrest of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das have sparked renewed tension.

Bangladesh will look for political stability and restoration of peace in the new year.

2. Israel’s offensive spreads in West Asia

Israel showed the world its might in 2024. Even as it continued its offensive in Gaza — killing dozens almost on a daily basis — it took on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant outfit in Lebanon, at the same time. And well, it managed to win everything without as much of a scratch.

Israel pulled off unique pager and walkie-talkie attacks on the Hezbollah with synchronised blasts of the devices. It eliminated Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in September and followed it up by killing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar within a little more than a fortnight.

Even as Isreal broke the backs of Hamas and Hezbollah — and Iran — the United Nations continued to flag fears of an impending famine and deaths of children, relief workers, and journalists in Gaza. However, Israel has proved that it can cock a snook at anyone who speaks against its right of might.

With the US getting a new president in Donald Trump — who famously promised to end all wars and has already warned Hamas to release the last of Israeli hostages — it remains to be seen whether the crisis in West Asia (Middle East) finally comes to an end in the new year.

1. Assad’s ouster and “liberation” of Syria

After 54 years of brutal despotic rule, the Assad family bowed out of Syria not with a bang — and not even with much of a whimper.

On December 8, after some 14 years of civil war and five years of stalemate, the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria dramatically collapsed in just a week. While Bashar ruled the country for 24 years, his father, Hafez al-Assad, ruled it for about 30 years before him with an iron fist.

Assad and his forces were caught off guard — and so was much of the world — when opposition fighters led by the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized the major city of Aleppo in late November. Many anticipated a bitter fight, but that never happened.

After Aleppo, HTS fighters quickly captured Hama and followed it up by seizing Homs and then marched on to Damascus, while Assad’s traditional allies Russia and Iran — caught up in their own little wars — did little to help him. Assad’s demoralised forces thought it wise to give up without a fight and the president himself unceremoniously fled to Moscow, to be given refuge by long-term ally Russia.

As the HTS leadership assumes power, Syria remains in the grip of tremendous uncertainty. But it has given hope to millions of Syrians who fled the country over the years — becoming the tragic faces of illegal immigrants to Europe — and they now dream of going home.

Little Alan Kurdi — the image of his little body swept up on a Mediterranean beach remains etched in the world’s memory — will never come back. But many other Syrian children may be spared a similar tragic fate if the country moves on to better days from here.

With a prayer for all the children in war-ravaged countries, we wish you a very happy New Year. Here’s hoping for a more peaceful 2025.